The Amy Eagan Show

Gary D Stocker (00:01.4)
It's the Amy Egan Show with Lindenwood University Head Women's Basketball Coach Amy Egan, where each week during the season and even out of the season, we talk Lindenwood basketball, we talk the Ohio Valley Conference, the NCAA, we talk academics, we talk about careers and pretty much anything else that comes to mind. Coach, always a pleasure to chat.

Amy Eagan (00:19.968)
Always great to be here, Gary.

Gary D Stocker (00:21.85)
And we chatted before we started recording this morning. We both watched the Iowa State Cincinnati women's game last night. And Iowa State started off something like 14 to no, and they've lost two in a row or two and a three. And it just brought up the point, you've kind of had a similar experience with your team. It's a long season and I gotta think that every team goes through periods where just nothing goes right.

Amy Eagan (00:43.49)
Right. You know, I think that's very true. I think it's hard, you know, to, it is really, really hard to sustain everything that you're doing all year. And, you know, I kind of tell our kids in that, like, every team has some ups and downs and that's different. Sometimes it's on the floor, sometimes it's in the locker room, sometimes it's both. I can't imagine a year where everything just goes completely smoothly. I've never had one of those. So I can't imagine any other coach in the world having one of those either.

You know, as much as like, you know, Baylor goes in and beats Iowa State and expose them a little bit, I think in a way, and you don't have a lot of time at this time in the year to fix some things and you have to have the right time to do those things. And then, you know, Cincinnati comes in right after and wins and, you know, Iowa State sitting there right now thinking, man, we've got to figure some things out. And I think that's a common in a lot of ways, you know? And I think, you know, when it comes down to it,

We all want to win every game. Like that's what we're doing. That's what we're trying to do is to win every game, but it is hard. And I think you want to be playing your best ball, you know, at the end of, at the end of February, beginning of March. And so if it takes some lessons and some people exposing you to figure some things out, then, you know, that's okay. You know, I hated losing to Western. I thought that was, you know, I just thought they were a lot tougher than us in a lot of ways. And then

Gary D Stocker (01:56.58)
Interesting. Interesting.

Amy Eagan (02:09.068)
know, Moorhead came in here and exposed us a little bit. And so from both of those situations, I think we were able to learn a lot about ourselves. And I think, you know, the flip around to Southern Indiana and now the flip around to SIUE, I think we started playing a lot better in a lot of ways. And so you don't want losses to have to happen in order to get some things changing that. You want to be able to do that from wins. But sometimes it happens that way. And again,

Gary D Stocker (02:30.862)
Hahaha

Amy Eagan (02:37.378)
think all of us, I mean, we want to be our best in March. That's when we want to be our best. we're going to keep plugging away and keep finding ways to get better.

Gary D Stocker (02:46.35)
So four and one in the last five games and all but one of those are OVC games. So I think you've got 15 Ohio Valley Conference games left. There's still a slog, but what are you looking ahead toward in those remaining OVC games?

Amy Eagan (02:59.712)
Yeah, you know, we talk a lot about I think January's hard because there's no light at the end of the tunnel yet, you know, and so how do you get better in January and what does that look like as an individual and as a team? Because I do think it's really important. And then, you know, when you get to February, you have a little bit of a light there one month left. Typically, you know, a regular season and then you hit the playoffs. So, you know, I think right now is a really, really important time. And I think it's important to have those conversations with our kids and.

And what can we do to get better as individuals? And does that mean being in the gym? Does that mean getting more shots up? 15 games seems like a lot, but that is going to fly by. It is going to go by really fast. And at the end of 15, as a coach and as a player, you don't want to look back and say, hey, we didn't do everything we could to put ourselves in a position to be ready for March. And I have no doubt my staff and

Gary D Stocker (03:41.167)
You

Amy Eagan (03:56.671)
And my players in that, we really do. put a lot of time into everything that we do in order to make them great and to make our program great. And so I always feel like at the end of the year, if I can look back and say, hey, we worked as hard as we could and we did everything we could to put us in that position, no matter what those 15 games look like, we'll be happy.

Gary D Stocker (04:17.818)
And let's go to a rare Tuesday night OVC game. took the team just across the river to Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. And in particular, a solid win for the Newwood ladies. In particular, I noticed the press breaker was pretty effective on Tuesday evening.

Amy Eagan (04:32.45)
Yeah, we've been working on it, Gary. You know that, like, you get exposed a little bit, you got to spend more time on it. Yeah, we spent some more time on it. you you get to conferences, so you kind of know some teams that are going to press and what that's going to look like. And so you're able to, and you know, you got to spend a little bit more time on that. So you kind of find some patterns of when they press, when they don't, what it looks like and that. So.

Gary D Stocker (04:35.996)
You

Amy Eagan (05:00.13)
We've spent some time on that. Southern Indiana has pressed a lot this year, didn't press very much against us, but has pressed a lot this year. Obviously SIUE picked us up a little bit towards the end when they were down and those kind of things. So I feel really comfortable with it. I think our kids are getting better and better at understanding their looks and what that looks like. And I think they're a lot more confident with it. And that does happen when you practice it more.

Gary D Stocker (05:25.404)
And I remember even early in the season, you, I think on your own, of your own volition, started talking about fresh legs. And of course now 11-5, so 16 games into a 30 plus game season. And I did some look at some stats and Ellie Brugelman and Brooke Coffee are playing about 26 minutes per game. And interestingly, Maya Skoff is about 29 minutes. Both of those around 70 % of all minutes to date. Are you pleased with the fresh legs approach you've talked about?

Amy Eagan (05:30.99)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Eagan (05:53.871)
Yeah, you know, our kids were the GPS trackers and you know all that kind of stuff. so Coach Julius, our strength and conditioning coach, he stays on me pretty well about, you know, how many our mileage and our load and our speed and all that kind of stuff all the time. And we try to monitor some of that early to stay healthy, you know, and to be able to sustain what we need to do. So at the end of the year, we're playing great. And I think if you looked at what happened last year with that.

At the end of the year, I mean, I thought we ran a lot of teams out of the gym because we had legs, you know, especially when we got to the WNIT, we just looked fresher. We looked, you know, like we had more legs, those kind of things. And so we do try to monitor some of that. Sometimes it's a hard balance between that and like staying in shape slash getting in shape type stuff. But I do think it's really, really important. And I haven't looked this week with anything. And, you know, with Warnley going down, some of those minutes went.

Gary D Stocker (06:31.226)
itched.

Amy Eagan (06:49.006)
So I haven't checked this week, I know before this week not one single one of our kids were in the top 20 in the OVC with minutes played. so yeah, and so I think that's that's really cool. And like I said, now it's gone up a little bit because of Warnley, but we'll continue to monitor that and do what we need to do. Like I said, it's a balance with stuff and and we just want our kids to stay as healthy as possible.

Gary D Stocker (06:50.341)
in.

Gary D Stocker (06:56.773)
interesting.

Gary D Stocker (07:14.78)
know, kind of a sidebar, it would be interesting to see if there's research out there on impact of minutes for both men and women athletes in basketball to see if there's actual decreased shooting percentage, decreased speed, something like that. That'd be fascinating to see if it's out there.

Amy Eagan (07:20.462)
Mm.

Amy Eagan (07:27.712)
Right.

Well, now I think, you know, so many people have the GPS trackers that I imagine a lot of them use it to monitor some of that to keep kids healthy and those kind of things. you know, as things have just changed so much with basketball being year round and all the pounding and the personal training and, you know, all that kind of stuff. think when you sometimes when you do some of that, you have you tend to see a little bit more injuries and and, know, I'm sure shooting percentage, it does play a factor in some of that as well. So it's just

important I think for us and I'm sure every program does it differently but it is something that's important to our program.

Gary D Stocker (08:06.14)
And let's talk about some players. And I've talked about Anna McCarn regularly. She's so intense, almost Maya Scoff-like in the intensity, especially on the defensive side. And Valerie Norwood, one of the smoothest players I've seen. Talk about both of their potential in the next couple of years playing basketball.

Amy Eagan (08:23.822)
Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, the sky's the limit for both those kids and, you know, both those kids really fit us and where we want to go with our program in the future in regards to maybe pressing a little bit more, playing a little bit faster on the defensive end. They're both super great athletes. And I've been really impressed with both of them. You know, I think it's hard as a freshman and hard as a freshman to step in to where you're playing with a lot of experienced kids, you know, and on a team that won 23 games last year.

and just having a lot of talks with them about what that looks like and the good days, the bad days, all those kinds of things. I think they're just getting more and more comfortable. the cool thing about it is both those kids we can coach hard and both those kids just keep working and getting better and better. think you saw Val take a couple of shots the other day in SIUE, know, against Southern. I just thought...

You know, we just played some great, great defense and I thought, you know, Anna was able to get two O boards against them. Like just some great things that, you know, maybe isn't as consistent yet as we want them to be, but you can definitely see some things that they're capable of doing with it.

Gary D Stocker (09:34.128)
And Anna's picking up quite a few assists in the game time she's in.

Amy Eagan (09:36.908)
Yeah, yeah. our five players tend to do that with how we play and how we run the ball through their hands. I think that's, yeah, yeah. think Kelsey against SIUE had six assists to two turnovers. And so for a five player, that's pretty good.

Gary D Stocker (09:40.592)
Yeah. Kelsey does that too,

Gary D Stocker (09:50.621)
Yeah, yeah. And let's go to the other end of the spectrum. Ellie Bruggemann, of course, in the third year in your program, Brooke Coffee in the second. Both had strong outings on Tuesday. Can both of those players take it to another level this year and next?

Amy Eagan (09:57.015)
Yeah.

Amy Eagan (10:05.484)
Yeah, for sure. I think I mean, I think you see in both of them that they're continuing to grow in different areas within their skill work. I think whether it's defensively, which I think Brooke has grown a ton defensively and still has a lot in her offensively where Ellie's added to a lot of ball handling and a lot of to her game off the dribble type stuff. I think they still got a lot they can both add to their game, you know, as we work through the end of this year and this summer will be a big summer for them with stuff.

Yeah, I always think you can find as a coach some way in some situation you can continue to challenge your kids to get them better and to make them better. It's, know, if the kid wants that. And sometimes when you have success, that's hard, right? Like, I'm good. Do I need to get better? But I always think there's...

Gary D Stocker (10:47.062)
And both had.

Gary D Stocker (10:51.748)
and both reached the milestones this past week.

Amy Eagan (10:53.986)
Yeah, yeah, pretty special. know, Brooke averaged 29, had 29 points the other night, which is a career high for her in everything that she does. And then she also had led the country in individual stats on Tuesday of all Division I, so that was pretty cool with stuff. And then...

You know, Ellie broke, got a thousand points. She's the first one in our Division One area here at Lindenwood and obviously our program to do that. So that was really, really special. And then she also set or broke the three point made record with 195, did I say? And so it was a really big week for us that SIUE game really.

put a lot of things on social media for us and blew up our program a little bit. But it's neat when you see like Brooke Coffey mentioned with some, the Power 4 kids on social media. And it's just neat to put your program out there and see it on a national stage, I think. So as we continue to build and we continue to do those things, I hope we can continue to get even more kids in our program to that.

Gary D Stocker (12:08.7)
And I noticed the Linda Wood SIUE game was on the ESPN women's game all day long on Tuesday before they happened. That's kind of nice to see as well. And then what looks like a pretty tough game coming up this Saturday, Little Rock is in town. I think they're three and one when I last checked in the OVC.

Amy Eagan (12:15.958)
Yeah, it is.

Amy Eagan (12:25.548)
Yeah, they're really good. I mean, they're Little Rock. know, they defend, defend, defend, defend, defend, defend, defend, defend, they score, OK, but they're going to try to out-defend you, you know. And yeah, they're a little bit different than last year, where they're maybe not as big, but they're a lot more athletic from top to bottom. And again, they just play really, really hard. So they have a great system that they run, and it's going to be a challenge for us to be able to defend them.

Gary D Stocker (12:31.676)
Ha

Amy Eagan (12:54.232)
really going to have to be locked in and understand their actions and what we're doing defensively against it.

Gary D Stocker (12:59.804)
And I think the students are back on campus. Do you want to encourage them to join you on Saturday afternoon?

Amy Eagan (13:04.62)
Yeah, so we start classes on Monday. if they're in town, we'd love to have them here. And obviously, the community as well. I just think our kids are fun to watch. I think you've watched them enough, Gary, to know that. They're fun to watch. They celebrate each other. They love each other. They play really freaking hard. And so I think it'll be a fun game for anyone to come out and see.

Gary D Stocker (13:28.422)
Well, coach, I will be there providing guidance to the referees as always. I don't do that anymore. And I'll look forward to watching some good basketball Saturday afternoon at Linwood University in St. Charles. One o'clock is a women's game. The men's game starts about 3.30. Coach, always a pleasure. We'll talk again next week.

Amy Eagan (13:33.39)
You

Amy Eagan (13:44.238)
Okay, thanks, Gary.