NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST FOUR - MONMOUTH VS TENNESSEE TECH

March 15, 2023

Ginny Boggess

Monmouth Hawks

Media Conference

THE MODERATOR: Coach, if you'd make an opening statement, and then we will start on Zoom with a question from Steve.

GINNY BOGGESS: Just want to say how excited and grateful we are to be here as a program and represent Monmouth University and the CAA on the biggest basketball stage. I hope that you guys get a chance to fall in love with these young women as much as everyone else in the league and around our community has, and we're excited to share our brand of basketball with you guys.

THE MODERATOR: We will go to Zoom with a question from Steve.

Q. Ginny, I'm just curious how your time -- you played at Marquette (inaudible).

GINNY BOGGESS: Absolutely. You'll hear us around Monmouth women's basketball often say preparation is separation. And so what we want is our players to be as confident as they can possibly be heading into this opportunity. And it's just the work. You know, again, clear communication with staff. I've talked openly about how incredible our assistant coaches and support staff have been throughout this. Our assistant coaches have also been at high levels, And we're prepared to just get to work.

It's a big nod to get that next scout and to attack it, and we're a very competitive coaching staff. And so we take that part of it very seriously, but certainly drawing from past experiences and what went well and maybe didn't go so well and trying to kind of maybe make those corrections. But we're willing to stay up all night, to get up super early, to do whatever we need to do to make sure this team has the best chance possible.

THE MODERATOR: Great. We'll move to questions in the room.

Q. Coach, so go through your mindset of getting your team prepared for conference play.

GINNY BOGGESS: Well, we were really grateful to be healthy, and I think that was a big thing. You know, again, you just heard from Ari and Bri and talking about that. But my mindset was one at a time. We have a little motto, "one minute 40 times" in a 40-minute game. And so we really wanted to stay true to that. We know how deep and how strong the CAA is, and we knew we were going to get our run for our money, so we just wanted to stay in the moment, be as prepared as we could possibly be. We did not look ahead at all past that first one versus Charleston, and then lucky to have just played Drexel six games before that. And then it got real.

Going into that third one, that was probably the tightest we were. It was a little bit of, wait a minute; can we do this? Are we supposed to be here? We did a great job, I think, as a staff. I'll give credit to our strength coach, too, Bri Rubino, of tapering down and being ready for a big four-game run. And so I asked them every morning and every night, how are your legs, and they're like, good, actually. And I'm like okay. And we're a deep team, and so, again, we just wanted to do what we do.

I think defensive philosophy comes into play when you get into these quick turnarounds and things like that and being able to say, hey, this is how we've guarded this all year, and we don't get so lost in a scout that we mix so much up. So we know how we guard those handoffs. We know how we guard those slice-and-cross screens. We know how we want to guard the dribble-drive. So just being able to rely on that and this is how we defend, I think, was really helpful.

Q. So describe to us what will we see -- what's your style? What do you all hang your hat on?

GINNY BOGGESS: We want five willing-and-able passers and five willing-and-able scorers on the floor at any point on the offensive end. We want to get out and push. We would like to get an attempt or a piece of the paint in the first eight seconds. That doesn't always happen, especially as the league got more and more used to seeing what we were trying to do.

And then we want to flow into our offense. We really believe if we set and use screens, that the ball will find the right shot. Again, we've got a really selfless team that gets excited for one another. You can see that when you watch them play. So you'll see a lot of juice, a lot of freedom and hopefully a lot of confidence tomorrow.

And then, defensively, we try to protect the paint. Going into this league and joining the CAA, it was a big boost of athleticism and size, and so we knew that maybe we wouldn't have the speed or the size that some of the other teams, but we knew that we could rebound if we were tough enough. And so we've really keyed in on that. I think rebounding was a huge difference for us. I think we were plus ten margin on the tournament. So that was a big factor for us getting all the way to the ship. So we're excited to be able to hopefully control the boards a little bit tomorrow. We just want to be who we've been all year.

Q. So kind of walk us through your journey as a head coach at Monmouth. Why did you come there and what was your vision for the program?

GINNY BOGGESS: I'm from a small town, in Hamlin, West Virginia, and so community and connection for me personally are really important. I chose a small private school with small class sizes, and it's what was right for me and my educational experience. And so that's very easy for me to share with our prospects, and that's what Monmouth is. It's a smaller private institution. Our facilities are unbelievable. It's a great education.

I think having leadership that exemplifies and reflects my core values is important so that I can be myself and thrive. And so we have that at Monmouth from President Leahy and Mr. Stapleton, our athletic director.

You know, when you're a kid from West Virginia and you get to live at the beach, it's pretty cool. I've been at a couple of stops. So quality of life is a thing. But girls' basketball at the Jersey Shore and in Jersey and in a three, four-hour radius is very strong.

Heard a podcast a few years ago now from the Golden State Warriors General Manager, and he said you want to pick a place where the -- the confusion is why aren't they winning? You know, why wasn't Monmouth winning? Every other sport was winning. And I felt like maybe I had the leadership that could bring some success to the program. So it was a perfect fit top to bottom. I could go on and on, but really excited and fortunate to be there.

Q. You talked about the tapering with your strength coach, but I mean to have your best scoring day of the year on the fourth day in four games in four days, that's pretty impressive. So besides having your legs and depth, what was it that allowed you to have that kind of performance in that championship game?

GINNY BOGGESS: Against a very good defensive team. I really think, you know, those of you that have been around the game like you guys have for a long time, our kids just got hot. They just got in that zone. And all credit to them. They started believing what we had been saying all year. And when the bucket gets big like that, I just try to stay out of the way, quite honestly. They were playing at a really high level.

I've talked previously about we were starting -- they were about to announce the starters, and I look over at Bri Tins, and you can see, she's pretty iron steel; it's never high, never low, woman of few words, and she's teary-eyed, and then Lovin Marsicano gets teary-eyed. And I'm like, four of our five starters are emotional right now. What is happening? But I took a second, and quite frankly, I got emotional in our little pregame prayer, and I realized it was just gratitude, just gratitude for the moment and gratitude for one another and for those two graduate seniors, gratitude for a second chance. And I told them when we took our deep breath right before we started, I said, I know that's gratitude. A younger Ginny probably would have been like, why are you crying? Let's get it together! But we took a moment, and I just said, that's your gratitude, go own it, go live it. And then Ari Vanderhoop, the one that wasn't upset, just locked it in and turned it up and set the tone for us really.

Q. You talked a lot about the injury side of it. Can you tell us like who was injured and when they came back?

GINNY BOGGESS: How long you got, Coach? No, so probably the longest, most impactful injury was Lovin Marsicano. She broke her rib and was out for six conference games. We run a lot through our 4 player. That's a decisionmaker for us. She's a career 38 percent three-point shooter, started out a little bit slowly at Monmouth on that front, but she rebounds for us well; big defensively in our switches. So that got us in the tailspin of rotations.

We moved Kaci Donovan, who's our starting 3, to the 4, and then brought Amiya Carroll in off the bench to become a starter. We had Belle Kranbuhl up at Northeastern dive on the floor for a loose ball, dislocated her shoulder. She was out for a few games. And then even when she was back, the first few games not full strength, really not confident in being the paint protector that we know that she is. Then Jania Hall got a concussion. And Amiya Carroll dislocated her shoulder. So we just -- it was just a domino. But you guys know every team in the country has battled that. And the only reason that we talk about that is because we weren't full strength. So I think we're a better team than maybe our record or where we placed in the league reflects. And, again, that's sport. Right? We're all beat up. We're all banged up. But we happened to get healthy and get hot at the right time.

I might be forgetting one. Antonia Panayides has been a defensive 3 and D kid for us all year long. She's got a bad ligament in one of our ankles. Jen Louro, sixth-year senior, some days can barely walk with her knee. This time of year, you get to that ship, and nothing hurts. Just go play.

THE MODERATOR: We'll go back to Zoom.

Q. (Inaudible)?

GINNY BOGGESS: Yeah, I want that to be an identity. I'm looking at Coach Warlick here, one of the toughest rebounding teams, Tennessee. But that's what I grew up watching and that's what I grew up hearing. And I know this is hard to believe, but I wasn't the most talented kid out there. But you can rebound. You know, and you can work hard on the defensive end, and you can use everything that you have. And so as we started looking ahead to the CAA, we knew that the league didn't have necessarily, from the eye test, the three-point shooting ability that we had, and we knew that that was one thing. Maybe we couldn't get a ton of stops, but when we did, we had to clean it up and finish the play. And so we were able to really buy into the defensive end of rebounding and then we could push our pace.

People have pressed us this year, and I've kind of joked with our guards, too. You don't wanna be pressed, get a stop. Get that board and then let's go, and don't foul. So I think just probably me harping on them. I'm big on the rebounding. And, again, our staff just staying disciplined and dedicated to it. But when you see success from it like Ari Vanderhoop has and our bigs have, they tend to want to replicate that game in and game out.

Q. (Inaudible).

GINNY BOGGESS: They're very talented. You know, I even go way back to eight years ago, those Marist teams that made those deep tournament runs, skilled, smart. They've got those two lead guards that very well could play in our league or above. And, again, they got a very balanced attack. They press. They defend at a high level. They protect the paint really well. Just a smart, skilled, well-coached basketball team.

Q. Good luck.

GINNY BOGGESS: Thanks, Steve.

MODERATOR: Anything else from in the room? If not, thank you, Coach. And good luck in the tournament.

GINNY BOGGESS: Thank you.