Oct. 22, 2012

Ole Miss volleyball head coach Joe Getzin spoke to the media Monday about the Rebels' two wins over Missouri and South Carolina on Friday and Sunday, respectively.

Opening statement…
“We had a very good weekend. We won two matches here at home. That is always exciting. We had to scramble the lineup a little bit because of some illness. The team really responded well. The best part of this week is we only have one match on Sunday at home. We’re excited about that. We get to have a little bit of time off and work on some things that you normally don’t get to because you have a little extra time. We play Auburn on Sunday. I was really happy with the way the team performed this weekend and hopefully we can keep building on it.”

On playing more freshmen this past weekend…
“We inserted a couple more freshmen into the lineup. Freshmen are sometimes good because they’re a little more inexperienced and sometimes they don’t know what to expect. They don’t have high expectations. Their teammates are a little more forgiving with freshmen mistakes than if it was a junior that made that same mistake. Because of that we have some pretty good chemistry going on right now. Nakeyta Clair was named the SEC Freshman of the Week. She put up some astounding numbers for us. We see that everyday in practice, she just hadn’t been able to reproduce that in game situations. It was a huge breakthrough for us.”

On Auburn…
“Auburn is a tough matchup. They’re a very good defensive team. They’re very scrappy. We’re going to have to see how those freshmen can respond. They had some really good results getting some kills first-hand. We’ll prepare a lot for the ball coming back to us and not getting frustrated when someone does some good things against us.”

On having a lot of season left…
“We have nine matches left. Right now what we’re talking about as a team is we have to be above .500 to be eligible for the NCAA Tournament. If we were to take care of business and get to 9-11 (in the SEC). We’re going to have to beat some top 30 teams. If we do that we can put ourselves back on the bubble that way.”