The Amy Eagan Podcast

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (00:01.233)
Welcome back to the Amy Egan podcast where each week, Lyndenwood University head women's basketball coach Amy Egan joins us to talk about women's basketball, of course, the Ohio Valley Conference, NCAA, academics, careers, and much, much more. Today we have a really special guest who had quite the weekend. I'd to welcome sophomore guard Ellie Brueggemann for joining us today. Ellie, thanks for joining us.

Amy Eagan (00:24.606)
Thank you, Gary. Thank you.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (00:26.629)
Well, you know, as we talked before, started turning on the record button. You had quite the weekend, quite the basketball game on Saturday afternoon when the University of Arkansas Little Rock was in town. You had a last second shot. Let's just talk about that shot first before we talk about the reaction that came after that. Step us through what you were supposed to do on the court and what actually happened.

Amy Eagan (00:31.778)
Yes, sir.

Amy Eagan (00:47.18)
Yeah, so in the huddle we were talking about, were trying to get a lob to Brooke, as you can tell, to the rim and try and get like at least a foul or something, you know. But whenever they threw it in, two people went with Brooke and thank God Brooke stayed with it and I was able to get two hands on the ball and put a shot up. But not gonna lie, I think my eyes were closed when I shot the ball and I didn't even see it go in. I heard everyone cheering and I was like, no shot that just went in. And it was just a really exciting moment, definitely.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (01:15.933)
And to watch the video, you can see the crowd reacting in the back to that kind of shot. And the young woman who defended you, I didn't catch the number, for a tough situation, she was in your face.

Amy Eagan (01:19.212)
Yes, yes.

Amy Eagan (01:25.806)
Oh yes, when I couldn't see, I didn't even see the basket. just, I just tried to get anything up because I knew we were running close on time. Yeah.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (01:33.053)
Well, I wasn't at the game on Saturday, but I watched that replay on the Linwood feed, on the ESPN feed. And we see that time. ESPN has those last second shots all the time. Some are more fascinating than others. But yours was particularly interesting because you kind of ended up on your end afterwards.

Amy Eagan (01:52.906)
Yeah, mm-hmm. no, everyone was like, you should have gotten an N1, but I mean, it didn't really matter because we ended up still winning, but yeah.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (01:59.357)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's move on from the game to the reaction. And I kind of wondered as I watched that Saturday evening if that might be the kind of thing that ESPN might pick up for a top 10. And it certainly was, Ellie. Tell us how you found out about the shot being on ESPN and then the reaction from friends, family, neighbors, all that.

Amy Eagan (02:19.334)
yeah, so I actually woke up Sunday morning and saw the text from Coach Egan in our group chat of the video of it on top 10 esvn or sports center and you know, yeah, it was awesome. All my family was texting me that they had watched and they saw on their TVs and they're like, that's so awesome. I was like that. It felt big time for sure and everyone was super excited and you know, hopefully Linden was on the map now. Everyone saw it so.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (02:42.679)
So you ever thought back to two years ago what you were doing? You were in high school playing your senior year of high school basketball to being on ESPN top 10 shots, plays of the day, two years later. That's pretty cool.

Amy Eagan (02:54.958)
Oh, no, that is awesome. yeah, that definitely, if you would have told me that two years ago, I'd been like, there's no way. It was a hype moment for sure. Super exciting.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (03:04.773)
Well, Ellie, congratulations, not just on the top 10, but for all the play, you're a joy to watch on the court. Let's talk a little bit more about Lindewitt. You're a sophomore now, second semester sophomore. Tell us what's been the most positive experience you've had at the university. And then after that, tell us what has been maybe the least positive.

Amy Eagan (03:14.147)
Yes, sir.

Amy Eagan (03:22.38)
Yeah, probably the most positive I would say. mean, definitely like the community of people here. Like I made my best friends here and it's been.

like an absolute like amazing thing to experience and even like the teachers and professors they're like everyone I've had they've been super understanding and when we travel and it makes like it takes a big weight off of our shoulders as well just knowing that they're understanding with us and they're able to help us but definitely the people for sure it makes it 10 times better especially since I'm far away from home but it's been super fun and yeah sorry you said something negative too

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (03:51.111)
What the

Yeah, please!

Amy Eagan (03:55.662)
I would say probably balancing out all the travel and stuff like trying to keep up with homework. It can be it can be tough sometimes, but I mean we have coaches that help us out and advisors that are super lenient with us and able to be flexible with us. So that helps us out as well too.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (04:12.061)
Good. Good. And so let's, know, the last question I guess I want to ask, Ellie, is kind of guidance. You know, you're 20, 21 years old, wherever you are right now. And there are young women and young men listening to this podcast who want to be like you when they grow up. They want to be a D1 athlete, whether it's in basketball or some other sport. And I ask this question to all the Lindowan athletes that I interview. What's the one piece of advice, one piece of guidance

you would give to that 15, 16, 17, 18 year old who wants to be like Ellie Brueggemann someday.

Amy Eagan (04:43.916)
Yeah, I would definitely say enjoy it while you're in it and because it does go by super fast and also just working as hard as you can because that can separate you from so many people like, you know, doing the stuff that no one else wants to do and just putting in that work and, you know, having a good attitude with it will definitely take you a long way.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (05:01.115)
Well, as I said previously, I wish you all the best. It's a joy to watch you and your teammates for sure. And I'll be there this weekend, provide guidance to the referees as I always do. And we'll talk to you soon. My pleasure.

Amy Eagan (05:11.522)
Thank you so much, Gary.

Amy Eagan (05:29.806)
All right, I'm here.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (05:31.463)
Well, if you don't quit bringing me such talented young women, folks are going to think this is rigged.

Amy Eagan (05:36.204)
I said, did you do good? goes, I did really good.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (05:38.589)
Oh, just yeah, really, really nice job all the way through. There'll be no edits at all, because outside of what you and I are doing before we get going to it. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start. I'm going to lead like I did with Ellie with a play, and I'm going to ask what you talked about in the huddle. Then I'm going to ask about what you saw with your permission, what you saw during the game. And then I'd like to do a follow up on what I'm going to call the exuberant reaction from the bench.

Amy Eagan (06:03.534)
Okay. Yeah, for sure.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (06:05.105)
You okay with that? And I couldn't follow why there was not an actual technical foul. So if you want to be able to, there was, but it was non-shooting kind of thing.

Amy Eagan (06:10.552)
There was, so we can talk about it.

No, there was, but they also had kids that came on the floor. it's, it was a technical that negated each other.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (06:20.112)
setting.

I did not know that. Okay. Interesting. So we'll open with that. This is my exuberant bench reaction. Ellie, we talked to her, got a reaction on that kind of stuff.

and then also doing that replay. And you saw this, I'm sure, as I watched replay a hundred times. Again, Maya, after she inbounded the ball and saw the shot go up, she raised her high knee. She was, if that ball rolls off to the right, you know what happens, right? And even, even, Gracie, she wasn't that far off on that high. And that's, man, that's a testament, not just to girls, but I think to the way you guys set things up. That's, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool.

Amy Eagan (06:53.09)
He was going to tip it in. She was in great position.

Yeah.

Amy Eagan (07:05.112)
Well, thank you. Yeah, it was pretty cool to see that even if Ellie would have missed it with one second left, there could have been another tip because they just kept fighting. It broke up back up. Yeah. Yeah.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (07:15.442)
Yeah.

Yeah, because the young woman brought, yeah, Brooke got it back up, but she was blocked out. She wasn't going to get a tip from that position. OK. And so then the other things I have is I'm going talk about your assistance and your responsibilities, your assistance and the responsibilities you to them. And then I want to talk about kind of behind the scenes thing. When you go on the road, how do other schools give you, schedule you time for shoot around some practices?

Amy Eagan (07:30.542)
My what? yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (07:46.205)
And then how do you do it? It was kind of a behind the scenes kind of question. right. All right. So we're already recording, so we don't need to do the introduction or anything. So we'll jump right in. The time will be eight minutes.

Amy Eagan (07:49.366)
Okay, yeah, perfect.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (07:59.773)
So Coach, always good to have you on the podcast. It's your podcast after all. quite the two-game weekend. Let's first talk about the game last Thursday. Talk about that game for us.

Amy Eagan (08:04.814)
Good point there, Gary.

Amy Eagan (08:17.474)
Yeah, I mean, you know, think CMO is a big rivalry game here. I mean, there was a ton of crowd here, a ton of fans here. I don't know if our kids really feel the rivalry yet because they haven't been here that long, you know, with it, but.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (08:30.162)
Yeah.

Amy Eagan (08:32.586)
I know the community does and I know a lot of students on campus do. And so I thought, you know, I thought Seymour came in. I know their head coach pretty well, Briley Palmer. She actually played college basketball with my younger sister. so I've known her for years and she's such a great person. you know, they came in and she's got a new group. She's kind of the situation I was in last year with a new group and a lot of freshmen.

trying to figure some things out and you know they were ready. I thought their game plan was really good. I thought they executed their game plan really well. I thought when it came down to it we were just able to make a few few extra plays to put us in a position to win and I thought we played pretty well. You know I didn't think we played bad by any means with it. I thought Ellie had an exceptional game going six for eight from the three but as I will always say she's a lot more than just a shooter but I think it was a it was a really good game.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (09:26.341)
And then let's talk about Saturday. course, throughout the college basketball season at all levels, there are some fabulous endings to basketball games. You had one on the game against University of Arkansas, Little Rock on Saturday. Ellie was on the podcast earlier today and she talked about her perspective. But step us through what you wanted to do on the play, which you called in the huddle, the play itself, and then maybe the exuberant reaction of the folks on the bench.

Amy Eagan (09:33.432)
Thank you.

Amy Eagan (09:48.876)
Yeah.

Amy Eagan (09:53.164)
Yeah, well, first of all, think, you know, with Little Rock being seven and two and us being seven and two, both, both opponents, both teams, I guess, knew that it was going to be a tough, a tough game and some really good competition. And we were kind of back and forth and we pulled away just a little bit. And then they made a run back, pulled away just a little bit. And then they made a run back and they actually came back and took the lead with like what, two minutes to go. And I was like, no, I hope our kids.

you know, continue to believe in what we're doing and themselves and that. And they did. They just stayed the course. They made plays. And then it came down to, you know, the last second shot. So, you know, we work on late game plays and late game situations. So our kids already knew kind of what the purpose of the play was and how we execute it and what it needed to look like. And I thought, you know, Boog, we probably usually would run that for for justice for Boog, but she was out of the game, fouled out. So we ran it for Brooke.

And, you know, I think athletically, and when you look at even Brooke, a lot of times people can switch with her because she's more of a guard type kid than anything. And that's kind of what happened. So they ended up switching it and pressing up to Brooke. And we were lucky enough that Brooke was able to get a little tip on it up in the air. And it happened to roll off Holman's hands and into Ellie's hands. And just, just like I drew it up, Carrie, don't get me wrong. Just like I drew it up.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (11:14.717)
You

Amy Eagan (11:16.782)
And you know, Ellie was really, our kids were really smart about time and score and she knew exactly like time and score and that she had to get it off quickly and she did. So props to her and to our team to just making plays down the stretch.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (11:31.845)
And then the reaction from the bench, again, I watched this many times. It was a human reaction for sure. And as you explained to me, both sides kind of got exuberant there.

Amy Eagan (11:34.455)
Yeah.

Amy Eagan (11:39.82)
Yeah. So, you know, I, I, told them, on Sunday, you know, that first and foremost, we were really happy and proud that they were celebrating, you know, and celebrating each other. And, know, it's such a hard thing because in my mind, the minute I saw it happen, I was like, no. no. I was like, we just got it technical and I didn't know that the other team had came off the floor. so I was like, I couldn't even celebrate.

LA because or the shot because I knew immediately in my head where the kids didn't, you know, they're just going crazy. And so, you know, what turned out is they went and looked at the monitor. They put 1.1 back on the clock and then both teams got a technical that negated each other because they also had a couple of kids on the floor that ran on the floor. So, you know, it's a hard I think that's a hard situation because, you know, the clock is running down. The shot clock went off.

And so the clock is running down. So you want to celebrate, but you also, your kids have to realize that they cannot step on the floor. And that in all honesty, that's my fault. And it comes down to me because I didn't have that conversation with them about that. So something we talked about on Sunday, again, we praise them for being great teammates, for celebrating each other, for going to pick Ellie up off the floor. But it's something that in those situations, we have to make sure the regular clock goes off.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (13:09.053)
So, Coach, a couple of questions, behind the scenes kind of questions for today's podcast. If you would please, you've got three assistants.

Amy Eagan (13:19.47)
Three assistants in a dobo? Four assistants.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (13:21.361)
Yeah, three assistants and director of operations. Step us through what you have each of those assistants do for you.

Amy Eagan (13:27.168)
Yeah, so, you know, we kind of, what I do is I kind of split up all the responsibilities and jobs that I need to have covered between all of them. I try to put them in areas that I feel like are their strengths. like when you talk about building a staff, like, you know, I knew Jordan was going to come be my associate head coach. And so he takes on a little bit more of like some of the upper head coaching stuff that I need done, handling some

little bit more practice, handling a little bit more of like, he does our offense this year with stuff. Sometimes a little bit more of the kids helping manage them with me. And so really how I do it is I kind of go top down and then, you know, and I can't remember, I think I hired Taylor next when I hired her and I knew what she had done for me as a GA. And then after that, when I was interviewing people like Lindsey and Aaron,

I'm interviewing people to fit things that I need in those other two spots, you know, with it. So just to kind of like a summary with stuff, some of their main responsibilities with it, I kind of talked about Jordan, but like Taylor is our recruiting coordinator and she handles all of our academic stuff and guard play for us. And then Coach Aaron handles our like social media posts, all of our social media, getting stuff out on social media. He's learning a lot this year with like,

post players and forwards and he's learning a lot of that from Jordan so Jordan can pass it on to him of how we teach and what we teach of things He handles a lot of our fundraising stuff. So that's kind of his main responsibilities and then coach Lindsey She's dobo. So she handles all travel and anything and everything you can think of office work for us And then she helps with the guards as well And so you look at then like game prep type stuff every single one of us plays a part in game prep

in scouts and film. you know, my job, feel like, you know, if kids are in, I should say kids, but they're kids to me still, but if they're in coaching, and they want to become head coaches and further their career, my job is to prepare them for that. So I've got to give them responsibilities that, you know, can help them grow and learn what it's like to be in that next position or to be in a head job with it. So we really share a lot of that.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (15:30.237)
Yeah.

Amy Eagan (15:50.062)
You know, like this year, every year, so Tay's been with me for, this is her one, two, three, fourth year with me. So this year I gave her all of our out of bounds and slob and said, you design them, you implement them. And we sat down and went through kind of some thoughts that I have with that and thought she had, and then we put them in. So like really getting them to think like if they're gonna take a head job, whether it's high school, college, or whatever that is.

Getting them to think about some things that go into that.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (16:21.917)
And you mentioned travel and I'm always fascinated with business processes and these basketball players for your team and others don't just show up, they travel on the road. Share with the listeners how you line up shoot-arounds and practices when you travel and then how Linenwood does that for teams visiting Linenwood.

Amy Eagan (16:38.39)
Yeah, so you know, when we travel like for conference games specifically, I could speak about that. On Thursdays, we contact like dobo to dobo usually. And we find or if we know assist on the other team, either way, we find what time the gym is available and what time we can get in and kind of plan our travel around that for Thursday games. Same thing for Friday. Like we're playing somewhere on Saturday, we usually practice at that place on Friday. So we'll contact them and say, hey, what's open, what's available.

And then Saturdays are all set in conference. So they're set with a way women's team and then the home women's team and then the way men's team and then the home men's team. So that's all set in structure. So we don't have to worry about, you know, worry about what times those are going to happen. With such early start at 1 p.m. that's, it's the easiest way to do it, you know, as you go. So we get all kind of all that information. Then Lindsay takes it and we sit down and she develops kind of an itinerary for us and for our kids.

of when we're gonna leave, when we're gonna do study tables, when we're gonna practice, when we're gonna watch film. And so they have a pretty good structured idea of what the road trips is gonna look like day in and day out. Of course, sometimes we have to adjust things or I feel like things need to be adjusted and we do, but they have a pretty good idea of the flow of how things are gonna flow.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (17:56.357)
And the last question is attendance. And I was at last Thursday's game and sat with the president and the attendance is growing, especially as the conference season. Jason Kummer had shared with me that the attendance, he wants attendance to a lot during the conference season and that appears to be happening.

Amy Eagan (18:12.258)
Yeah, I think so. mean, I think people are noticing in the community and on campus and that what's happening within men's and women's basketball. And I always think and I always say, asking somebody to come sit through four hours of basketball is hard. So double headers are hard with it. It's just, it's a lot of your day with stuff. But I definitely think, I will always say it, winning brings people, right? And so.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (18:38.338)
yeah.

Amy Eagan (18:39.182)
The more you win, people just want to watch winners, you know, and they want to watch a brand of basketball and they want to watch, you know, people that are passionate about their sport and that work really hard at their sport. I think our kids are fun to watch. I mean, we're growing, think, every day in our skill and every day in our execution with stuff. But I think we've got a good base of X's, N's offensively and defensively that makes our kids fun to watch. And we've got some big time players that are making some big time plays.

I think that helps bring people too. yeah, we're just really thankful. We hope we can continue to grow that in the community and continue to get people invested. think, you when you talk about the youth of our community, I think that's so important because, you know, those youth kids become junior high kids, they become high school kids. Some of them want to play college basketball. I think we've got the best role models in the world for that. So just good people on and off the floor. So hopefully we can continue to grow that.

I mean, we need to sell it out every time. That should be our goal.

Amy Eagan Podcast For 012825 (19:42.493)
Well, let's call that a wrap with Lyndenwood University head women's basketball coach, Amy Egan. Coach, always a pleasure to chat. Let's get together again next week. Those who make time to listen to the podcast, we are grateful. Make sure to share the podcast link with friends, families, neighbors, and especially that really potentially talented high school basketball player just down the street. For Coach Amy Egan, I'm Gary Stocker. We'll be back next week.