Last year, the Wisconsin Badgers volleyball team made an epic run to the Elite Eight in the NCAA tournament before losing to the Stanford Cardinal — the eventual champions.

With most of that 2004 squad back this year having another season of experience under their belt, head coach Pete Waite is hoping they can make another tournament run as they head into this weekend's Sweet 16 matchup with Notre Dame.

Waite has great confidence that the No. 11 seeded Badgers can upset the No. 6 seeded Fighting Irish — and rightfully so, considering this is the same Notre Dame team Wisconsin beat in the second round of last year's tournament.

But it wasn't just the victory that stands out for Waite, it was the manner in which his team won.

With the Irish at game point 29-23 in the first game, Wisconsin rallied back to win 36-34 and decidedly took the ensuing games 30-16 each.

"That's a huge comeback in rally scoring to be at game point and to come back that far so that gave our team a lot of confidence," Waite said. "That gave them a lot of confidence, the feeling that they could come back against anybody if they needed to, and then they obviously went up and caught (No. 2) Hawaii up in Green Bay, so we've been building on that and that was a young team we did that with."

"There were five freshmen on the court, a couple on the bench, and now as sophomores they've gained that extra year of experience."

Killing 'Em Softly: While most of the hype surrounding Wisconsin is typically of size advantage on the net, sophomore middle blocker Taylor Reineke hardly ever gets the same coverage as some of her teammates.

In this past off-season, Reineke worked hard to improve her game and fill out her slender 6'3" frame.

She also played doubles in beach volleyball, a rarity for a middle blocker as most players at that position don't have the back row ball-handling skills.

The hard work certainly paid off as Reineke is currently leading the Big Ten in blocks at 1.67 per game, which is also good for second place in UW history, one-tenth behind Heather Dodaro's season record of 1.77 blocks per game back in 1996 — certainly buzz worthy.

"If you look at Taylor from last year, she was mostly just a blocker and a defender and one of her big goals was to become more offensive and be more of a part of our whole team play and she's done that," Waite said. "She really doesn't always get the press and she just seems to silently hurt people.

"Her hitting percentage is so high all the time, she's usually one of our leaders in kills, and her effort is great every night on the court so she's just been so consistent for us, it's been a great year for her."

Defense wins championships:

As the old saying goes in football, basketball, and nearly every other sport for that matter — defense wins championships.

Volleyball is no different.

Primarily known as a strong team on the blocks and offensively a year ago, Waite worked hard to improve the Badger's passing and defense for this season.

"That's what we wanted to work on from last year, is to make our whole team defense better," Waite said. "Jo Wack came in and really raised our level of defense individually, but now everyone else has stepped up their game a little bit. And any time you have a big block — that's the beginning of the defense, but when you have a big block, you dig around that big block and that makes it easier for your back row.

"That's how we've done well this year — we've been pretty balanced, front court and back court."