“I think one of the most important things is that I never realized how important the NCAA Tournament was until yesterday. I think I have taken the tournament for granted the last few years. After seeing the reactions of our players when they saw our name up on the board on the TV, it was one of the most incredible things I have seen. You realize and understand how much energy, effort and hard work they are putting in. It is amazing the emotion you get when you reach a goal that takes a lot of hours of preparations. It has paid off to reach a goal that we felt we could achieve. We look forward to playing Maryland on Friday and putting ourselves in a great chance to win and get to the second round and see what happens.

“The SEC received six bids to the tournament - that is a record. Volleyball, I believe, is the only sport in the SEC to not win a national championship. Our coaches in the conference have realized this and put a lot of energy into this. We have high aspirations as a program and as so does the SEC as a conference in this sport. That goes for the state of Kentucky as well, It has obviously been a basketball state for years, but three teams from the state of Kentucky are going to be competing in the NCAA Tournament on Friday night and a fourth one, Eastern Kentucky, lost in their conference finals after winning the regular season in the OVC. This state is rapidly growing in this sport and we are very excited to represent Kentucky in the NCAA Tournament. We play Maryland, which is 27-4 this year. The only common opponent we have this year is Clemson. We beat them early in the season, 3-0. They beat them a couple times. They played a very similar system to Arkansas so we feel that we are prepared and know what we need to do to be successful on Friday.”

On turning the program around so quickly…
“It is a heck of a group effort. We had a group of seniors that has never been satisfied. I am sure that is the way they were before our coaching staff got here. They have been an amazing group. I think these kids needed a reason to be successful and I think we instilled some things that made them feel confident about what they were doing. The committee recognized how tough our league was. We went 10-6 in the conference and built on that as the year went on, giving us this great opportunity.”

On if reaching the NCAA Tournament was believed to be an attainable goal…
“I definitely thought it was an attainable goal, especially after working with this group in the spring, seeing how they worked in the summer and knowing the type of competitors and athletes we had. Our first goal was reaching the SEC Tournament and our second goal was reaching the NCAA Tournament. As you know, anything can happen when you make the NCAA Tournament. It was one of our goals and we definitely thought we could get to this.”

On the advantage of playing close to home…
“It is big because we get three days of solid practice at home. We can get prepared and when we get in the gym down [in Louisville] we can go through our game plan and the things we need to execute to beat Maryland. It is an advantage and we are going to take advantage of it.”