Sept. 24, 2012

Ole Miss volleyball assistant coach Shannon Wells spoke with the media Monday afternoon about the Rebels' 3-1 victory over Mississippi State on Friday and their upcoming week against Alabama and South Carolina.

Ole Miss Assistant Coach Shannon Wells

Opening statement…
“This weekend we had one match Friday night, probably our biggest of the year. We played Mississippi State. We beat them in four sets. We had an amazing crowd. There were tons of people in the stands and they were screaming. The community of Oxford really stepped up and helped us out with that and made it a great environment to play in. It really carried our team throughout the process.

“Amanda Philpot had another triple-double. That’s her second of the year. It is kills, digs and assists. That’s another great accomplishment. We really rely on her a ton. She’s running our offense. For her to sit back there and make some really big digs against their right side, who they wanted to attack us with, was a really big thing for us. It really helped us win down the stretch.

“Allegra Wells, our right side, continues to play really well. Another double-digit kill performance for her. We thought that she was struggling a little bit in the first two sets. She made some uncharacteristic errors that she hasn’t really made in the past few matches. She was able to pull herself out after the break and finish the match with zero errors after that.

“Kara Morgan, our junior outside hitter, was another big player. She had double-digit kills again. She’s really become one of the go-to attackers on our team.

“The one person that doesn’t get mentioned a lot that probably should is Ashley Veach, our senior libero. This is her first year stepping in at libero. She was a DS (defensive specialist) for us the previous three years. She’s done an amazing job. She passed a 2.3 out of a 3.0. We want our kids to get at least a 2.3 and she passed over 50 percent of the balls this weekend. We were really proud of her. She’s been stepping up and coming in the gym getting extra reps. She is starting to get a little bit more confident. Her presence is really needed and I think our girls are responding to that.

“This week we’re on the road. We play Alabama and South Carolina. Both teams are playing really well right now, probably the best they’ve ever played. They’re two, two-year coaches and they’re kind of turning around the programs. They have small gyms like ours so that is going to be exciting. They’ve been blowing up the crowds. They’ve had over 1,000 fans at their last couple of matches. When you get 1,000 people in a gym the size of ours it gets really, really loud. We’re going to have to prepare for that this week. That will definitely be something we have to work through. Both teams are really hungry. Their outside dominated and we know that going in. Both players, the outside for Alabama and the outside for South Carolina, have been very successful against our team. It’s going to be a challenge this week at practice. We’ll have to have our kids step up and get ready. These are two teams that we can compete with. To be at the top of the SEC you have to sweep at home and you have to take some on the road. We’re hoping we can go in and just play our game, play consistent and limit our errors. We just want to see what we can do.”

On preparing this weekend at practice…
“Volleyball is volleyball. The two things that we really need to work on are serving and passing. We’re going to have to take a ton of serving reps and serve against them. We’ll try to keep their offense predictable. When the ball is on our side we have to control our first contact. We’re going to have to limit our errors. They’re going to keep the ball up and be really scrappy. We’re going to have to rely on what we learned at Missouri and Texas A&M, two schools that had amazing crowds. It was loud the entire time. We just kind of learned from that. Hopefully we use the experiences we had at Mizzou and at A&M going into this weekend.”