We did better than expected. We faced a tough team and we prevailed. We got to se our team work in different situations, including being down in a game. Winning the first game 32-30 is nice, to know that we can keep fighting and stay aggressive.

In the second match, Thomas was challenged by our staff to get blocks and she got eight in the second match. She just went off. The way she was running around, going after it, she's not bad for a walk-on.

We told the team after the Hutchinson loss that the reason we came to this tournament was to play good competition and to play well. Minus the Jefferson loss, we think we did. To be at the same gym the national tournament is at and get those first-day jitters out of the way, hopefully next time we'll be more prepared for this facility.

We're young. We only have three kids on the floor who saw significant time last year. Other than that, no one else played. It's nice to be able to get some other people to step up and learn how to be leaders.

Knowing we're not at full strength, that's one plus of where we're at. Even the people we have on the floor aren't healthy, so as the year goes on hopefully we're going to get better. We're not up to full strength yet, and to beat a tough Lee College team in our first two matches, it will be fun to see what happens later.

We expected her to do good things, but to have a freshman with 17 kills is fantastic. We need to keep giving her the ball. That's a big key, is seeing if we can get her into the lineup more and get her to do more things. We are sorely lacking outside hitter depth and she brings in a strong arm and good defense.

We hung (in there). That's the main thing. We played well. Now we're back home again and back against local competition and we can show why we were ranked fifth in the nation.

When their middles are 6-4 or 6-2, it makes it difficult. We played hard and played well, they just had more answers than we did. We played up to our ability, so I'm just happy we actually gave our heart into this one.