SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 4, 2026

Larry Vickers

Khady Leye

Kaitlyn Duhon

Bon Secours Wellness Arena

Auburn Tigers

Postgame Press Conference

Auburn-50, Texas A&M-49

THE MODERATOR: Let's welcome Auburn to the post-game press conference along with Coach Larry Vickers, Khady Leye, and Kaitlyn Duhon.

LARRY VICKERS: First off, hats off to that Texas A&M team. You know, they've been one of the hottest teams in the country since their South Carolina game. You know, we knew we were going to have to come in here and compete for two hours the whole entire game, and I felt like we did that.

Obviously, you know, we hope they get an opportunity to play in post-season and one of their key pieces comes back.

I thought we had our game goals going into the year, and our team, led by Khady and led by Kait, they came out with a tremendous amount of energy. We wanted to make sure that we struck first, and I think we did that, and that gave us a lot of confidence moving forward.

I felt like it was a total team effort. If anybody seen us play this year, you know, we're not a group that wins shoot-outs, but a rock fight, we win those. I was super proud of them the way they competed, got rebounds, played together as a unit.

Pryor had an amazing performance, but I thought they did a good job kind of taking the task on head-on.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. That was a career high in rebounds for you, Khady, 15. What was working so well for you on the glass today?

KHADY LEYE: I just wanted it more. I knew I was going to get those. So coming into the game, I knew that I needed to rebound for my team, so I went to get it.

Q. Khady, talk about that game-winning basket that you had by the drive. Was that play designed for you?

KHADY LEYE: First, thank my coach for believing in me. I think that's the big thing. Because when he drew that, I knew that was coming, that drive was coming, because we did that play in that game multiple times, and she was sitting low. I had the advantage, so I took it. My teammates believed in me, too.

Q. Kaitlyn, I believe I see where you played 39 minutes today. In this day and age when everybody is talking about how difficult it is to play consecutive nights, what are you planning to do to rest up? How do you feel? How are you going to be able to keep your legs?

KAITLYN DUHON: Just stretch, ice bath, get straight into the Normatec boots and recover with my strength coach, one of the best in the country. She got me.

Q. Kait, what is it about playing Texas A&M? You had a career high in points in College Station, and another big game today. Anything about them that just fits your game?

KAITLYN DUHON: I'm aggressive playing anybody. If anybody seen my game, I'm always on 10. So I was just excited. Going into this we were 0-0, and we wanted it more. My teammates were excited, and we feed off each other's energy, and that's how it is.

Q. Kait, for you, getting to the lane tonight was big. You out-rebounded and out-scored Texas A&M inside the paint. That was a big part of your offensive game plan. How did you find success?

KAITLYN DUHON: Just being a dog, out-hustling everybody. Everybody knows, I'm going to touch the paint and keep going regardless if there's three people, four people. I'm going to try and get touches.

Then like my coach always say, two good paint touches and a kick-out, and we got good shots out of that, too.

THE MODERATOR: For either player here, points at such a premium in this game, what was the key there in that fourth quarter, especially when you were down five, knowing that, hey, it's hard to score, but what do we have to do to get back in this game?

KAITLYN DUHON: That it's just a dogfight. Playing hard, like, we're just down by five. We just have to put our hearts into it, and that's exactly what we did.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, players. Questions for Coach.

Q. Coach, again, your first year being at Auburn. What does a win tonight at the SEC tournament do for just the future in building the foundation of this Auburn program?

LARRY VICKERS: Well, you know, it's going to be a process. I think for us anything that we can show potential recruits and the city of Auburn our style of basketball and just kind of get more buy-in. I felt like this was one -- that Texas A&M team has been so good over the last few weeks. This was one for us that showed us, hey, we can play with anybody, and we can beat anybody.

Q. I forget how you characterized it. You're not great in shoot-outs, but you're good in the rock fights. Was that kind of the strategy coming in? Let's make Texas A&M play our style?

LARRY VICKERS: Yeah. So we're actually 4-0 in the SEC play when we hold teams under 60. Unfortunately, at Florida it was 61, and Kentucky was 63, Oklahoma was 65. We have to hold teams below 60, because today we shot 4 for 18. Two of them came in the last four minutes or so, four, five minutes.

Because of that, we know on every possession defensively, every rebound, it just means so much to our group. I thought today -- sometimes on the road we don't do that very well, but I thought today we did a good job.

Q. Before you came to the conference, I'm sure you heard about how difficult it would be, the physicality, the athleticism. Now that you've been through the gauntlet, is there anything that really stood out that surprised you that maybe caught you unexpected?

LARRY VICKERS: Well, people talk about how tough the league is. So going into nonconference, we wanted to challenge ours. We played Oregon, Cal, and Syracuse. We played a bunch of tournament teams.

You can look. Like, Syracuse had 52 at the end of regulation. It was a tie game. We lost in overtime. Cal had 50. Trying to think. Oregon, they won the game with 56 points.

Then we get in the league, and everybody is scoring 70. It's just that easy. So I tell everybody, you know, it's brilliant X-and-Os minds in this league. I mean, brilliant, but they're amazing recruiters as well.

If we're going to take our program to the heights where we want it to be, we're going to have to do a better job. We did a great job. I have great players, but we're going to have to get out there and recruit as well moving forward.

Q. As a first-year coach, how do you feel like you've been welcomed by your colleagues? Is there a sense of collegiality among conference coaches?

LARRY VICKERS: I had a relationship with Yo prior, so she's been amazing. And Coach Staley I met when we played in a tournament a few years ago. And when I got my first couple of SEC teams -- my first SEC win, she reached out and congratulated me. Kenny tells me all the time, anything I need, just call and ask.

Everybody has been great. Everybody has been great. Obviously we compete and we all want to win, but I think they do see our league as, hey, we want to be league-first at the end of the day, and if somebody is going to win the national championship, we want them to come out the SEC.

THE MODERATOR: Any thoughts on Ole Miss tomorrow night?

LARRY VICKERS: I haven't had a chance. I haven't watched any of them, but we know that they're one of the most physical teams in our league. Christeen, boy, she put on a field day our first game in Birmingham, and we're going to have to match her size and her intensity as well as Cotie. She was getting point touches any time.

We're going to have to just rest up and figure out how we're going to make those adjustments from the first game to this game. The first game was close early, and then they kind of separated.

We have to do a good job tomorrow as far as executing the game plan and playing a lot freer on the offensive end.