Mark Pavlik Quotations

We're reaching a point in the season when knees are starting to get a little bit tender, and shoulders. Especially in the men's game, you know, you've got 190 pounds, it's not the jumping, it's the landing. I want us to be as fresh as possible in late April or May. If we gotta give them some days off and let them recover, I think with the men it's real important to do that.

Luke is more than capable. We just become a little bit of a different team with Luke in there.

Last year was very similar. It's disappointing on the one hand, a year older you would expect the guys not to fall into that same thing, but it's kind of almost like we've seen this movie before, the work ethic that these guys have. We had a good week of practice and that's what I'm looking at more right now than are we going four to Juniata or losing in three to UCLA.

I didn't want him to just step aside. The only bad thing is, if I sent him any (farther), he'd be in an ocean right now.

Going on the road, we're not going to be comfortable in those gyms. And when you're not comfortable, you really have to focus in on your effort and execution. We have to block balls, and we have to pass balls.

I thought that Rutgers came at us pretty hard at their place, and it's just tough to win on the road. Like a pitcher, we didn't have our best stuff but we took advantage of match ups we liked. Good grind-it-out wins.

I think we'll just keep spending time on the passing. As we go through April, that's what's really gonna settle out. I'm not sure anything is solid, settled, set in stone. I think we're trying to make sure we have all options available.

I wasn't real pleased with the appearance of team A.D.D. in there. We can't do that. I don't care if we're up 18-10, there are going to matches where we're going to be at 22-22 against good teams, so that was the disappointment there. I just thought it looked like, at points, we lost focus and at this point in the season you can't get bored with a match.

We played the way we should against Princeton and took care of business. Against Irvine we played well, but not well enough.

We have to make sure we take care of our matches against them here on our home court. It's as good as an EIVA weekend as we can get.

When Price came in, all of a sudden our physical level just shot out of the roof. An exclamation point on, 'We're bigger than you, we're stronger than you,' was made by Price.

This was a match we need a little bit. Just to get back on the winning track. Obviously it was one where we enjoyed some physical mismatches, and I think we took advantage of that.

This was a great match against a well-coached team. But no one wins a national championship in February.

Both teams have gotten so much better from the last time we played. Both teams have been in the gym quite a bit. We know what they do, they know what we do, the question is how they've improved on what they didn't do well here in November, and how we've improved from what we didn't do well in November.

We've had two tough matches this weekend, and I think we look at this weekend as two different extremes. I'm pretty pleased with what we faced this weekend. It gives us a real good view of where we're at. Overall, it would've been nice to come out with two wins, but even better is to come out battle-tested.

Those teams don't let you slack off for four or five points. They're gonna make you work.

We lose seven inches. How does that come into play? We'll see.

We have to dig some balls against teams that can bring heat. We can't just rely on our block to stuff every ball, we have to come up with some digs.

We gotta keep getting better, it doesn't really matter who you play. We're playing some pretty good teams here the next four matches, and we're going to be in some hostile arenas for three of the four. We have to find a way to keep getting better.

There's some responsibility on a setter for a team that isn't a great passing team. I wasn't pleased with the sets Danny was giving the hitters. We just didn't get good swings.

Coaching at my alma mater has been a dream come true.

They don't back off with the heat, they bring.

There were times tonight when we were passive, and that's disappointing. But I got chased out of the locker room after the second game and the guys took care of the rest. I like the way we played in the third and fourth games. Saint Francis is as good a team as they were in the mid-90s, they have a nice future.

This match was a microcosm of our first three matches. I'm disappointed that we come out here to this prestigious tournament and this fantastic facility and crowd and look that bad.

They're out to prove something. We're going to have our hands full down there.

It's a great rivalry with the Buckeyes. You just know that neither team, no matter what the score of the game is, will never be out of the match so you can't back off and expect them to hand it to you.

I told the guys in the locker room, Game 2 is the way we can lose an EIVA match. Games 3 and 4 are the way we have to play against teams we have a physical advantage over.

I told them to take a look around and hopefully in May we're in that same situation with maybe double the crowd. That's what's fun about it. This match with this crowd, you never want to lose the aggressiveness that brings you to that point.

It's always great to play in front of your hometown crowd. It's something you can't underestimate, and we love playing at home.

It's always interesting to remember them their first couple days in the gym as wide-eyed freshman, who were really trying to figure out what was going on, what to do. And four or five years later, they're leaders of the team.

It's going to be a big weekend for us.

The offense is starting to click, and we're putting together better runs. We're starting to play good volleyball and our blocks and defense have improved.

They did not play well here, they'll be the first to admit that. But down there, they're going to have a crowd and it's going to be loud. I don't think it's going to be easy.

I know on offense we're going to be fine. But we need to block some balls. This is a senior-laden group and they know what they need to do to keep playing.

Game 2, I don't know what changed (but) we couldn't pass a ball. I have a grandmother, she's going to turn 100 on Feb. 9 and I know she could have passed those balls better than we did.

If I could write the ending to those previous appearances, we would have won a few more titles.

I don't think their serving changed much. Jay just put balls on the money.

The guys gotta understand that they have to be ready to play from the beginning of the match.