AMERICAN ATHLETIC CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 9, 2025

Kim McNeill

Amiya Joyner

Devin Hagemann

Dickies Arena

East Carolina Pirates

Postgame Press Conference

East Carolina - 64, Memphis - 45

THE MODERATOR: We'll go ahead and get started with an opening statement from Coach and then take questions for the student-athletes.

KIM McNEILL: Yeah, first of all, I'd like to say Memphis, that's tough team. They always play extremely hard. They've got some players on there that don't quit. We knew coming in it was going to be a dogfight. They're really good on the offensive glass. And just kudos to them and their seniors that had an unbelievable career.

Just really proud of my team of just really taking the model of one quarter, one half. That's what we talked about going into conference tournament. Everybody's record is 0-0. It doesn't really matter what has happened from January up to this point.

I thought we did a really good job of prepping the last couple days and just really coming in and executing the game plan. We wanted to turn 'em over. We wanted to be really good in our matchups, which I felt like we hadn't been this season. But come tournament time, if you defend, rebound, and share the ball, you got an opportunity to win, and I thought we did a good job of that today.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. Questions?

Q. I know your last game, obviously, didn't kind of go where you wanted it to, but what did you guys get right over the next three, four days heading into this one? Because it looked like you guys were ready to rip right at the beginning.

KIM McNEILL: After that UT San Antonio game, I thought we were pretty embarrassed how we played our last home game and how we performed. But after that game, in the locker room, we said we had to move on and figure out how to come together and play East Carolina basketball for seven days and that started in practice and leading on into the tournament.

We just really emphasized our defense. That's been our motto -- ever since I've been here at East Carolina, that's been our identity, is for us to defend and be able to get out in transition. I thought we really did a conscious effort of executing the game plan, which was defending and trying to turn them over and getting out in transition.

Q. Amiya, you obviously had a really good game. You had a double double. How easy is it to kind of get going when you have some teammates with some pretty big assist numbers?

AMIYA JOYNER: They're always looking to find me. That's it.

Q. For Devin, Coach was talking about turnovers, but not only did you guys get some turnovers, you turned those into points. I guess, just how crucial was that just to be able to take advantage of those turnovers?

DEVIN HAGEMANN: It's very crucial. Before the game, we have a limit of turnovers that we try to keep under. So that was really important. Just as a point guard, just knowing that that's my role, to take control of the game and just keep our turnovers low.

Q. Coach, the first time you guys played Memphis they hit a bunch of threes. How did you guys kind of take that part of their game away?

KIM McNEILL: Yeah, that was a part of the game plan, just knowing what Boler and Eaton and Welch was because they had really good games against us the first time. I thought we did a really good job of that. I also thought offensively our posts really set the tone early. I thought Amiya and Anzhané did a really good job of finding each other on the high/low.

We knew they were either going to pack it in in a zone or pack it in versus a man and try to take our post away. Obviously that's everybody's game plan. I thought we did good job of moving the ball right to left and then finding each other over the top. I thought they played really well together and set the tone.

Q. You guys have been getting tons of assists all year, to see it again tonight from Devin, Hutton's got another five, that just leads to scoring all over the roster. It's just, how much does that open up everything when you can share the ball that well?

KIM McNEILL: I love looking down at the stat sheet and seeing three people in double figures. That kind of tells the other team that you can't take one person away and beat East Carolina. But I've been saying all year long, this isn't a one-man show, this team isn't. In order for us to be successful we got to share the ball, move the ball from right to left, and really score out of our offense. And I thought today we did a really good job of executing our offense and scoring and allowing the offense to score for us.

Q. What does this win do for you guys just moving forward? How are you going to use this to play hopefully a lot of games in a lot of days?

DEVIN HAGEMANN: It was a great win, but we're not satisfied. We have North Texas tomorrow, so we're going to not -- well, it's great momentum going into the next game, so we're just going to use that and come back and get this win tomorrow.

Q. Along those lines, ask you to take a look ahead to tomorrow's matchup with North Texas, what do you see?

KIM McNEILL: Yeah, I think we played an extra game with them, six overtimes, four at their place last year and two at our place this year. So hopefully it won't go into a whole lot of overtimes, hopefully we can get it done in regulation. But obviously they didn't finish No. 2 in the league for no reason. They're a really good team, they play hard for each other, they execute their game plan. But we owe 'em. We feel like they stole one from us down in Greenville. So we'll come in tomorrow, we'll be prepared. We're 7-1 in conference, in tournament play here in the last three years, so tournament time is where we peak and that's always our goal, we want to be playing our best basketball come late February, early March, and I feel like we're doing that now.