Editor’s note: The following is a partial transcript from an Illini Drive interview with Illinois volleyball head coach Kevin Hambly and sophomore Ali Stark.

Illini Drive: You played some volleyball this weekend, started off Friday night against Penn State and went to a five-set match. I’m wondering what your thoughts are on that match. Did you feel good that you battled? Obviously you were disappointed.

Ali Stark: It was a disappointing finish, but I think that it’s the best volleyball that we’ve played so far this season. As disappointing as it was to not take away a victory, I still feel like we accomplished a lot of what we wanted to accomplish. And it feels good to know that we’re moving in an upward path.

Kevin Hambly: I agree, if we played the way we did in a match against the other team, we beat them. Things have been moving in a great direction, and it’s hard to realize that because we split on the weekend and split on the weekend before; but we’re getting better and better, and I agree with Ali, it’s the best we’ve played. For spurts of time there, it’s the best volleyball with this team this year. I think it gave us a little bit of confidence. We knew what it felt like to play like that. We got into the Ohio State game, and it was a little bit of a hangover, but we got back to that level pretty quick.

ID: What did you think of Russ Rose figuratively tipping his hat to the Spike Squad?

KH: Russ has a great respect for the game and a great respect for the people that care about volleyball and the crowd, and I’m not surprised. He enjoys coming here. It’s always a battle. We’ve had some great matches with them over the last several years. I think he has a lot of respect for what we’re trying to do.

ID: The atmosphere in that game compared to some of the year’s past, is it still the same? How was it?

AS: I would say the atmosphere against Penn State’s always a pretty intense one. It was awesome. Everyone was dressed up in the Halloween costumes, which was a lot of fun. But Penn State is a rivalry regardless of whether or not they’re our rivals. We always want to beat them, so it’s always intense, definitely, I’d say.

KH: It was a good crowd, but it wasn’t our best crowd, to be honest. I think probably in 2010 when we had a chance to beat them and we hadn’t beat them, that crowd was electric. You walked in, you could feel it, you could feel it on your skin; you knew something special was going to happen that night. But it was a great crowd. That was something special, this was really good. If we were winning more, of course it would be better, and that’s on us to win a little bit more and bring the fans in from all across this region.

ID: For the breast cancer match on Sunday, with the proceeds and everything, did you guys get a good turnout for that?

KH: We made $5,000, which is great. It’s been growing every year. I think one of the coolest things was that the girls read off all the names of the people that they were representing that had breast cancer, and they had that on their jersey.

AS: It’s such an honor for us to represent the names we have on our backs and just the additional incentive to play for the person that you’re wearing and obviously just playing the match in general. But it was an honor to play.

Illini Drive can be reached at illinidrive @dailyillini.com and @IlliniDrive.