The Amy Eagan Podcast

Gary (00:03)
Welcome to the Amy Egan podcast where each week Lyndon Wood University head women's basketball coach Amy Egan talks women's basketball and much, much more. We'll talk about past games, future games, players, the Ohio Valley Conference, NCAA, academics, careers, and much, much more. Amy, welcome. Tough loss on Thursday, but a dominant performance by Justice Odom in the win on Saturday. Talk about those games.

amy (00:23)
Thank you.

Yeah, you know, I thought Thursday was tough. You know, I think we played a really good, talented team and UT Martin. And you know, the first time that we played them at third place, we were able to come from behind and get a win. And you know, we came from behind a lot and we showed a lot of it to them by making plays down the stretch, getting some steals, getting up in some passing lanes.

Really just going and making plays and I was really disappointed on Thursday with us because From probably the six-minute marker the third quarter on you know I was I kept telling them in every huddle like we've got to go make plays. We've got to go make plays and We just didn't do those things We just played well enough to be in the right spots, but not make anything happen and so You know I said on the radio. I don't think we played bad on Thursday we just weren't willing nobody was willing to

Put themselves out there and take a chance to make a play to make something happen for us, which we needed to happen So I thought again we talked a little bit about that on Friday before we started game prep for you for Little Rock And then I thought you know in Little Rock game You know, they're such a different tight They're a different type of team a different type of game in regards to how good they are defensively you really got to have a great mindset going into that because

it is hard to score against them. You're really just trying to find any way to score against them because they're so defensive minded and so good athletically, physically, everything defensively position wise. And I thought our mentality on Saturday was really good. I thought we played, our defense was great. We made some things happen. I think we turned them over 20 times. And so we made some things happen, but we also found ways to score. And especially down the stretch, I thought-

Justice was huge for us. We were up, I think, 12 right around there, and then she gets in foul trouble. And I'm sitting there on the bench just going, man, this kid is just making me so mad, because if she was in this game, we'd continue to hopefully stretch that. And so, but they made a run at us, and then we were able to get her back in the game and really stretch it. I think she had like 16 in the fourth quarter and stepped up and hit some really big free throws for us with it. So.

Just a great performance by her, but also a great performance by our team on Saturday.

Gary (02:57)
And I think we've talked about this before, but you're heading toward that first, completing that first year at Lindenwood. And just as you come from other places, what kind of traditions have you started already at Lindenwood and maybe ones you'll look to add in the coming years?

amy (03:11)
Yeah, well I think, you know, for us and our program just in general and overall, you know, for us, you know, you talk about culture and you talk about setting the groundwork and laying down your program this year and I think it's been a lot of that, you know. We've tried to do everything we can to the best of our ability with who we want to be, how we want to do things, what we want that to look like on and off the floor with our kids.

You know, I still think there's a lot of adjustments we'll make after this year because it's such a learning process your first year with how things operate, whether it's the other side of campus or operate within your program or operate within your kids and so forth with it. But I do think it's really, really important and having the ability and the resources to do team building type stuff is something that, you know, not only brings you, you know, some fun to your team, but also I think encourages them and brings them closer.

I always feel like anytime you can put them in vulnerable situations with team building is sometimes the best because then they really learn to each other are outside of just on the floor and they kind of grow that connection and whether that's learning how to talk to each other or learning about their families or maybe some of the hardships they've been through in life. I think it really does help. When you talk about like traditions and those kind of things.

You know, we do a lot of team stuff. We do some, we call it PG days, personal growth days, that are traditions for us that I think help with some of the team building. But we also try to do fun activities with them around holidays or just when we kind of feel like we need some of that to help grow us as a program and team. So there's a lot of different things we do. And again, some of that's depending on who you have in your program and what you feel like they need, right? And that's different every year with it.

We definitely try to do as much as we can and make this a family atmosphere. And I think that's really, really important to carry over onto the floor.

Gary (05:15)
And kind of in the same line, Coach, and I've seen some social media posts with your players doing some work in the community. In what ways do you encourage that community engagement and service among your players?

amy (05:30)
Well, I think a big part of who we are is being selfless, you know, and we talk a lot about that, serving others and being selfless and, you know, being thankful and showing gratitude and the people that do things for you and those kind of things. And, you know, you talk about community engagement and, you know, I've always said and, you know, I know I've said this to my staff too, is like we need this community to fall in love with.

our kids and us right now as we're building because if you can get them to fall in love with your kids and who you are as a program and what you represent they'll come to games even during the building process because what I think what you find if you look at any great basketball program is the more they win right the more their attendance increase as well we want that to increase as we're building as well so we're trying to get the community and

the youth and parents and everyone to fall in love with who our kids are as people first during this building process. So for us, we do a lot of things, visiting classrooms, we do a lot of things where we're trying to be out in the community and trying to increase some of that engagement so that they come see a game and watch us play and fall in love with who our kids are as people and want to come back.

Gary (06:53)
And one of the challenges that I have just mentally is thinking about these student athletes at whatever level of college. And of course, we see them, whether it's the high end in basketball or whatever sport or other ends, other areas. They also have school really is a front, the first item on the agenda. How do you manage that balance of being a high end D1 college student athlete?

amy (07:11)
This is.

Gary (07:19)
and at the focus on the college education, which will be their meal ticket for 40 years after they're done playing for you.

amy (07:23)
Yeah. And I do think it is hard for kids to manage everything. You know, you're talking about 18 to 21 year old kids that, you know, they have school, they have basketball, they want a social life, like they're at that point in their life, you know. So I think it is really, really tough for them. And we really try to get them to understand through conversation kind of where those priorities lie, you know.

And for us, we talk about God first, whatever that may or may not be in their life. And everybody's different with that. We have some kids that go to church every week and some kids that don't. Next is family, how important family is and taking care of family. And then after that, obviously academics, they are here first and foremost for their degree. Then basketball and then social life. And, you know, if you want to be great at any of those things that come before social life, you do have to have some.

some give and take, right? You can't, that take for us has to be from their social life in order to be great, the stuff above that. So they get it, they understand that. We have a lot of those talks in the recruiting process with them. So they understand kind of our expectations with it and so forth. But I do think for our kids and how we do things, we try to relate everything to life. And so when you talk about managing some of that in the classroom.

Some kids, they do kind of want to come to college and play basketball, right? They forget that in four years it's going to be over with. So talking with them a lot about sometimes academics are hard, sometimes academics are not fun. Your first two years of college, sometimes you study things that you could care less about, right? That have nothing to do with what you want to do with your career. But you've got to be able to do those things that you don't want to do to the best of your ability in order to grow.

right, and in order to improve yourself. And so just having conversations with them about that and regarding that and the importance of that in four years it is going to end. Let's help teach them as many life lessons and how they manage a lot of that is so, so important.

Gary (09:35)
And you know, for what it's worth, even faculty have to do things they don't want to do. And I realized today I had to submit my syllabus for the spring two term, and I was not happy to have to allocate time to do that. So even at my advanced age, coach, we do things that we don't want to have to do.

amy (09:41)
Yeah.

I'm telling you, yeah, you gotta do a lot of things in life that you maybe don't want to do, but it's also really important just with that syllabus that you do it to the best of your ability because you know down the road it does play a factor. And so just getting kids to understand that I think.

Gary (10:08)
And Coach, we've talked about a lot of things in our first year of doing this podcast, but one of the things we haven't talked about is technology. What are some of the technologies you would either like to see come to Lindenwood or ones that you're even using already?

amy (10:20)
Yeah, so I think technology is an everyday changing thing. It's an everyday growing thing within the field of athletics and sports. I think even from, if you look at from two years ago to now the amount of, whether it's emails I get every day or

the amount of people that reach out that want to talk to us about, hey, we have this technology that can figure this out with this kid and this out and how to do scattering reports and that just keeps increasing with stuff. And so, you know, when we started this synergy thing that a lot of schools use now, when we first started, I mean, you could get lost in that for hours. Like with all the analytics of it and everything, you could get lost for hours. You have to really figure out what you need to look at.

and what you're going to pick and choose to look at, probably on an every day, every week basis, whatever that is. But it is really, really important. You can learn a lot, you can teach a lot. You know, it becomes ever-changing even with our kids as we recruit new kids because they're so used to technology these days. It's probably not my strong point with it, but I rely a lot on our assistants to make sure that we're up to date with it and we're using things. But like for instance, we use...

an app called Teamworks that tracks everything of our kids' schedule. We have it just all laid out for the whole year pretty much in there. And then we edit it usually once a week if we need to edit it. That's how we send text messages. That's how we send emails out to them. That's how we send everything out. That's how we communicate with it. So that's really, really big. We use Synergy. We use Just Play for a lot of like film exchange. Synergy is Just Play's a lot of like...

Scattering reports and that and and all those things are continuously updating we are as well, you know with it So it's really really important It's funny that you asked that question because I was just talking to my assistant to our babies right compared to me Two days ago, probably we were talking about film exchange and I I was like well, you know Use when I first got in coaching We used to have to mail out or email out film exchange and then sometimes we'd have to meet people to get the VHS tape

to exchange in order to watch film. And they all looked at me like, oh my gosh, that's nuts. And so where we now have things that fix that and make it really, really easy for us, now we have other challenges that we face. So it's crazy to think about that, but technology definitely is an every day and every year changing thing. And we're trying to put our kids in the best situation with how they learn.

to be successful in those areas and a lot of them these days do use a lot of technology.

Gary (13:10)
I remember just as a side story, I was watching one of the Milwaukee Bucks players shooting and he had a machine that measured the arch of his shot and the spin on the ball. And baseball has similar kind of things. I can see how you could calibrate that muscle memory based on the data on arch, spin and all that kind of stuff. Different distance, all those kind of things.

amy (13:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah. You know, a lot of people probably don't know, but our kids were like, we have like five or six heart rate monitor type things that our kids wear during practice and during games, um, that track like, like if you, if you, if I asked you, how many miles do you think Ellie Brueggemann runs in a game?

What would you say? No, about six in a game. So like we can track on an everyday basis and it's different for kid to kid, how fast they recover, like how many miles they're going or the load that they have on them. And then we can make some adjustments to that with practice. And, you know, Julius, our strength and conditioning coach, he monitors all that on a day-to-day basis. He tracks it all. And then...

Gary (13:51)
mile and a half.

Huh.

amy (14:18)
You know, we really look at that and talk about that per kid and within our team, what that looks like, you know. Oh, we looked really tired this week. What was our load management? You know, how can we make some adjustments in that? It's crazy, but it's something that, you know, is important. You know, we're trying, you talk about kids these days and how much they do, right? Keeping them injury free is really, really important, and that plays a really big factor in that with what we try to do to manage all that.

Gary (14:48)
Interesting. And again, we've talked about the season winding down, and you've been with these young women and your staff for many months now, day in and day out. Share, coach, one or two really neat things from your perspective that have happened in this first season for you at D1 and at Lindawood.

amy (15:04)
Yeah, well, I don't even know, you know, where to start with all that because I think there's been so many out neat or special opportunities or special things that have happened this year. You know, I want one of the things that I'm going to tell the kids, you know, when when it's all said and done is, you know, I think a lot of people will look back from the outside and judge this team on.

on how many wins, that's just how society is, right? How many wins you've accomplished and what that looks like, whether it's non-conference or conference with it. But the people inside our program and them and us, man, I don't know if I've had a team that's made more progress, and they should have, they should, right, they're young, but that's made more progress, that's been more coachable, that's been more vulnerable.

to losing and still wanting to be better. You know, they've just done some really, I think, amazing things this year that go unnoticed and untalked about in a lot of areas. And so I think that's probably one of the neatest things is that, you know, a lot of people think that it's been maybe a bad year, and I just think it's been such a great year and such a successful year for our program.

And not saying we don't want more and not saying that we don't want to win more, but Man, it's been it's been a really good year. You know, I asked Tay This was a while back. This was actually like before we played UT Martin and we had just lost the game before that Before we played UT Martin I said Tay have you have you enjoyed coaching a whole group of women as much as you've enjoyed coaching this group and and

You know, she said, no, I said, me neither. Like, I just really like these kids, you know, and not that we didn't enjoy the other groups, but you just don't find a group a lot of times when you're going through a lot of hard that is fun to coach as much as this group has been. So I think that's pretty neat too.

Gary (17:20)
Yeah. And for what it's worth, as I drove home after the game on Saturday, I was a little sad because I have to wait what, eight months? Amy, unless you can get another game sometime soon, I'm going to have to wait eight months to see these young women play live again. I'm a little upset at that, but I'll. And then, of course, you know, changing big topics here, court storming big deal last weekend, a couple of weekends ago. It could happen at Lindenwood someday. What are you talking about? Yeah.

amy (17:25)
I know, me too.

I know.

It's gonna happen, come on.

Gary (17:47)
What are your thoughts on balancing the joy of the moment with the safety of opposing players and officials?

amy (17:54)
It's crazy because the radio station just asked me that today with it, how I felt about it. I think, first of all, we have a great student section here. We have a lot of kids that come to games. I think that's awesome. We talk about being the sixth man and that kind of stuff. I definitely think we have that here. We're really thankful for that. It's going to happen here.

You know, we're building right now, but there's going to be a time where there's going to be some really big wins and some really big things happen within our program. And so it may happen here if there's not a rule to it. But I do think there does need to be something, you know, you rewatched whether it happened to Caitlin Clark or the Duke player, you know, this past week with stuff. I think there has to be something set in place to protect the opposing team. I definitely think that like you.

The last thing you need to worry about or want to worry about as a coach is one of your players getting hurt in a post-game set celebration. Do I want those celebrations to happen because I think they're awesome? Yes, 100%. But I think there has to be something set in place for the opposing team for sure. I don't know what that is or what that's going to look like, but it's going to have to come to that with it. So that's really kind of how I feel about it and what I think, you know.

I don't know the solution for sure to it, but I definitely think there needs to be something.

Gary (19:22)
If I ever get the chance to storm the court, storm will be a strong word because I will walk slowly. Coach, last question. I'm gonna focus on the University of Southern Indiana. And your team could have had them down late in the game on New Year's Eve, if not for what I'm going to lovingly call an overzealous whistle. They came into D1 with Lyndenwood. They're doing okay. What do you like about what they're doing at Southern Indiana?

amy (19:27)
Hehehehe

Well, I think every institution is different. Every team is different. I think I have a lot of respect for Rick Stein and his staff there. I mean, I think I played. We coached against each other for years. So I've known them for years. And they're just great people, first and foremost, and are doing it the right way and doing it their way. They play a different style than probably every other team in our league when you talk about.

post play and like some high-low stuff which you don't see very often anymore because so it's so hard to find post players so a ton of respect for what they're doing. I think you know the university when you talk about even the second year for them you know they knew they were looking to do this and you know their facilities amazing all those things are just they have set in place to really I think aid them in recruiting which is really big.

to aid them in those areas and to help them be successful. And I think if you ask them in the conversations even I've had with them, it has really, really helped. The university is committed to it and they're doing things the right way. So, you know, I would say the same thing about us here, you know, with it. You know, our university and our commitment is there. You look at, we've talked about the practice facility already with that.

We know we have other things that need to be done with our locker room and so forth, but the commitment's there. And they're seeing a lot of those benefits, I think, early in the second year. And I'm hoping we see the same thing next year with stuff. But they're definitely seeing some of those benefits early.

Gary (21:34)
Well coach, always a pleasure. I'll find a way to steal a couple wins this weekend and sneak into that OVC playoff. Maybe I'd be willing to drive to Evansville. You find a way to get into the OVC tournament. I'll find a way to get to Evansville. How's that sound?

amy (21:46)
Yeah, I wouldn't complain about that. Two games left in a regular season and just like we approached last week on Thursday and Friday, I mean, we just want to be the best that we can be in each game and go out and try to find ways to win. And we're definitely going to do that for these two games as well.

Gary (22:07)
We'll get together again next week and talk about the season as we wrap it up. And we'll look forward to speaking with you then.

amy (22:12)
Hey, can I say one more thing real fast? Okay, for everyone that listens, and I know we're gonna continue to do this and that, but I said it on the radio the other day, and ending our home game at Lindenwood, I'd like to thank, obviously, the people that come to our games, or the attendance that's been at our games, whether it's the kids, or faculty, or community, or parents.

Gary (22:14)
Absolutely.

amy (22:39)
You know, I think we have started to create a very special atmosphere here with that. And I think that's really important for not only our student athletes here, but for recruiting. So definitely wanted to thank everybody for their commitment when things maybe haven't shown up in the win column the way we want for their continuous commitment to our program. And I look forward to, you know, us continuing those relationships, to building on those relationships, and for next year for our home games.

to restart and take that next step in our program. So just wanna thank everybody. I know it's not the end of the year, but it is the end of our home games for everyone that came out and supported us and has poured some of their heart and watching some painful basketball as well sometimes into who we are and better things to come for sure.

Gary (23:30)
Very good. Well, hey, we've come to the end of this podcast episode with Lyndon Wood University Head Women's Basketball Coach, Amy Egan. I encourage all of you listening to the podcast to share it with friends and family and neighbors and your favorite women's college basketball player to be. If you have questions or comments for Coach Egan, send them to me, gsoccer, that's G-S-T-O-C-K-E-R at Lyndonwood.edu. Coach, best of luck, we'll talk soon.

amy (23:55)
Thank you.