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Flash Quotes

General Quotes

About point differential, Prosser's vision:

Prosser:

"Last night, I had a score in mind:  15-6.   It kept popping into my head, thinking about today's game.  What was the score?  Fifteen-seven.  I guess, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Zahner:

"Everything was on the line, and we went for it."

About improved performance:

Prosser:

"We haven't beaten that team very often.  The times that they have beaten us, they've killed us."

Zahner:

"We've been working with our coach Dane Selznick for the last couple of months.  And everything we've been working on seemed to happen.   All the bad habits finally seemed to fade away, and the new skills came into effect."

About chances for a GWG Gold Medal:

Zahner:

"I think if we play like we did today - relaxed and controlled - we can do the job."

About Argentinean performance today after opening with two wins:

Martinez:

"We played bad because our concentration was not good.   We were too relaxed."

Conde:

"They came to win everything here.  We came to play only."

About change of momentum following early 6-0 lead taken by Canadians:

Heese:

"They put on a little more pressure with their serve near the end.  When it came down to crunch time, they pulled it out and we made some errors."

Child:

"To last that long and crumble at the end like that is frustrating."

About early lead:

Heese:

"I wasn't surprised because we were siding out very well.  I wasn't surprised that we were able to keep them off the scoreboard, but maybe the 6-0 (lead) was surprising."

About uncertain status of advancing to the medal rounds:

Child:

"This is unusual.  We're not used to pool play.   Right now our situation is in someone else's hands.  Right now we're looking at this as if we are eliminated, unless something fortunate happens.  We blew our chance to keep fate in our own hands."

About slow (0-6) start:

Guilherme:

"Every game is different.  We never expect to beat anyone 15-2.  We played a different type of game.  Also we played at a different time (6:45 p.m.) the last two games. We were not used to this.  Canada played very hard because it was their only chance to get to the semifinals.  We didn't need to win to get to the semifinals."

"After 6-0, we still keep our minds concentrating.   We changed our game.  I did some jump serves and Para made some good blocks.   After 6-0, if your lose your mind, you will lose 15-0."

Para:

"We took more time outs and we talked about not losing concentration."

About playing their first tough match after two easy opening wins in the GWG:

Para:

"It's good to play a match like this because tomorrow we may have a match like this.  Then we will have to perform like this tomorrow."

About contingent of family and friends in the stands for Brazilian team:

Guilherme:

"Our coach, our trainer, our family and friends are here.  We have a lot of support, but they all sit apart.  They know the game of volleyball, and they look to see how the game is going and watch the technique of the other players and help us with our strategy."

About the point differential (Norway had to win by 15-11, or better)

Jan Kvalheim:

"We knew before the game that we had to concentrate on our own game. We knew we had to win by 15-11 or more, but we knew we had to think about the game and strategy and we sort of had a very good start. Then they came back and we didn't lose control. We stayed confident even when we were down by 11-8; we took six points in a row. We always thought that we could win that game and we never gave up. Then they got two free and stupid points at the end and that's what was so frustrating now that it's over. I think that with this game and the other games we had a very good tournament compared to the last two tournaments we have done. It's a bad feeling to lose a spot in the medal round by such a small margin."

About Norway's play:

Bjorn Maaseide:

"They are #4 in the world ranking and this tournament counts towards the world ranking so they do not want us to go too far ahead. This was their chance to stop us."

About Switzerland's 12th point (eliminated Norway from medal round):

Bjorn Maaseide:

"They had to beat us 15-4 to pass us and that was an issue. You always try to win, but the game was at 12. It was kind of over. We love the game, but something kind of happened."

About their comeback to tie the score from 8-11:

Jan Kvalheim:

"I think that's one of our strengths as a team during the last seven or eight years. We have won a lot of close games and we have been down 11-4, 10-5 and in the season of 1995 we played 20 games 15-14 or 16-14 and won 19 of them. In lots of these games, we're down a lot, but we always stay confident. We never lose control and even if a lot of crazy things happen we stay relaxed and we always think we can come back in a game. Even at 11-8, we stayed confident; we thought about the strategy in the game and the points and not really that they couldn't make the 12th point."

About the format (point spread system) of tournament:

Bjorn Maaseide:

"On days like, this I enjoy double elimination more."

About thoughts going in:

Martin Laciga:

"There was still one chance we had to get third in the pool. If we won 15-9 or better, we would have been third. There was a small chance; we were winning 11-8 and we had a chance to lead 12-8, maybe through that point we could do something. But typical for us in this tournament, we missed that chance."

About a foot injury suffered in Thursday's second round:

Paul Laciga:

"It swelled a bit during the night, but it was better to think about different things. It was OK."

About Argentina's Esteban Martinez shouting on the 12th Swiss point (celebrating his team's advance into medal round):

Martin Laciga:

"My feeling is he didn't deserve it because they had a chance against Australia and they should have scored some more points. I think they don't deserve to get into the semi-finals, but we just play our game. Whoever gets second, gets second."

About the importance of making a statement here?

Paul Laciga:

"Yes. I want just to prove that we can play beach volleyball too."

Esteban "Mono" Martinez of Argentina watched the Switzerland vs. Norway match. Norway had to lose or win by less than four points for Martinez's team to advance to the medal round.

"It's difficult when you're not in control. We played good our first two games, but today our mistake was too expensive. (Argentina lost to Australia 15-7)"

"It was tough to watch. Switzerland needed only one more point (they led 11-8), then Norway, Norway, Norway, until they scored 14 points (to take 14-11 lead)."

About the match:

Adam Johnson:

"We expected to play a little bit better than we did last night. It didn't seem to happen. I don't think I hit as many balls out of bounds as I did last night. Ricci was controlling the net very well. I think Karch and I are setting each other close on the net. We're not use to using our hands on our tour (AVP). We're not used to that and trying to set each other a little further off of the net to not give the blocker such an advantage."

About Sinjin Smith's injury:

Adam Johnson:

"I wasn't even aware of it. I don't know what happened. I've been playing this sport too long to notice when someone's cramping out there. You go after the guy and find out he's fine. I didn't really think about it when we started out. We served him the first few balls and they sided out. Then we went after Ricci and started scoring points."

About Smith and Luyties rally to knot the score up at 14 all:

Adam Johnson:

"It's who's not going to make the mistakes. I don't know that maybe they made a mistake when my serve hit the line. I know it was a tough serve; it could have been in or out. Karch made a great move on the last point and blocked Ricci. I don't know if you can call that an error. It's good playing on both of our parts. I love those kind of games when it's tied up 14 all and if you win, you go on, and if you lose, you go home."

About switching off blocking assignments:

Adam Johnson:

"What we've done all along is switched off blocking. Sometimes I actually can block and get career. There have been matches where I block six or seven balls for points and it's just getting into a groove and I see something in a particular player that I like and he's easy for me to read blocking."

About the match:

Karch Kiraly:

"I knew it was going to be a tough match. I'm not particularly pleased the way we played. We're happy with the win, but we'll have to play a lot better than that to advance on to the gold medal match. We made the plays when it counted - when it was close at the end. I'm hoping that we can both bring our level of play up because we're going to have a tough opponent tomorrow."

About Kiraly/Johnson's recent play:

Karch Kiraly:

"I think we're both giving up more points than we might normally in our sideout game, getting blocked, maybe not shooting our shots as well, still trying to get used to hand contact on this ball a little bit. It's a little different trying to shoot soft shots with the ball. Trying to get our serve going more and create more scoring opportunities, also."

About fatigue at the GWG:

Karch Kiraly:

"We had to play a lot last weekend. We were much more fatigued after our regular AVP event in Belmar, New Jersey. We played about five hours on Saturday in two matches and at least five hours on Sunday in three matches. This is easy compared to that in terms of conditioning. It's more of a sprint to the finish now instead of an endurance contest."

About the importance of playing former teammates, Smith and Luyties:

Karch Kiraly:

"I really didn't feel anything different form this match than yesterday or the day before. We need to beat every opponent in pool play to move on to the medal rounds. I didn't think of this as any more significant because we were playing Sinjin and Ricci and didn't feel any more adrenaline or any less than other matches."

About his injured calf:

Sinjin Smith:

"Earlier today, I wasn't sure how I was going to feel today because during the latter part of the match last night it really didn't feel that good. The medical crew here worked on me after the match and several times today. They helped out tremendously in getting my calf ready and also they taped it so that I couldn't injure it any more. That helped out a great deal, but I still wasn't sure even when I was warming up how well I'd be able to push off of it. Siding on, I felt pretty good. Moving back and forth, I wasn't feeling so great, so I was relying on Ricci to do all of the blocking and scoring our points. And he almost did it."

About Smith's ability to play today:

Ricci Luyties:

"When I saw him warming up I was very worried. He was jumping about six inches off of the ground. I was worried that I'd have to play well and then as soon as the match started, he started out great. I knew that he was going to step it up and play a good game. I was a little worried that he might not be able to run the balls down. He did; at the beginning of the game, he was right where they shot the ball a couple of times and so, that may have made them attack a little more, so it helped me as a blocker. When the team is shooting the ball all the time, as a blocker, you feel kind of helpless."

About playing the other US team:

Ricci Luyties:

"I was just very frustrated by our first two games and really just wanted to win a game. It wasn't so much about knocking them off as just wanting to win. I'd like a US team to win the gold medal."

Sinjin Smith:

"Every game we play, we want to win. It doesn't matter what's behind it, although this is a special game because it is Karch and Adam, and they are one of the best American teams. We want to go out and we want to beat them no matter what the circumstances. Plus, there was a little extra hype involved because of what went on during the Olympics; the good match that we had during the Olympics. This is the next time we have competed against each other. It put a little bit more importance on it - probably more because of the media than us."

"I would like to see Americans come out in the medal round."