By Thomas Corhern, TTU Sports Information
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Tennessee Tech women's basketball head coach Kim Rosamond's message to the players at the end of Friday's practice was a simple one.
"You belong here."
After all, the Golden Eagles have never shied away from any competition, playing many of the nation's top programs over the years.
They'll definitely face their toughest test of the season on Saturday morning as Tech (23-9) takes on regional No. 1-seed Indiana. Tipoff is scheduled for 11:30 am. Eastern/10:30 a.m. Central.
The game will be broadcast nationally on ESPN2 with Brenda VanLengen and Holly Warlick on the call, while Dylan Vazzano and Frank Harrell will have the broadcast locally on 106.1 The Eagle.
Tech defeated Monmouth 79-69 in the First Four matchup late Thursday night to advance to the Field of 64, giving the Golden Eagles their first NCAA tournament win since 1990.
After that, it's been a quick turnaround to face the rest of the weekend's bracket, including Miami and Oklahoma State. The winner of Saturday morning's game will face the winner between the Hurricanes and the Cowgirls on Monday.
"(Thursday) night was obviously a historic night for our program, getting our first win in the NCAA tournament in 33 years," Rosamond said. "We will celebrate that later, but right now the most important thing is we got 40 more minutes together. We are excited about the opportunity. We took a moment this morning in film to talk about the little girl in all of us, including myself, and how exciting it is to be in this moment, to be part of this, to be able to play in the atmosphere that we're going to play in (Saturday).
"But then we also took time to talk about how as grown women and competitors the challenge that we have ahead, but also the opportunity. And so we look forward to it. I do want to commend Coach (Teri) Moren and Indiana on what they have built here. Just you look at the attendance, I think their attendance has almost doubled over the last year or two where the stage that she has put Indiana women's basketball on. It's exciting for our game, and they are an outstanding basketball team, a well-coached basketball team, and we are looking forward to the challenge that tomorrow brings."
A little over 12 hours before the press conference, the Tennessee Tech women had just gotten back to the hotel victorious. The work didn't stop there though.
"We got back to the hotel, had a little pizza, celebrated for a moment, and then the players hopefully got more rest than the coaches did, because the coaches didn't get a whole lot of rest," Rosamond said. "Coach Melanie Walls had the Monmouth scout, and then Coach Allison Clark had Indiana. And she had us ready -- she was ready days in advance, but myself and our team truly we were just all focused in on Monmouth.
"But when you get to this point, if you don't have a great staff, it's almost impossible to get your team prepared. I've got two head coaches on my staff, both Allison Clark and Melanie Walls were high school head coaches. Jasmine Cincore is one of the up-and-coming young coaches in this business. So those guys do a great job of preparing us and getting us ready."
With the focus now squarely on the Hoosiers, the plan becomes a bit clearer.
"Indiana gives you a lot to prepare for," Rosamond said. "They run a lot of things, a lot of actions, a lot of sets, but the great thing about defensively for us is we'll just focus in on our defensive principles and the way we've defended actions for most of the year. There may be some things that we tweak here and there specifically for Indiana. But we've guarded most everything at this point. Now, maybe we haven't guarded Mackenzie Holmes or Grace Berger, but we've seen most of the actions that we'll see tomorrow, and we've just gotta stick to our principles."
And the numbers Holmes and Berger are incredible. Holmes leads Indiana (27-3) in both scoring and rebounding with a 22.3-point, 7.3-rebound average and shooting a scorching .688 from the field, while hitting .716 at the free-throw line as she has knocked down 126 of her 176 charity tosses. Berger is averaging 12.5 points, while Sydney Parrish and Yarden Garzon are averaging 12.1 and 11.1 points respectively.
As a team, the Hoosiers are averaging 81.5 points a game and allowing 62.3, shooting .498 from the field and .371 from 3-point range. They average 37.0 rebounds, 18.3 assists, 8.1 steals and 4.8 blocks. Indiana has won 16 straight home games.
"They are so balanced," Rosamond said. "Holmes is averaging in conference play 24 points a game. What I love about them, I think they play the game the right way. I have so much respect for what they do -- they're going to work the basketball, similar to what we try to do. They're going to work the basketball inside first. They're going to go to Holmes first, and then you've got shooters around them that can spread you out. Grace Berger is a mid-range machine. She's got one -- and you don't see that a lot in women's basketball. Usually it's a three-point shot or get to the rim, but her mid-range game is just a thing of beauty.
"They are so skilled. They pass the ball so well. Their basketball I.Q. is extremely high. So obviously they're averaging almost 80 points a game and they are very unselfish. They share the ball extremely well. While Holmes is a handful to guard, and we've gotta make sure that we don't give her easy touches. We can't just let her -- they've got a height advantage, there's no doubt about it. But I think we've also got athleticism and speed that we have to use to our advantage to try to counter that. So we're going to have to work really, really hard to limit her touches, and when she does touch, just make it really, really tough on her, and then make sure that we defend that three-point line really well and then keep them off of the offensive boards."
While Indiana has a wealth of weapons, the Golden Eagles have quite a few weapons of their own.
"And you saw that last night," Rosamond said. "Peyton Carter set the tone for us last night when she had 12 points in the first quarter and came out, hit four 3s, you know. (Monmouth head coach) Ginny Boggess is a very good coach and she's not going to let one kid hurt her. And then when they started taking her three away, you saw Jordan Brock step up and make some big plays. Then in the second half you saw Maaliya Owens step up and make big plays, Anna Walker had a big second half. Reghan Grimes, while she didn't have a big scoring night, she impacted it in so many other ways, defensively and rebounding. And then Jada Guinn 'Jada Guinn'ed' it, so to speak. What she has done so many times for us down the stretch. She just took over when we needed big buckets.
"You know, that's another one of our core values is team first, and we want to be unselfish. We've got a very unselfish basketball team that shares the ball. And so, yes, it's hard to guard a kid that averages a lot of points, but when you've got five scorers on the floor, it makes it very difficult as well."
