Royce Hinton | Posted: 9 Dec 2016 | Updated: 8 Nov 2020

Sweet Sixteen postgame press conference

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THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by BYU head coach Heather Olmstead, student-athletes Mary Lake, Whitney Young Howard and Amy Boswell.

We'll begin with a statement from the coach and then we'll take questions for the student-athletes and the coach.

Coach, if you want to start off and give a statement on the match tonight.

COACH OLMSTEAD: Yeah, congratulations to the University of Texas on advancing in the tournament and a great match. I don't think I could be more proud of the match that our team played. I thought except for a lapse in the second set, that was phenomenal volleyball and I'm very proud of the team and the courage and the fight that they showed in this match tonight.

Q. For any of the players -- (inaudible) -- the way you guys played --

WHITNEY YOUNG HOWARD: I feel like this environment is what we're used to. This is what we are used to playing in. We are used to going five sets, we're used to fighting and working our butts off, so nothing new for us. It was just another opportunity to go out and give it our all.

Q. The way they came back --

AMY BOSWELL: I don't think we let that one slip away. We were fighting the entire time. Texas is obviously a fantastic team and volleyball is a game of runs. We just came up a little short and their run was a little longer than ours.

I could honestly and without any regret say that we fought the entire time and that Texas didn't -- we didn't give anything to Texas. They had to take it.

Q. You guys were down a couple match points in the second half, you had to you rally back and force that --

WHITNEY YOUNG HOWARD: There's no doubt that we weren't going to lose that. You see the rally -- there's no doubt.

AMY BOSWELL: That's one of the things we work on all the time is just staying in the present, ball for ball, what do I have to do next. That was something our team did really well tonight I thought.

MARY LAKE: Even though we were down, I think our team did a really good job at staying in the present and being really calm, and just trusting that if we do the things that we do, eventually the ball will drop our way, because sometimes the ball just doesn't drop your way.

I think it just showed a level of maturity from all our players that we stayed really consistent, even when we were down.

Q. With the emotion swings, talk about that.

COACH OLMSTEAD: Yeah, I think we just tried to stay focused on the next point. So their match point, we just tried to side out and get good touches and control what we could control. I thought our girls did that.

The first set was just great volleyball by us just to hang in there and compete, and obviously in the fourth and fifth, I just thought we kept getting better as the match went on. I thought our entire team just battled. They were not going to give up, and I love that about this team.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you all.

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