NCAA Champs!

NCAA Champs!

May 9, 2000

LOS ANGELES - Well, we did it. We're NCAA Champs! All I can say is that we just came out fired up on Saturday. The night before the final we had a film session and a lot of guys stayed afterwards and watched films for even longer. Scott (Morrow) and I tried to focus mainly on their setter so we could get his tendencies down and be able to read him really well. There was a lot of hype surrounding the Ohio State middle blockers. Both of their middles were ranked No. 1 and 2 in the nation in hitting percentage all year long. Scott and I kind of took that upon ourselves to prove who the real middle blockers were and show them what's up. Scott and I came out fired up! During the season, one of their middles was hitting like .520 and the other one was above .500 as well. But in the championship match, Scott hit like .630 and I hit .600 and we held their middle blockers to .145 and .230. We pretty much shut them down. We watched so much film that by the time the match came around, I think we knew what they were going to do before they did.

The crowd was definitely in Ohio State's favor. Fort Wayne is only about an hour and a half from Columbus so I guess that's expected. But also, that's just the way it is with UCLA. When we're playing somewhere, especially a place where the home crowd doesn't have their team there, they aren't going to root for us. They don't want to root for the favorite or the team that wins it every year. They want to root for the underdog. Especially in the Midwest. The Penn State team was even there behind the Ohio State bench cheering for them. But we just came out and took care of business.

I was named to the All-Tournament Team at the Final Four, which was a great honor. I was hoping for it and it felt really good when they called my name because it's been a long time coming. I haven't played that much until this year, and everybody has kind of been against me all throughout my career. There are so many people that doubt you and what you are capable of doing. But when it came down to it, I was feeling real good, and my knees weren't bothering me too much. I was feeling really confident heading into the match. Once it started I felt really hot, and the more Brandon (Taliaferro) set me, the more confident I became. I was talking the whole match and letting the Ohio State guys know when I was getting kills on them. I guess that's attributed to my Santa Cruz roots. My club team, Team Santa Cruz, always talked a lot of trash, and I still like to use that technique. Volleyball is so mental, and anytime you can get into someone's head and make them think about something else besides volleyball, it can be to your advantage. I was just feeling good, and I was talking as much as I could. I told the setter to sit down after I threw him down on a dump.

After we won the match, we had a great time. It was so much fun. Everybody that was in the crowd cheering for us and all the people that were involved with UCLA went to a restaurant. One of the alumni owned a restaurant there so we were able to get a room all to ourselves. We just ate and had a good time. They had four TV's and we were able to watch the match on ESPN. Everyone called up the coaches to make speeches, and then all the seniors had to do it too. I went up there and said a few words. Since the match finished so early, we all went to a club down the street. We hung out there for a while and danced and did some karaoke.

Actually the first thing we did after we won is went to another restaurant because when we were driving to the arena we saw that their sign out front had a message that read, "BUCKEYES WILL TAKE BRUINS IN FINALS." After we saw that we told ourselves that we were going to make them eat that sign when the game was over. So after we won, we drove over there with our championship trophy and made the manager come outside with all the waitresses. We took a picture in front of the sign with the girls and our championship trophy. It was hilarious. The manager was like, "Oh, we knew you guys were going to win all along." Yeah right! They told us to mail them the picture and they'd put it up in the restaurant.

Now that the season is over, I guess next up for me is going to Europe this summer. Myself, Evan (Thatcher) and maybe Ed (Ratledge) are heading off to play over there. At the start of August we'll go over there and play on this team that travels all throughout Europe and plays all the professional teams. From that, the teams decide who they want to pickup. Right now both Evan and I have our sights set on going to Spain. Volleyball is pretty big in Europe, especially in Italy. It's big in Italy! I'm not expecting to be able to play there, but it would be awesome. I'm mostly doing this for the experience. I've never been to Europe so it should be fun. If anything, it will be great to just be able to do that instead of start a "real" job right away.