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Dec. 1, 2006
Utah Head Coach Beth Launiere
"We found a way to win tonight against a battle-tested Michigan State team. They've been in a lot of big matches, and we knew that coming in. I felt like games one and two - it was about who made the fewest unforced errors. In game three we got shaky. We haven't been in those tight battles very often. Games four and five were really about our team believing in themselves during those tight situations. None of us ever were thinking about this being our last match. We were thinking about battling as a team.
"We never found a great answer for their slide. We didn't expect that to hurt us as much as it did. I just feel like we didn't do a very good job on them in that first game. Once we started digging them it helped us. We rotated our lineup three rotations in game four, but they wanted Whitney Webb on number 11. We didn't have that on most of the match. I took a chance that she was going to switch after she lost, and she did. We got the matchup we wanted in game five. So I thought our block really stepped up late in the match."
Utah, # 8 Kathryn Lovell
"We did gain momentum back in game three, and that was really key for us. It gave us a lot of drive going into game four. It helped us to believe in ourselves as a team again. We've just worked so hard together, and everyone really believed that we would do it."
Michigan State Head Coach Cathy George
"It was a tough match. In our locker room, it's pretty tough right now because there is a lot of regret that we didn't close out the match when we had chances to earlier. I think that Utah is a very good team and I think that our team has come a very long way. One year ago, we were 12-18. We were ninth in the Big Ten. We have made some major steps since last year. We're very proud of our team for what they have accomplished in this short amount of time. This is a great experience for us to be here in the NCAA Tournament. We feel that we need to learn how to go after winning a first-round game and then a second-round game to push our program to that next level where we can achieve greatness. Part of that process is learning from experiences like this.
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