NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST FOUR - INCARNATE WORD VS HOWARD

March 16, 2022

Ty Grace

Brooklynn Fort-Davis

Krislyn Marsh

Howard Bison

Media Conference

Howard 55, UIW 51

TY GRACE: Wow. Wow is the first thing that comes to my mind. I'm just thankful again for this group of young women that they came and made history tonight. I'm so very proud of them. I want to say thank you to the whole bias on community, the whole bias on family, just all the support that's been getting poured out. Just elated and happy to be able to represent this university, and I'm sure the young ladies are, too.

Q. Rebounding, you guys have been a great rebounding team all season but especially tonight. You had over 50 of them, 22 offensive boards. What did you feel like you had working there, especially on the offensive glass?

BROOKLYNN FORT-DAVIS: Me personally, my shots weren't falling, so I knew that I had to keep on shooting them, and I do excel in crashing the boards, so when they didn't go in, I just had to go crash and do what I'm good at.

KRISLYN MARSH: Exactly that. I knew they played behind us so the O-boards were going to be extremely important. Defensively I just like to run in there, and that's exactly what I did. I wanted to capitalize on them.

Q. What was the feeling to come in here and win a First Four game for the first time in school history?

KRISLYN MARSH: It's amazing. It's amazing. We made history tonight. Still unbelievable. We're just excited. Happy to be here. Happy to have our names go even further.

BROOKLYNN FORT-DAVIS: It's a great experience. It's like this week has been great for us. We won a championship and we're still dancing, the first win in Howard history. This experience is just great, and I'm just living it.

Q. Going back to the first half, first quarter you guys were trading baskets back and forth and then both teams went on a drought in the second quarter. What were you doing offensively to get you out of that drought?

BROOKLYNN FORT-DAVIS: I think we just crashed the boards, played off our teammates' misses, and tried to continue to lock them down on defense because they weren't scoring as much. That's about it.

KRISLYN MARSH: Yeah, like Brook said, crashing the boards was just crucial because it gave us a second opportunity to hit shots. Even when our shots weren't falling we were able to get our own rebounds, just keep trying, keep pushing at them, along with our defense being able to lock them down so at least they weren't scoring, and once we got into a rhythm we just capitalized off of it.

Q. You mentioned the experience a little bit. Have you given any thought yet to what it's going to be like to take on the No. 1 team in the country on their floor Friday afternoon?

BROOKLYNN FORT-DAVIS: I'm not scared. It's just another experience, another day to play how we play. It's going to be a tough one, but we've played tough games all season, so we're ready.

KRISLYN MARSH: Exactly that. Exactly that.

Q. I was just curious since this is a whole new experience for you all to be at the NCAA Tournament, to come and to be on location here and to see all the March Madness signs and just experience that sense of it, what has that been like for you to be in the tournament and to be able to play another game on Friday?

BROOKLYNN FORT-DAVIS: We're just grateful and blessed. We feel like superstars. We get to walk around with cameras everywhere, play on a big court, nice arena, nice lights. We just feel like superstars.

KRISLYN MARSH: Yeah, it's amazing being here. I'm just in awe. Everywhere I look there's cameras. Everywhere I'm looking there's trophies, memorabilia everywhere. Just really happy to be here and soaking it all in.

Q. Have you soaked it all in, coming in here and getting this victory and what it means to the program?

TY GRACE: Yes, absolutely. I have soaked it all in. It's been amazing. You can't -- it's not enough words to describe the feeling that we have and I have today and from the week, like the kids kind of said. It's just been a great feeling. I'm overwhelmed, I'm thankful, I'm blessed. It's just been great. There's so many words I can't describe; I end up having a loss.

Q. They cut the lead to one point late in the game; what was your team able to do to get that lead back up to five and then finish out?

TY GRACE: Well, I want to first say Incarnate Word played a great game. They were tough. We knew we were going to have a lot of movement in their offense, and they make all their foul shots, so they just came well prepared, and they did a great job.

We just needed to settle in. We missed a lot of shots, like you all saw, missed a ton of shots, but I think the rebounding kind of wore them down a little bit. We saved that defensive pressure, definitely mixed it up with them. We played man and we took away some of their looks in their offense. I think the team did a good job locking in in the second half defensively, and obviously we started making our free throws down the stretch and made some lay-ups when we needed them that were really crucial, so that was important and I think that kind of helped us pull away.

Q. You mentioned kind of settling in. What is it like as a coach just trying to calm players down in an environment like this, especially in the first half when things weren't going your way?

TY GRACE: Well, we've been here before. We've been down in games, so it was not an unfamiliar place for them. I told them we just had to settle down, calm down, make the right reads, take time on their shots, take time on their lay-ups, and they did that.

We're not going to make every shot. You're not going to be a perfect basketball player, but you've got to make sure that you settle down, you play calm and you stick in there with your teammates.

Q. Advancing to that next round, what do you still want to see from your team heading into that next game?

TY GRACE: Just competing. We've been talking about competing this entire season no matter what has happened. They were going to go compete, and that's the one thing they do, down, up, close game, tie game, they're going to compete. They're going to make sure they give themselves a chance to win, and that's all I can ask from them. Give yourselves an opportunity to win no matter what the situation is.

Q. It's been a minute since Howard has been to the NCAA Tournament, since 2001, but now you have a roster of really talented young players. What does this mean in your mind for the future of this team, and what would you say the culture of this team is to bring it to this point with such young players?

TY GRACE: I think the future for Howard women's basketball is in great hands. I think we built the foundation over the past years that I've been here, and that's what we plan -- that's what I came here to do. I came here to compete for conference championships and make a run in the NCAA Tournament. That's what we talk about, that's what I tell recruits, that's what we talk to our players about.

The future I think is in a great place, and I hope that the people that are still here, the players that are still here are going to continue to buy in, they're going to continue to work, and whoever comes to follow is going to do the same thing because that's going to be the expectation. So I'm really excited about that. I couldn't ask for anything else from this group of young women.

Q. I'm curious what your thoughts have been on the whole First Four experience from finding out Sunday where you were going to be and be in the bracket and have to play to kind of a little bit of a quick travel turnaround to just being with some of your athletes were just saying, being here and actually on the court and seeing all of the whole tournament itself for the first time, even if it was more of a play-in game.

TY GRACE: Right. I've said this before. I'm going to be transparent about it. I didn't think -- we won the conference tournament, and I thought when you win the conference tournament you get an automatic bid, that you don't have to play in. So for my team, it didn't matter. I just told them, this is what it is, this is what the situation is and we're going to go in and compete and we're going to go in and win the game, whether it was the play in game, First Four, first round, we don't care, we came to compete and play.

Obviously I guess that's not for me to decide, I'm not on any committees or anything, but that was what was decided. We came here to play, and this is the result and we won, so that's all I'm focused on from here on.

Q. Yesterday you mentioned the banner, how it reminded you all season about when the last time this happened. That banner is going to look very different for the program moving forward. What are your emotions when you think about all the challenges you had to overcome this season to get to this point?

TY GRACE: I'm glad you made that point because my AD is in the crowd so he's ready to get that banner made as soon as we get back to D.C. ASAP. I can't wait to see that drop. Now it's a different mindset, it's a different view when we look up into the rafters and see 2022 MEAC champs and then NCAA first round win, we just made history, and I'm so happy, I can't wait to bring that back and have that be seen by people in the community, people that come into our gym, people that come to Howard University. It's just going to be an amazing feeling, and I'm glad that I was able to be a part of that.