NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - AMERICAN VS MICHIGAN

March 18, 2022

Megan Gebbia

Emily Fisher

Jade Edwards

Taylor Brown

American Eagles

Media Conference

Q. You've got a group of four seniors who played for American. When you guys reflect on your career, what do you think about your time at American now that you're in the NCAA Tournament?

EMILY FISHER: I mean, we have five seniors in our class, and over these four years it's been just really awesome, this whole experience and for us to get here to the NCAA March Madness is really a credit to the hard work we've put in over these four years.

JADE EDWARDS: I think about the summer coming in freshman year and all of us getting to know each other, getting really close. And then as the season started freshman year, wanting to win it all and coming up short. Four years later, we can say that we did it, the five of us all still here. It's really exciting.

TAYLOR BROWN: Going off of that, it's just been a great experience the last four years getting to make really good friends on and off the court and us five finally getting it done this year.

Q. What did you know about Michigan, if anything, before you saw the selections and what have you learned about them since you've been doing your prep to get ready for the game tomorrow?

TAYLOR BROWN: We knew that they were a really great team. Naz Hillmon, great post player, so those are some of the things we knew before coming into this game.

JADE EDWARDS: Yeah, similar to what Taylor said, they've always been one of the great programs in the country, have some really notable players on their team. Not much has changed. We still respect them the same, still looking forward to the game.

Q. Last year a big story was that the NCAA didn't have really adequate facilities for the women's tournament. I know y'all weren't there, but this year how has it been in that regard?

JADE EDWARDS: I mean, yeah, we weren't here last year so we don't have much to compare it to, but from what we see on social media, it seems like the men and the women have the same swag bags or something like that. We haven't gotten ours yet, but I'm excited to see it.

Q. Taylor and Jade, you guys are both from Big Ten country, Minnesota and Illinois. Were you recruited by Big Ten schools? Was there any interest in playing in the Big Ten? How did you end up at American?

JADE EDWARDS: So no, I wasn't recruited by any Big Ten schools, but obviously we're very close to Northwestern and Illinois and I have friends at both universities. They weren't really in the recruiting process for me, but I like basketball, I keep up. I know most of the players on both rosters.

TAYLOR BROWN: Yeah, I was not recruited by a Big Ten team. I follow the Big Ten, though. I love watching them play. Since I've been little I've been growing up watching them play.

Q. What's your plan to match up with Naz Hillmon inside? How do you plan on doing that?

MEGAN GEBBIA: That's a great question. Help. That's what I'm going to say. Obviously she's a tremendous, tremendous inside presence for them. You watch her throughout the season, and it just seems like she continues to get better and better.

It seems like they go through her a lot, although they have a host of talented players around her.

It can't be a one-man show. You can't have just one person try to guard her. We'll do different things, put different people on her at different times and things like that. But we know going into this game that she's a focal point for us.

Q. Michigan's coach talked a lot about pace of game. They want to speed it up. The flipside being that you want to slow it down. Is that accurate, and would you like this game to be a 50s, 60s point game in terms of total scoring?

MEGAN GEBBIA: That's a great question. I would say sure, yeah. We like to play in transition. This is not like we are a 'walk the ball up the court' type team. It depends how the pace is going and what's happening in the game. If we can keep it in the 60s, that would be perfect for us.

But yeah, I think this team, this year in particular, has shown me a different way to win, and a lot of that is a combination of running and running our offense in the half court.

Our offense usually takes some time to run throughout the 30-second shot clock, but for the most part, we've been able to run at times in transition. We probably don't want to play at Michigan's pace. I think that's pretty accurate. Controlling the tempo is a big focal point for us coming into tomorrow.

Q. One of the other strengths for Michigan has been rebounding. How important is that for you, and what do you do when you come up against a team like Michigan and you maybe don't have the same size that they do in terms of trying to be on the glass?

MEGAN GEBBIA: Yeah, that is probably the thing that we've been talking about the most over this past week is rebounding. Especially in the Big Ten in general. That's just a huge conference size-wise.

The focal point is to crash the defensive boards collectively and trying to find a way to tip the ball out to your teammate or whatever that may be in order to kind of just stop the second-chance points that they might get out of that type of stuff.

Rebounding is definitely a number one, and we'll see if we're able to do that tomorrow when the ball goes up. It's a good question.