11 Quotes by Manuel Diaz

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.

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.

If Chavez would only act according to what he says, then we'd have an environmentalist Venezuela.

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.

Our guys are playing well right now. Having said that, I think we are coming up on the toughest part of our schedule. We have three matches in a row on the road and we need to be playing our best tennis of the year. It's going to be a major challenge, but I think we have a good deal of momentum and confidence going into it. Hopefully we can come out and play to the best of our abilities.

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.

We're not treating this match any differently than any other match we've played this year. We just need to keep playing the way we have been up to this point. I want our players to be concerned with doing what we do well, and not anything else. I just want them to come out and get after it.

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.

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.