SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TIPOFF MEDIA DAYS

October 13, 2026

Larry Vickers

Auburn Tigers

Women's Media Day Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Here with us today is Coach Larry Vickers from Auburn University.

LARRY VICKERS: Good morning. Hope all is well. You know, just standing up here, year two, everybody is asking me, what's the difference? Just being comfortable. Just being familiar with the league. Just being familiar with this process. I knew exactly what today was going to look like. You know, preseason. That's kind of some of the big things early on.

I am extremely excited about this basketball year. Next year I have to have Tiffany be able to talk a lot more about basketball. I think that will be a goal of mine obviously as I heard my intro, we have to win a lot more basketball games. That's our goal.

As we kind of go through this process now in year two and we begin to put together teams that I want to kind of be staples in Larry Vickers' basketball teams, we just want to grow day in and day out, on the floor from top to bottom. We feel like we did that with our recruiting class. We added eight new players.

Sometimes when I talk, I talk about nine new players, because Quanirah Montague, she wasn't able to play with us last year after the injury. So we kind of have nine new players in our fold. You know, two freshmen, Ashley and Zaniyah, and then our six transfers.

Kind of going into our recruiting process this year, it was important for us to get stronger as a basketball team, to get more hips, more strength all across the board. I feel like we were able to do that, you know, adding Jessica Peterson to our team. She was a leading rebounder in the ACC two years ago. I already talked about Quanirah being healthy. She had a double-double in our league before, so she knows what it takes to rebound in our league. Bringing in Savannah Scott back, who is also familiar with the SEC, and then Danielle Osho. I think our four room has improved a ton.

I think for us I make the joke all the time, I didn't know it was possible to win -- well, to lose a rebounding battle on the glass by 30, and we've done that. I never want that to absolutely happen again. So I thought we were able to do that with adding that forward room, allowing Kaitlyn Duhon to get back to her natural position at the three. Add in Sira Thienou, who is going to be a huge piece of what we were going to do this year. I mean, she is an unbelievable SEC talent, one of the best ten two-way players in our league.

We felt like overall across the board we've just been -- we've just improved, and we're excited about the product that we're going to put on the floor moving forward.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. You talk about Sira's future with this team. Obviously it was announced recently of her injury for the season. I know you guys have a lot of guard depth coming in this season, but what does that kind of do for you from a mindset perspective with Sira being out right now and what that looks like going forward?

LARRY VICKERS: Well, it was definitely an unfortunate injury, and she's working hard every day in PT. She would have played 32-plus minutes for us even with the guard depth that we had.

She's just an unbelievable player, and we are excited about her growth as she kind of had her team. You know, she's played with remarkable guards the last few years, and this was kind of going to be her show.

Obviously just losing her is a huge piece for us, but I do think our team kind of had the next-woman-up mentality. I could see some of the focus on some of our guards after she went down and improved from day to day, as they look to just now know that they're going to have to do a lot more to achieve a lot of our team goals going into the year.

Q. How would you define success in year two?

LARRY VICKERS: Well, you know, year two, we just want to be significantly better. Everybody on the Plains tries to keep me calm as we look to rebuild this thing, and they're, like, hey, it even took BP three years. Obviously this is a completely different time, and we don't want to take it -- we don't want it to take three years, but I think overall for us, you know, doubling that win total, being in the NCAA Tournament conversation, those are important pieces of the puzzle for us as we look to grow this thing to a national power again.

Q. One of the calling cards you've had throughout your career has been defense. How do you feel like this team has started to come together defensively so far?

LARRY VICKERS: Well, I think when you have players on your team like Kaitlyn Duhon, who every day hates getting scored on, Quanirah Montague who hates getting scored on. She's a versatile defender. It became a part of our DNA and our mentality.

As a coach who, fortunately enough, I've had the No. 1 scoring defensive team in the country at one point. But I think in our league for me moving into year two, when you're going so to see five of the top ten offenses in the league, we've kind of tried to adjust our approach in how we're going to try to score the basketball. I think that will be the biggest difference between last year and this year for us.

Q. Going into year two, what are some adjustments that you've had to make to get comfortable in this league?

LARRY VICKERS: Well, I think for me it's getting outside my box. Before I took the Auburn job, I did not have a Twitter, and some of my tweets, Connor wrote those. I'll let you in behind the scenes. Just blocked Instagram. We have some of the best social media personalities as coaches on our women's basketball side.

I know that the recruits are watching that, so you know, I think when they're hanging out with me, they're around me on the visit, they're, like, oh, Coach is really cool. But that's been the biggest adjustment for me.

You wake up and you see some interesting things on the Gram for some of our coaches that are outside my personality trait. Not that I would do those things, but that I would show those things.

That's been the biggest difference for me coming from where I was. I was focused on basketball all day every day. Now I have to be focused on my social media presence as well.

Q. You mentioned rebounding a lot in your opening statement. Is that where you see the biggest growth? Where do you see the biggest growth from last year to now?

LARRY VICKERS: Definitely rebounding, not even close. I have players fighting for rebounds in practice. Last year it wasn't that we didn't have that rebounding mindset. We were just so small. I mean, our starting center was 6-foot and a half. Kaitlyn Duhon, who has played the three her whole life, had to play some four for us. Syriah Daniels was playing some five. She's 6-foot.

Just from that piece, like I talked about Quanirah being healthy, but her being healthy, adding Jessica, adding Danielle, adding Scottie, our forward room I think we have a really solid forward room.

So I'm excited about them overall as a whole as well as our guards having less pressure to rebound. Now we can get some leak-out buckets, or some easy ones another type of way.

Q. What has been your sales pitch to attract those eight new players? What are you telling them?

LARRY VICKERS: Obviously with the history and the tradition of Auburn basketball and what Coach Champy did and what Nell did, it was about 15 years ago that we were holding the SEC championship trophy up. With some of these players being born in 2008, 2009, some of them don't remember things like that, but now when they walk in, they see that trophy, they see those Final Four trophies, and understanding what we are as a basketball program, as a program with 1,000 wins.

From there, we want to be a program to where when you watch us play basketball, they're going to say, hey, we're going to do that exact stuff on the next level, and we're going to call it the same things. As we recruit pros, because obviously you need a lot of pros to win in this league, they can say, hey, it will be beneficial if I go to Auburn because, the Xs and Os, the basketball, is going to transition very smoothly.

Q. You've talked a lot about going into year two of a rebuild. Just curious, what were the biggest kind of in-game challenges in the SEC of a year one for you? How much do you feel like you learned in game just going through them?

LARRY VICKERS: Well, for me I was just talking to our Director of Officials. I think our coaches do an amazing job. I don't want to say working officials, but working with officials. I'm going to have to do a better job of working with officials and making them see the things from our standpoint. That's something as a basketball coach I want to improve on year two.

We have some of the best in the country at doing that. I'm watching them from afar. Well, really not from afar, from about 15 feet, taking notes and stealing some things.

I think for us as our adjustments go, I thought we got a lot of great looks last year, a lot of great looks. Now just adding those players that I think are going to finish some of those looks are important for us.

Also, with that, last year from our defensive efficiency numbers on the first shot were amazing as we're charting stuff like that, but we couldn't grab the rebound. Now they're playing ping pong until the ball goes in.

That's why we've harped on rebounding so much. That's why that was our focus going into this year. Like I said, I think we were able to do that to a certain extent.

Q. Over the summer you added Coach Sydney Carter to your staff. How beneficial has she been coming in?

LARRY VICKERS: Well, you know, the great thing about Sydney is she knows nothing but winning. That's all she knew at Texas A&M, in the W, and then Texas as she went to back-to-back Final Fours. Those are the kind of players and people and coaches that we want to kind of add into our program, right?

How do you win? All right, well, we can look right over there, and she's been in locker rooms that have won a ton of basketball games. I think this is going to be an interesting challenge for her as the foundation isn't built. She's helping us build that foundation along with Taja Cole and Candice Jackson and Audra Smith and DeQuann Gordon, and our whole crew, Tamoria Holmes.

As we put that together, right, we just want to now prove and show that why we're going to be a winning program with time.

Q. What has Phoenix Stotijn brought to your team?

LARRY VICKERS: For us last year we couldn't shoot the ball off the bounce at all. It was something that we really struggled with. Phoenix will be a floor spacer for us at multiple positions.

She has an amazing work ethic. Regardless if it's conditioning, weight room, extra workouts in practice. So she does things the right way.

We're excited about Phoenix being comfortable. Obviously as a freshman she averaged 7 in SEC play, so she knows what SEC play is like, even though last year maybe didn't go the way she would have wanted to go at Indiana, but she's been successful in this league, so that's important to us as we add players.

Q. What makes Kaitlyn Duhon an elite defender, and Syriah Daniels being in the program as long as she's been in it and being from Auburn, what could that mean?

LARRY VICKERS: Well, Syriah Daniels and Kaitlyn Duhon both have the right mindset on the defensive end. They hate, hate, to get scored on. And that's one thing that defense is about pride and continuous effort, and both of them have that.

Kaitlyn's versatility and her strength, her size, as her brother is having an amazing year as a defensive end at Tulsa. Their physicality and mindset is what makes both of them great. I would tell my coaching staff last year as I took over Auburn, I'm, like, she would be the best safety in the country. You know, she's going to put her body in harm's way. She's going to take charges. She's going to get every 50/50 ball. She's, like, Ed Reed for us.

We have defensive principles, and then Kaitlyn has her own principles that, you know, she's able to use some of those, that elite athleticism, to do certain things.