SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 5, 2026

Larry Vickers

Khady Leye

Bon Secours Wellness Arena

Auburn Tigers

Postgame Press Conference

Ole Miss 73, Auburn 57

THE MODERATOR: We'll get started with the Auburn post-game press conference here. We have Coach Larry Vickers and Khady Leye. An opening statement from Coach and then questions.

LARRY VICKERS: First, congratulations to the Ole Miss team. They kind of stuck it to us in the first five minutes. We didn't do a very good job of responding to the ball pressure, but congratulations to them.

You know, we knew kind of coming in that we wanted to own the first quarter, and we knew the physical style of basketball that they play. You know, we didn't rise to the challenge early into the basketball game.

I called a few time-outs, but it got kind of ugly. You know, I was happy with the second half a little bit as far as the way we responded. I'm not sure what we cut it down to, but I felt like we did a good job fighting back and competing. Kind of want to exit this tournament with our head up.

This is also a little bit different because, you know, I have three seniors for sure and then two that are kind of seniors. You know, generally this time of the year the seniors lead. They don't want to lose, and then they kind of carry everybody on their back. Congratulations to them. Congratulations to them for some of the things that we accomplished this year. I'm proud of them. Joining a first-year head coach in the SEC isn't easy. You know, I appreciate them for joining us. That's all I got.

THE MODERATOR: Khady finishes her tournament with a combined 28 points and 23 rebounds. Questions for Khady?

Q. Khady, what can you take away from this first season at Auburn, first season in the SEC?

KHADY LEYE: Obviously this is a tough league, so I know that this league is really competitive, and I'm really glad that I'm on this team. I love playing for him. He's a great coach, and I'm proud of my teammates and how we fought through the end.

Q. Also, two big games in the tournament. You finished this season really strong. What can you personally carry over into the offseason and into next season?

KHADY LEYE: I mean, we just got to play hard from the start until the end. We cannot wait until the second half to start playing hard. We got to bring that dog mentality from the start and carry it out to the end.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Khady. Congrats on a terrific first tournament here at the SEC tournament. Questions for Coach.

Q. As you mentioned obviously this is your first season coaching in the SEC. You also mentioned yesterday that Coach Yo has been somebody who has reached out to you a lot this season. What are you going to take from this whole experience as your first year here and carry over into next year?

LARRY VICKERS: Well, depth is so important in this league. I thought that's probably one of our biggest concerns. So our concern number one is to try to get deeper going into next year. We have to get a lot bigger.

We were a team, we lost by 17 on the glass today. Last time we played them I think we lost by 28. This Ole Miss team, it wasn't a great match-up for us size-wise, and they're just so physical. We can't do nothing with Christeen down there. We just really can't do anything with her. I thought Khady did a very good job competing. She's more of a four than a five.

For us, we want to get bigger. We want to get deeper. We want to add some more talent to the perimeter. We're just going to kind of start from day one and push the buttons on things that we need to fix, because this league is super tough.

I tell everybody, our defensive numbers were through the roof. We played a tough -- we played a lot of tough competition. Our schedule wasn't just all guaranteed games. Then as soon as we get in the league, teams are scoring 70 religiously, and Texas had 90. We gave up a few 80s. It just speaks to the talent of this league.

Number one, we have to get bigger, we have to get deeper, and we have to become a better rebounding basketball team. That's definitely my priority moving into the portal.

We tried to add some shooting with some freshmen moving forward, but those are the two main things that we're going to look to as we kind of build into year two.