The Amy Eagan Podcast

Amy Eagan For Jan 21 2025 (00:00.937)
Welcome back to the Amy Egan podcast where each week, Lindenwood University head women's basketball coach Amy Egan joins us to talk about basketball, course, but academics, leadership, learning, and much, much more. Coach, welcome back. Always good to see you, especially on cold winter days.

Amy Eagan (00:16.994)
Man, it is freezing outside. But it's great to be here and great to, we've already gotten practice in today. starting off the day on a great note and looking forward to staying warm and it'll go out and watch a game tonight. So that's going to be a little bit cold, but I'm excited to be sitting in a warm gym, hopefully.

Amy Eagan For Jan 21 2025 (00:38.635)
Good. Well, hey, before we talk basketball, let's talk NCAA. And if you want to share the big NCAA announcement from last week, how you learned about it, and really what it means for Lyndenwood University and for your program.

Amy Eagan (00:49.676)
Yeah. So the NCAA in a roundabout way, won't give you the exact wording with it, but has said that if the schools that are in a transition can meet certain qualifications, they can become eligible for the NCAA tournament starting next year. And so there's still like, I think it's such great, great hope.

And news for us, for our program, for all of Lindenwood, for, I mean, you think about women's soccer, you think about women's volleyball who had opportunities to play in the NCAA but couldn't because we were in a transition period. Just great news for all the athletes that worked so hard to make those championships happen. And now after this season, they're going to have an opportunity to see the benefits of that in regards to some NCAA tournament stuff. So.

We do still have to meet certain qualifications. am very, very confident in listening to Jason and listening to the president talk that they're gonna make those things happen. I think it's really important to them. think they understand, know, President Porter's kind of been on the thing since the transition started. think like this is, this shouldn't be happening, we shouldn't be penalizing our student athletes, you know? And so I'm very confident that they're gonna make it happen.

It's exciting for us. We kind of had heard that they were looking at possibly doing it. And then we got word on Friday. And so, or no, we got word on Wednesday, I'm sorry, before our Thursday game. So I told our kids and they were really excited except for our seniors. But I think when you look at the impact that it has, there's so many people that try to negative recruit against you and there's

Amy Eagan For Jan 21 2025 (02:25.889)
Very cool. yeah.

Amy Eagan (02:39.404)
a lot of kids that won't even look at you because you can't play an NCAA tournament, you know, type stuff. that's obviously their, you know, what they want and their choice and that kind of stuff. you know, I think it just helps us with recruiting. It puts us one year ahead with recruiting. I think we've been very fortunate. I mean, if you look at the kids in our program, we just got amazing kids that, you know, they...

They obviously want to play in NCAA tournament, but they also wanted to build this into something special and you can see that they're doing that. So I'm really excited for us and for recruiting and for our program and for the kids that are currently in our program.

Amy Eagan For Jan 21 2025 (03:17.065)
And let's talk about last week. It was a road trip and as we know, road trips and whatever conference and whatever level are challenging for lots of reasons, logistics and travel, the bed just sleep in, all those kinds of things. And it was a split weekend, but I want to draw an analogy. And I remember it was early in your first season last year in the probably the fall of 2023, you took the ladies to Evansville, ahead by 17 in the fourth quarter and lost. And the same thing kind of sort of happened at Southern Indiana this past week.

And to me, coach, was an indication of progress. was a close loss at Southern Indiana. You had freshmen last year mostly, sophomores mostly this year. Is that what you're saying?

Amy Eagan (03:56.418)
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, last year, when you talk about it being a learning year and all of our kids knew it, when we were putting positions that were hard or we were putting positions that were tough, in a lot of situations, was growth that needed to happen in learning how to handle those situations and manage those situations and what it looked like. And I think this year, because they went through a lot of that and because they grew from those hard situations,

They're putting themselves in a much better situation and a lot of great things are happening for them and for the program. So yeah, mean, Southern Indiana is so talented and so good. those are things, I said it from the beginning, I think of the year, Southern Indiana has really lifted this league because when you have somebody that runs through a league the way they did last year, every coach in the league is looking for better kids and looking to...

to, you know, you're chasing them. You're trying to find ways to make up to get to their level. And I think that's happened in the OVC some this year. You know, I think we've gotten better. I mean, in the portal, you know, we've had, I think we did really well with that. And so we've gotten better and we've got more experience. And so you're seeing some of that happen with it. But I think a lot of it's just growth, you know, and I think that's a great thing to see and still more growth needs to happen. I mean, I think we could have won.

won that game and put ourselves had ourselves an opportunity to win that game. There's some things late game that I should have done better as well. So it's an overall growth, think opportunity for us and something that we're going to get better from. then next time we're in that situation, hopefully it ends our way.

Amy Eagan For Jan 21 2025 (05:33.793)
Okay. And then the Morehead's deck game, was a big 20, I think 20 plus point win. I watched that. And to me, I saw the first time Linda Wood took a lead and really never relinquished it throughout the game. Is that also a sign of growth?

Amy Eagan (05:37.166)
That's it.

Amy Eagan (05:45.688)
Yeah, you know, I think so. mean, playing on the road is really hard. And that's probably one thing that, you know, we have talked about a little bit as a staff too. We haven't been as successful on the road as we have at home. And some of that's growth and learning that what it takes on the road versus being at home and, you know, so forth with it. But yeah, I was really happy with Saturday. thought our kids, you know, from tip to the end, they played, you know, both sides of the ball.

They competed for 40 minutes. They I mean you could just see it. It wasn't like we're up. Let's relax or You know, we're up, you know, let's take a playoff I mean they just they just went after it all game and saw such some great great things I thought you know a lot of our kids did very well We have five people in double figures, but you know one of the kids that stood out to me really was Michaela Cunningham chaos and just the way she carried herself the way she she led

something that I've been trying to get her to continuously do consistently for us and I just thought she did a great job with it.

Amy Eagan For Jan 21 2025 (06:53.589)
And then a long weekend on the road, now two weeks at home, that's going to be nice. But of course that means a lot of road trips down the road. That's what we call your problem, not mine. then, and you've got CMO coming in on Thursday this week, University of Arkansas, Little Rock on Saturday. What did expect to see this week?

Amy Eagan (06:59.534)
After that, yeah.

Amy Eagan (07:11.222)
Yeah. Two really good teams. mean, think, know, CMO, although their record doesn't show it, they're very capable and they've got some really, really talented kids. Both teams are very athletic, a lot more athletic than we are from top to bottom. They play a lot faster than we do from top to bottom. So we're going to have to be able to handle some of that. You know, I think both of them are capable of pressing if they want to press for 40 minutes a game.

So I think it's gonna be a game that you're gonna see from SEMA. mean, they play hard from start to finish. They got a new staff. So when you have new staff and a pretty new team, the first game's always a little bit iffy because you don't know exactly what to expect. And that's why I think in a lot of our games this year, we're just so much more comfortable going into them because we know a lot more.

about each team and about each player and each staff. So it's gonna be a little bit challenging in regards to that, but our kids had a great day of practice today. They're focused, they're ready. Little Rock's just good. mean, if you know Little Rock, you know that they defend for 40 minutes and they defend their butts off. And so if you let that affect you and your offense affect your defense, you're gonna be in trouble. So.

So I'm excited to have an opportunity. There'll be either six and two or there'll be either seven and two or six and three, one of the other coming in, because they played Western Illinois before. So it's going to be a good game. And it will be really nice if we can protect our home court.

Amy Eagan For Jan 21 2025 (08:49.377)
Okay. And then the season isn't really quite over, but really 12 conference games left. And so really a little past the halfway point of your second season, we've talked about the freshman, predominantly freshman to predominantly sophomore transition. What do you look for in these next, these final 12 conference games?

Amy Eagan (09:06.03)
I can't believe there's only 12 left. is, I mean, it's flown by, it's gone so fast. And then I really cannot believe like Ellie Bruegerman and Alyssa Nielsen and all those kids that were freshmen are gonna be juniors. That is just crazy to me. But time goes by really fast. so, you know, I think we have a group that wants to continue to grow.

Amy Eagan For Jan 21 2025 (09:08.587)
you

Amy Eagan (09:31.694)
They're not okay that is January and think that, you we're done getting better. I really do believe that. I think they practice that way, not that that we're always 100 % and always there. Sometimes we have to get it out of them. But I think overall, I think overall, they're still really working to get better and to improve. And they spent a lot of time in the gym. So I think we're headed really in the right direction and building some really great things. And I think, you know, we want to be playing our best ball.

at the end of February, beginning of March, and I don't think we're playing our best ball yet, which is a good sign. So, you I think it's in their hands and we're going to continue to coach them the way we coach them and to continue to educate them and help them grow. And if they take that responsibility, I think we'll do some really great things down the stretch.

Amy Eagan For Jan 21 2025 (10:21.537)
Well, coach, thanks. Let's call that a wrap for this episode of the Amy Egan podcast. Coach, always a pleasure. We'll look forward to seeing some basketball here in St. Charles the next couple of weeks and we'll get back together again next Tuesday.

Amy Eagan (10:31.298)
Sounds great. Thanks, Gary.