Questions for Shakira Austin or Madison Scott.
We'll start off in the room first.
I guess you get the obvious question first.
I mean, how does it feel to finally get here?
Maddie.
Oh, man, it feels amazing.
I was -- I was holding on to the -- to the -- What is it?
The bar of the bleachers like I was on a roller coaster.
Nah, I was just so excited just to finally see Ole Miss
go across the screen, you know.
And to see it, you know, it was nerve-racking, of course,
but to see it, and just to see all the --
all the smiles, all the cheers, you know, it was just --
it was just a great moment that I will remember forever.
So, I was so excited to see our name go across that screen.
How many times did you think it was going to be Ole Miss?
Was it every single time? Every single time.
Every single time. Trying to like calculate like,
okay, maybe this is number five, whatever.
All right, we're not going to be on this one.
But, yeah, every time, we just had our hopes up.
And, Shakira, for you, you know, coming here
when the program was --
you know, they had just come off an oh-and-16 SEC season,
and now that they're here, for you, kind of taking a chance
and coming here, to see it pay off like this,
I imagine this is probably pretty powerful for you.
I mean, it feels great.
And I was looking forward to playing a few schools,
you know, who laughed about my decision coming here.
So, you know, it just -- it just feels great, you know.
We finally got here, you know. It's been a long season,
and, you know, we just want to end it right.
What do you guys think this next couple of days
are going to be like? You've got five days to prepare.
Just what do you think the focus is going to be
like preparing for your first NCAA Tournament game?
Um, I think it's going to be pretty intense.
I think, you know, now that we've finally seen
that we're in it, we know we're playing,
who we're playing, you know, I think, you know,
everyone is just going to get more ramped up.
You know, I feel like we're going to have
a little bit more focus,
and, you know, the energy should just carry out until we play.
I mean, defensively y'all [inaudible]
teams under 61 points for, I believe, over a month now.
How good do y'all feel about y'all's defense
going into this matchup?
That's definitely what we're going to have to carry,
you know.
No matter who we play, you know,
you can only prepare so much for it offensively.
So, the defense is what we knew
was going to get us into the Tournament, regardless,
so, you know, I think there's a lot of teams in the --
in the Tournament who really aren't prepared
for a defense like Ole Miss.
I know y'all probably don't want to look ahead in the bracket,
but did I hear y'all consider Baylor at any point
when you were getting recruited?
We did.
Yeah.
We did. Yeah.
They were definitely in the mix a little bit, but --
Yeah.
But, yeah, we're at Ole Miss.
It's a good place for us.
How far has this team come since that opening, you know,
Belmont just came across the street.
It seems like a long time ago, doesn't it?
Definitely. I think everybody would want to, you know,
see that matchup again, see how it goes.
But, you know, it was tough that our first journey,
our first challenge was the first game,
but, you know, it really set the tone
for the rest of the season just learning from mistakes, so.
Talk about just the way y'all have just kind of grown up,
you know, from when y'all first came here,
or, you know, your recruitment experience,
you know, and you guys have been recruited here.
But just talk about just the time y'all got here,
the time, you know, just being announced that
[speaking indistinctly] NCAA Tournament, you know,
just, you know, what Coach Yo
just means to y'all, you know, as a coach.
I mean, I'm sure you've probably had to ask
or answer a lot of these questions sometimes,
but, you know, just kind of talk
about that from a player's perspective.
Coach Yo's our leader. You know.
She's our -- She's the head of the snake, you know.
She's our -- She's our -- She's our leader.
You know, we look up to her, you know.
She inspires us, you know.
She -- She -- She gets us going. You know, she pushes us.
She says things that, you know, we don't always want to hear.
You know, she -- she does a little bit
of everything, you know, so to be here in this moment,
you know, especially when she was recruiting me,
all the stuff that she said to me,
all the promises, you know,
she -- she knew it all along, you know.
So, to be in this moment, you know, it's amazing.
You know, to -- to look at her and see like -- like,
she's like, Maddie, I told you so.
You know, like -- and she did.
So, you know, this is, like I said,
just another memory, you know, that we will never forget,
and we're just so excited to see,
you know, what we do in the Tournament.
Shakira, what advice do you have for some of the players
who haven't been to the NCAA Tournament before
about what to expect for a game like this?
Um, I think first just, you know, don't play tight.
You know, the big stage can really,
you know, set players off, especially young players.
But you just gotta give all the effort,
you know, for 40.
You know, the game plan might not go as you want it to,
but, you know, as long as you're working harder
than anybody else on the floor,
then it'll turn out the way you want it to.
Any other questions in the room? We'll go to Zoom then.
Questions on Zoom for Shakira or Maddie?
Yes, I have one. It's Dorothy.
Go ahead.
Hi. I'm sorry, I couldn't really hear the question in the room,
so I want to know
if you guys thought that your name wasn't going to be called?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, the fact that we were the last --
the last pick was definitely nerve-racking.
Definitely. But -- What did you say?
I said okay. That's all I wanted to know.
I couldn't really hear what they said there in the room,
so you guys weren't sure.
So, talk about how you got this plan
to attack this week in preparation.
We just gonna go hard, you know.
We're gonna -- We're gonna do what we do.
A point in the season, you know, we lost our identity,
so it's going to be important these next couple of days
that we stick to what we do, you know.
We're going to work heavily on our defense.
You know, we're going to work on just doing what we do.
You know, we want to go down there
and just play Ole Miss basketball.
So, it's going to be important that we're just locked in
these next couple of days
and just bringing high energy, you know.
Just -- Just -- Just ready to go
because we want to do big things.
You know, we know it takes everybody.
So, we all just have to put in the work together
and -- and give it our all and see what happens.
Thank you.
Any other questions from Zoom or in the room?
Great. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.