AMERICAN ATHLETIC CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 11, 2025

Lindsay Edmonds

Malia Fisher

Aniah Alexis

Dickies Arena

Rice Owls

Postgame Press Conference

Rice - 67, Temple - 49

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

LINDSAY EDMONDS: I'm just so proud of our group. The toughness, the togetherness, the composure that we had for 40 minutes tonight was incredible, a really well-balanced attack. Everybody that came in contributed. Our defense was incredible. We hung our hat on our defense, held them to 31 percent. They're a great team, but I think it just shows how great our defense was tonight.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. Questions, please.

Q. I saw you guys celebrating so loudly after the game. Is that, like, the momentum that you guys are taking into the next game or is that, like, we made it to the championship game, that's, like, our goal from the beginning of the season?

MALIA FISHER: That's always the goal at the beginning of a season. We knew as soon as the game and the buzzer ended last year that we wanted to be right in this spot where we are now, and we want to take that energy that we've had every single game and take it into the championship and continue our run.

Q. What are you feeding the team or giving them this time of year to go 7-0 in the tournament so far last two years?

LINDSAY EDMONDS: Thank you, first of all. I think, again, it's just our toughness and our togetherness. I think it's our culture of coming together when it matters the most, leaning on one another, being willing to run through a wall for one another. Truly a family, and I think it just -- we're leaning on our foundations of who we are, and we don't want it to end. And I think we're playing every possession and everybody should be able to see that with the way we're playing.

Q. Last time y'all played them during the regular season it was lopsided in the other direction. What were some of the adjustments you were able to make this time coming into the higher-stakes environment?

LINDSAY EDMONDS: I mean, the last game got away from us in the fourth. It was a really close game through three, and it got away from us in the fourth, so we talked about playing four full quarters and imposing our will defensively and making sure that they feel us in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock and in the last 10 seconds of the shot clock, so no early transition points and limit their offensive rebounds at the end, and I feel like we did a great job of that.

Q. You mentioned the rebounding. That was a big part of -- we saw Temple play really well against Charlotte. They out-rebounded them. You mentioned that was a focus for today. What went into that in just out-rebounding them in particular?

LINDSAY EDMONDS: It's always a goal for us. We always want to win the battle of the boards. We're not doing it right now, but in a full normal practice, we practice box-outs and rebounding every single day. So the players know that, they know that it's the expectation, they know that we want to win the battle of the boards. We faced a great rebounding team last night as well -- or yesterday as well, and so I think we were able to carry over that mentality from defending and rebounding against UTSA into Temple.

Q. We began the season talking about getting a high seed in the NCAA tournament, and then y'all had the journey y'all did. How do you bottle up that emotion to earn the chance to play for a second consecutive trip to the NCAA tournament?

LINDSAY EDMONDS: Yeah, I think we just keep doing what we're doing right now. We are playing with a lot of energy, we're playing with a lot of emotion, we're playing like we're not ready for it to be over with, like I said earlier. We just got to keep bottling that up. It's great to get to the championship, but now we have one more that we got to be able to get in order to be getting back into the big dance. That's obviously the goal. It's going to be the goal of our opponent as well, and so regardless of who we play, it's about playing 40 minutes of our brand of basketball the same way we've been playing for the previous three.

Q. Malia, as a leader on this team, how do you stay level knowing that the stakes just keep getting higher?

MALIA FISHER: I think I think about how we've been here before, and knowing that we're very capable of doing what needs to be done, and also just relying on my teammates being on the court. I'm not always level headed and I hope the energy is contagious on the positive end. So from that aspect I rely heavily on my team and we rely on each other to just to keep going and keep fighting.

Q. Aniah, you had a sequence in the second half where you got a steal right there on a Temple inbounds and kind of caught 'em off guard. Can you talk to just the intensity and how y'all were able to never let it get back to single digits again?

ANIAH ALEXIS: I think coming into the half Temple had went on their run, and then we were going on our run. And I had just scored and then I was up tagging and I got that steal, threw it off her leg, and my team we just built off of each other's energy. So that, I think, really set the game away and we just kept going.

THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you.