Manuel Diaz Quotes (11 Quotes)

We're excited to finally get outdoors. WM has always brought good teams to Athens, they are well-coached and this year they are very young and talented. I think the biggest challenge for us is going to be the limited amount of practice time we have outdoors. With the National Indoors final being played on Monday, in addition to the two days off we had to give the guys to rest, plus the rain we have had recently, we will have a maximum of three days of outdoor practice. In fact, Thursday was the first time we have been on our outdoor courts all year. It will take some time to get adjusted.

Having an undefeated regular season has got to be in the back of the players' minds somewhere. But it is not something we are focusing on. One of the great things we have done all year is stay focused on one match at a time. Our guys have shown a lot of maturity and composure to not get too high or too low. That consistency has been a big part of our results this year.

Overall we did a good job today. I'm really pleased with the way our guys focused in singles play. My only concern was that we were a little sloppy at our No. 2 and No. 3 doubles and we can't afford to do that in our next match. We just need to keep taking care of winning the doubles point and continue to be strong in singles. I know that the guys are aware that we can still be better.

This match is traditionally a very tough one. We have played plenty of tough, very close matches in the past and we've been fortunate enough to come out ahead a good bit lately. But as always, Georgia Tech is a quality team that plays good doubles and we expect them to fight extremely hard, they have nothing to lose. Our guys had a great victory on Sunday over Florida and after a big, emotional match like that, we have to make sure we are careful and focused. We certainly want to avoid a letdown.

Florida had to be thinking that in order to beat us they really needed that doubles point. So we knew they were really going to bring it in the doubles and they did. But we also knew that it was going to be very hard for them to beat us in singles three times, we would really have to not play well. They came awfully close to doing that but we were able to fight and hold on.

We've been in the finals I don't know how many times before and not won it. This is the only national event we've never won as a program so this is a great tribute to our squad. This is a big deal for us.

Tennessee is a young and very talented team. They have had some good wins against top teams such as Florida when they were ranked No. 5 in the country. Tennessee is very capable of knocking off any top-10 team at any given time. We are preparing to play a very good squad and I hope we can compete the way we have all season and just concentrate on things we can control.

We beat a very good Ole Miss team today. They came out and took it to us in doubles. Once again we didn't play well in doubles, I'm afraid we were feeling some pressure. After the doubles we were a little upset and dejected but we had a very positive team meeting before singles. I challenged the guys to show us what they were made of. You can't win every match 7-0 or 6-1, you have to win the close ones too. We knew it wasn't going to be easy but its worth going after. I am so proud of the way they competed. These are the moments that matter and you remember forever.

We had a very good day today. Our top two doubles teams played very well and our singles was very consistent once again, especially at the bottom of the lineup.

A match like this is the reason people come to play at Georgia. It was a beautiful day with a huge crowd and a lot of pressure. I could probably give a thousand reasons why we should have lost this match, but we found a way to squeak through and get the job done. That's the true mark of a championship team, to win when you are not playing well - and today we did not play very well.

I'm very proud of our guys. The conditions were not ideal today, it was very windy. Some of our guys were able to take care of business and some struggled. It is a great feeling to clinch at least a share of the conference but not as satisfying as it could be if we are able to pick up one more win. We have a tough match on Sunday though, I'm sure Ole Miss will have a good crowd and their players will be fired up. I really want to see our guys come out and be aggressive. If we can compete well, then we have a chance to make ourselves very proud.