Portland State vs. Northern Colorado (10.04.08)

LYNDSEY BENSON
Head coach

“One of our goals going into the match was we had to out-dig them. We felt that if we have more digs in the match than they did, we felt like we were going to be successful. And that was the case. We out-dug them by nine digs, and that was probably the point separation. That was huge. Bre VanDerMost with 25 digs in a four-game match was getting it done. She did a great job.”

“There were a couple streaks where they went on runs, but we got impatient offensively. We don’t have to try and force something. We just need to be patient, be patient, be patient and eventually we knew we get an open net and we’d have a chance to go in for the kill.”

“When they made runs – when they beat us in game three – that was the difference. We got impatient and we got lulled into a little bit of a slow pace. And I think that was one of the factors of the match. When we could go at a fast pace, we were in control of the match. When we started playing at their slow pace, they were in control.”

“We haven’t seen every team in the conference – NAU is going to be very tough, Weber State is going to be tough – so it’s too early to say anything, but we’ve now knocked off No. 1 and No. 2 in the preseason poll. We’re definitely on the right track.”

BREANNA VANDERMOST
Junior DS

“We made a goal at the beginning of the season to out-dig and out-block our opponents this year. And tonight we did. That comes out with the win. It was awesome.”

“This is the most excited we’ve gotten after a match. And there were multiple reasons for that. One, we’ve never beaten Portland State – home, away – we’ve never beaten them. Two, they’re the first team in the conference. That’s huge. And it just feels great to take that position from them. And you just want to beat them. You want to be first. So it felt really good.”

ALLISON RAGUSE
Junior MB

“I think we all know we can win this conference. It’s under our control. We’ve proven it. But losing is now in our control, too. And I think that’s the difference from last year. Last year, we were like, ‘What do we do? How do we stop them?’ And now it’s ‘We’ve just got to stop our errors. We’ve just got to get back to playing like we know how to.’”

“It was one of our preseason goals, to knock them off and to beat every other team that we haven’t beat since I’ve been here, since Lauren’s been here, all the upperclassmen. It’s definitely something we wanted to do.”

“We’ve got a lot of confidence going into the CSU game, and now we know we can handle the heat from teams. We’ve got great defenders, and we know we can score, too. It’s going to be a fun match.”

“We’re just really excited to play against big schools like that and get a lot of people here, into Butler-Hancock. It’s very exciting to get a chance to play them.”

KENZIE SHREEVE
Junior OH

“We haven’t beaten them in the two years we’ve been in the Big Sky. This is a team we wanted to beat this year. We’ve been preparing for them all week, and it feels good our hard work paid off.”

“We have momentum coming into the CSU match from all three of our big wins. If we can just take that into Tuesday and play our game, it’s going to be a great match.”

“We’ve got to limit our errors against the Rams. In the past we’ve had a lot of errors, and I think that’s what killed us. If we can limit those, we’ll stay in the match.”