Prematch press conference: coach and player thoughts

Shawn Olmstead

On the tournament...

We're excited to be here. I'm thrilled for these kids. It's been an outstanding year. All their hard work, all they've put into this season has really paid off for these girls. We came through an exciting conference play, and then it was exciting that we could host the tournament the first two round in Provo. That really helped us, so this is the next step and we're excited to play Oregon here shortly.

On the team...

When I got hired I had this plan of what we could do. You plan accordingly and you try to put together some five-year plans and then into the future. I believe that this is where this program can be. I believe that we can compete at this level year in and year out. The kids are there. The talent is there to recruit. So this is kind of where we wanted to be. Maybe it happened a little faster than I thought, but as soon as this team this year started practicing double days and as soon as this team develop within a short period of time, I began to see, as did the other coaches, that this could be a pretty good team.

On Oregon....

We look fairly similar if you look at the records. We're 28-3 and they're 27-4, so their one more loss becomes a win and we're the same. They've been very battle tested in the Pac-12. I believe that's a great volleyball conference. In the same tone, I believe the WCC has picked up. We showed that the teams we got in the tournament. So our level of competition has also improved in our conference.

Oregon's done a great job going through that conference and staying pretty consistent through that conference as well. They'll lose a match, and then they'll go win a bunch. Like I said, it's kind of been like us. They've got a really strong opposite. We've got a strong opposite. They've got good outsides, and I feel we compare equally in that position as well. With that being said, they're physical at pretty much all six positions. They have a good setter who locates the ball and runs a very efficient offense, which our setter does as well. It's going to be exciting to see the two offenses. Somebody told me the other day that they thought our offense is No. 1 and their offense is No. 2, so that should be fun and that should be exciting. That's kind of what we see. Like I said, really similar things. I don't know if they feel the same, but I know they're going to be confident for the season they had in their conference. In the same tone, we're very confident in our conference as well, and we're excited to represent the West Coast Conference.

Heather Hannemann

We set goals at the beginning of the season. We have steps we went through. We had a preseason goal, a conference goal, and of course our ending goal is to be in the NCAA tournament. We're really excited to be here and to play against Oregon and see what we're made of.

Jennifer Hamson

We're really excited to be here. It's been great. It's been a great journey. We've really grown as a team. It's fun to be here and see what we can do together. 

Oregon is a really great team. They have a good ranking. Just watching them play in film, they move really well. We're just excited to play a good team and see what we can do.