Tennessee head coach Eve Rackham Watt met with the media following the Lady Vols’ 25-19, 25-17, 25-11 sweep of Illinois on Tuesday night. Here is everything she said.
Q: It’s a 12-0 start in sets, no sets dropped yet. What’s been the key to that start?
Well, we’ve been really, really good offensively. We’ve been really clean. I think we’ve been really good behind the service line, and I think we’ve continued to kind of score different ways. It hasn’t been one person we’ve had to rely on. I think obviously we’ve had a couple of main attackers, but I think anybody that’s been playing has been able to put up big offensive numbers for us, and obviously we’ve got, I think, the best setters in America, so that makes everybody look good. And I think just overall it’s been a total team effort. But I think the big thing is our offense has just been clicking.
Q: Super efficient night for your attackers. What led to that efficiency, especially for Jalyn and Maggie?
Yeah, I mean, Jay and Maggie, they’re super, super high IQ kids. Both have great vision. I think what makes them unique is that, obviously, they’re a little bit undersized, but they just see the block so well. They’ve got great range, so if blockers take something away, they can hit something else. And again, I think Caroline continues to just give them options with the quality of set that she’s giving them. But again, both just really, really high IQ players. They don’t have to be in the perfect situation to score. They’re able to take balls in lots of different scenarios and find the floor.
Q: Jolene got some early stats tonight. Talk about her performance and her development this early in her career.
Yeah, Jo’s a superstar. She’s so good behind the setter. That slide is so good, it’s so hard to stop. It took a little bit this evening for it to connect. I don’t think her and Caroline were connecting as well early on. Early in the match, you’re still trying to figure out how a team’s gonna defend you, but once Jolene kind of… we took her out for a little bit and put her back in, she was great in the third set. And once she gets going and in a rhythm, she’s really tough to stop. It’s really hard to stop a slide. It’s probably the hardest ball to block in volleyball, and if you’ve got a really proficient slider, you want to get them the ball.
Q: With so many new faces and a veteran setter like Caroline Kerr who’s been doing this for three and a half years, how much does that add and how much easier does it make things?
I mean, it’s everything. She just brings it all together. We have a number of new pieces, but it hasn’t felt that way, because they’ve worked so well and because she’s such a tremendous leader and communicator and film studier. She does all those things so that they don’t feel like they’re a new team. She’s brought everybody together from last January, when these players came in, so they’ve worked really hard at those connections.
It’s been really important to her that she’s established those connections. They put in work outside of practice on those connections. They’re talking about it, and so that’s what happens. You show up, but it’s the players who do that stuff, and she is special in that way.
Q: What does it say about this team that you strengthen as the match goes on, this early in the season?
Yeah. That’s one of the things I’ve been most impressed with and told them. I feel like they’ve been really good in tight moments. Early in that first set, I think the emotions are high, and I think once we kind of settled in, you saw a little bit more calmness. They were a play ahead. They were not kind of reacting. They were very proactive. They were very aggressive.
And then the same in the second set, I thought that we were a little sloppy at times, and then it was kind of like they made this decision that they weren’t gonna do that anymore, and then they were pretty much lights out from there. And as a coach, that’s not something I did. That’s not something… it’s just that group of players out there making a decision to, like, okay, we’re gonna stop. We’re gonna focus now. And then they did that, and I think you can see the results of it too.
Q: How do you feel about where the team is defensively four games into the season?
I think it’s a work in progress. I think we’ve got a number of young middle blockers obviously, and Chelsea Sutton was coming off of injury and missed the off-season, so she’s just been getting back. And so that is one of the things I’m most excited about, because there’s so much room for growth there from a blocking standpoint with those middle blockers. I thought Maggie had a great, great blocking match, but again, she’s new. She’s new to it. Last year she didn’t play in the front row for us.
So we just have some new pieces out there, which to me is a good thing, ’cause I think we’re okay right now. I think there’s just a lot of room for growth. And then you’ve got veterans defensively in terms of CK and Jalyn and Raegan. Those guys have been out there in a lot of matches. So our floor defenders are a little bit, I would say, further along than our blockers at this point. But I think that’s, again, that’s exciting, ’cause there’s room for growth there.
Q: How hard is it for players to flip a switch and know when to be powerful and when to go off-speed? Jalyn Stout seems to do it really well.
Yeah, it’s more difficult than it looks, I think, at times, and it’s one of the things we talk a lot about, I think a lot of coaches talk about, is, hey, the management of swings, right? And you want them to be aggressive but not reckless. And a lot of times young players struggle with that balance in terms of knowing when to kind of go for it and when to hold back. You learn pretty early on, if you go too easy, that’s gonna come back faster.
And so they learn about placement and situation and, okay, that was a good swing, and then this time. And I think this group is really good at that. I mean really, really good. You talk about Kennedi and Jalyn, I would say it’s Maggie’s specialty. I mean, those guys are very… when I say high IQ, that’s what I mean. They understand the situation that they’re in and when they can be a little bit more aggressive and when they do have to just play something smart.
