NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - IONA VS DUKE

March 17, 2023

Billi Chambers

Kate Mager

Ketsia Athias

Juana Camilion

Cameron Indoor Stadium

Iona Gaels

Media Conference

Q. Kate, what do you think the reason is why you guys have been so successful in road games this year, because you're facing another one here tomorrow night.

KATE MAGER: Yeah, I think that we just approach every game the same way, whether it be home or away. I think that our chemistry has really allowed us to build a special culture here, and it's pretty easy when we have veterans like Juana and Kets to lead our team. They're really easy people to follow along.

Q. Picked to finish fifth in the preseason in your league, won the league by two games in the regular season, then you win the conference tournament. What's the mindset going into the season?

KETSIA ATHIAS: Our mindset was we're going to show them that we're not fifth, and that we're the best in this conference, and that we have people that can play and that can shoot the ball, and we can be first in the conference.

JUANA CAMILION: Yeah, kind of what she said. At the beginning it was like it didn't matter where they put us. We know what we worked for throughout the whole summer and we were going to keep working. It doesn't matter where we are, we're going to take it game by game. And that's what we did throughout the whole season.

KATE MAGER: I think they could have ranked us 11th and all of us still would have believed that we would win that MAC championship. Coach has the slogan Mind on 2 and we really believed that we were going to get the second championship for Iona.

Q. For any of the players, Duke has established a reputation this year of being a pretty good defensive team. What do you think the solution is to solving that?

KATE MAGER: Yeah, Duke is a great defensive team. We've watched a lot of film on them. But I think that we're also really great defensive team, so it's going to be a great defensive matchup. Just for us offensively, we're going to keep running the same thing. We have a really good offense that works for us, so just stick to what we know and play our game.

JUANA CAMILION: Kind of like following that, we've faced other good defensive teams, and we just run our stuff. We know what we're doing, and if one read we're looking for doesn't work, we're going to find something else. That's what we do, we keep trying and find each other open all the time.

KETSIA ATHIAS: I think they pretty much summed that up. Basically just running our offense and doing what we do, and yeah.

Q. Have you guys had a chance to kind of take in being in the NCAA Tournament as well as being here in Cameron Indoor Stadium?

JUANA CAMILION: It's been crazy, especially since we won. I don't know, for me, I've been here for so long looking for this. It was a crazy 24, 74 hours, just receiving a lot of messages, a lot of people wishing us luck against Duke or congratulating us for the season and everything.

And as a team, it was just like constant excitement. Every time we saw each other it was like, we just won, we're there, we're going. But as soon as we got to Duke, it's like, okay, it's time to focus. But throughout this whole week it was focus about the game and preparing for that.

Q. When you have a long winning streak like you had during the season, was it all smooth all the time, or what were some of the adverse things that happened along the way?

KETSIA ATHIAS: It definitely wasn't smooth the whole time. For some games, we would struggle to score in the beginning, and then we would have to come together and really lock in on defense to pull out a win, but in those times, we just had to come together and play our game, run our stuff, stick to our culture, and we know that's going to win us the game.

KATE MAGER: Yeah, I think that, like Kets said, we've won in a multitude of different ways. We have had games where we've only scored 39 points, but we've pulled out the win because we've locked in so well defensively. And then we've had games where we scored 93 and break an NCAA record.

It just depends on the night, whatever is working for us, but we're a defensive-minded team, so we're always going to lock into that.

Q. Juana, what do you see out of Duke's offense that will be key for you guys to be able to be successful tomorrow?

JUANA CAMILION: They're a really good team. They play a lot of, like, ball screen motion and that. But as we said, we're a defensive team. We help each other a lot. We communicate. We're a defensive-minded team, and whatever they do, we're just going to lock it up and do our best and try to take it away.

Q. Kate, I've seen very few 50, 40, 100 players. That is kind of crazy. Can you tell me a little more about your mindset as a shooter, maybe what you do before a game, routine-wise, what you did in the off-season, anything of that nature.

KATE MAGER: Yeah, my shot is something that I've always taken pride in, and it's pretty easy to shoot the ball when I have great teammates aside of me always finding me. Pretty much after practice every day, I have a routine. Shout-out to Coach Nick and Thoranna Hodge-Carr. They deal with my crazy routines and rebound for me every single day. Great rebounders, always got to give them credit.

But it's just like growing up, I've always been a shooter. I've watched film on a lot of great players like J.J. Redick from Duke. Just lock in to always having a next-shot mentality. It doesn't really faze me when I miss because I know that I've put in the work and they're going to fall and my teammates are super unselfish, they're always looking for me and finding me in great spots.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, ladies.

Now joining us from Iona is Head Coach Billi Chambers. Questions for Coach.

Q. What were you doing so well during that big winning streak and even since then that has kind of got you on this upward spiral here, or upward trajectory?

BILLI CHAMBERS: I think our women said it really well, that they play unselfishly. We have a culture where it's a culture of competition when it comes to wanting to shoot the ball the best on the team, but also a culture that allows us to share the ball really well.

Anyone can step up in any moment and knock down shots for us or really step up and take a great defensive assignment for us, and I think that's what's special about this group. Our leaders demanded the standard throughout the year and all their teammates came behind and followed them and bought into their roles, and it made it a really special season for us.

Q. Is there anything special that goes into preparation when I guess you probably knew you were going to be a visiting team in your first game in the tournament, and how does that play into things? Looks like you've had some success on the road this year for sure.

BILLI CHAMBERS: I hope that success carries. We haven't really changed much of what we do. Like our young women said, we want to focus on us -- we want to make sure that our priority is sticking to our standard, staying true to who we are. We're a very defensive-minded team. We want to disrupt the other team offensively.

We want to try to take away the first and second option and really make them try to look for option 3 and 4. But we do a great job of sharing the ball, which allows us to shoot it really well, put points on the board.

The offense that we run allows for a lot of set foot open shots if we're disciplined in what we do. Obviously Duke is an incredible team, and we're going to have to factor in length and athleticism and just their ability to defend at a high level. So we just have to make sure that we are focused on playing off of two feet, finding the open person, making the extra pass, even the second or third extra pass, to find the best open shot.

Q. Unlike a lot of teams in the tournament, you finished your conference championship March 11th, whereas a lot of teams finished the week prior. What were those 36 hours like where you didn't have your next opponent, and also what did you guys do to prepare coming into Cameron?

BILLI CHAMBERS: I would say it was a bit of a whirlwind. For the players, incredible excitement. They're young. They can bounce back quickly. For the coaches, I felt like I got hit by a truck. We were trying to figure out what are we were going to focus on these next couple of day, tweaking some of the things that we did offensively, working on some of the things that we changed down the stretch that we wanted to use in the postseason.

And then obviously once we got the matchup, really going to work and doing our homework on what Duke does well, how we can exploit some of the things that they don't do well, obviously trying to find opponents that run a similar system to us to see how they're going to guard it so that we can prepare them as best as possible.

I will say I have an incredible staff. Ashlee Kelly, Nick Volchok, Brianna Sanders, our assistant coaches who are responsible for our scouting do a phenomenal job of making sure that we're prepared day in and day out. I think they've done a great job of preparing us for Duke, and it's just a matter of stepping out there, throwing the ball up, and taking it one possession at a time.

Q. To follow up with that, what did you guys, if anything, do differently knowing that you're having a 9:30 p.m. tip-off?

BILLI CHAMBERS: We did change practice time. We did practice at about 8:30 p.m.. and it's funny, the coaches are sitting upstairs, we're going over practice plan, we walk down the stairs and the music is blasting. And they've got the balls, they're shooting, they're competing against each other. They're just having a blast.

And I'm like, this is us. We have to change. This is their time that they go out and they're college kids, and this is just a different type of party for them. For us, we've got to wake up,

a little bit of coffee in the evening as opposed to the morning, and getting ourselves ready for those first few practices. But I think they've adjusted well, and I think they're just so excited to play. The adrenaline will set in, and we'll get ready to go.

Q. Does that just speak to the culture that you in your 10th year have built at Iona?

BILLI CHAMBERS: I think it sure does. I think they take so much pride in taking any obstacles that comes their way, and a 9:30 p.m. game is a different obstacle. They just get in there, they get about their business. They want to make sure we're focused on what we need to do, and we have great leaders.

Ketsia and Juana are phenomenal. Kate and Thoranna Hodge-Carr, who she mentioned is her rebounder and gets in there and shoots with her, they follow without question. It makes it easier for our younger players to step up and do their jobs because they see no push-back. They see this is a culture. This is how we do it, don't question it, make sure we're working hard because we know we're going to see the success from it.