Maureen Hirt is the Women’s Basketball Head Coach at Denison University where she led the Big Red to the D3 National Championship in 2026. On their way to the title, the Big Red took down two unbeaten squads and became the first NCAC team to win the national championship since DePauw in 2013.In her 4 seasons at Denison Hirt has compiled a 75-36 overall record

Hirt came to Denison after spending the previous season as the Associate Head Coach at Oberlin College, her third year on staff as an assistant for the Yeowomen. During her second year at Oberlin, Hirt was one of 10 Tara VanDerveer fellows across the country to be a part of the 2020 cohort for the Women’s Sports Foundation’s advancement of women in coaching.

Hirt is the Co-Founder and Owner of Ohio Champion Basketball (OCB), a basketball skills and performance training company in Cincinnati, Ohio. Since November of 2015, OCB has trained athletes from the middle school to professional level. She began her coaching career as the Guardian Angels eighth grade boys’ head basketball coach, a position she held for four seasons from October 2014-February 2018.

Maureen played her college basketball at Kenyon College where she was two-time team captain and the 2014 North Coast Athletic Conference Player of the Year. She was a four-time All-NCAC player and three-time first-team all-conference selection, and is still the school's all-time leading scorer with 1,819 career points. After her senior season, she was recognized as a D3 Women’s News Third-Team All-American and first-team all-region performer.

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You’ll want to grab pen and paper before you listen to this episode with Maureen Hirt , Women’s Basketball Head Coach at Denison University, 2026 D3 National Champions.

Website - https://denisonbigred.com/sports/womens-basketball

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Twitter/X - @MaureenHirt

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I think pressing style is so fun too because it's a mental aspect when you can kind of get teams to maybe make a couple mistakes in a row and you can feel the momentum or we always talk about how basketball is a game of runs in our program and we want to make sure that we go on our runs and cut their short as much as possible.

And I think pressing and being able to dictate a lot of what other teams have to do and speed them up is a really fun system to play into.

In her four seasons at Denison, Hurt has compiled a 75 and 36 overall record.

Hurt came to Denison after spending the previous season as the Associate Head Coach at oberlin College, her third year on staff as an assistant for the YO Women.

Hurt is also the co founder and owner of Ohio Champion Basketball, a basketball skills and performance training company in Cincinnati, Ohio.

After her senior season, she was recognized as a D3 Women's News 3rd Team All American and 1st Team all region performer.

You'll want to grab pen and paper before you listen to this episode with Maureen Hurt, Women's Basketball Head Coach at denison University.

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Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast.

It's Mike Cleansing here without my co host Jason Sunkel tonight.

But I am pleased to be joined by Maureen Hurt, head Women's basketball coach of the Division 3 national champions, Denison University.

Maureen, welcome to the Hoop Heads pod.

Thank you so much for having me, Mike.

Excited to have you on.

Looking forward to diving into both the championship season and your background and life in the game of basketball.

So I'll start out first of all by saying congratulations to you and your team on winning the national championship.

Obviously everybody starts out with a goal at the beginning of the season and only one person, one team gets to cut down the net.

So congratulations on that.

Let's start there.

Thank you.

It was such a fun journey.

Yeah, it's the same thing we Talked to our three seniors is there's like there's 420 plus Division 3 institutions out there in the world and three college seniors got to end their Careers on a note like that.

So what a journey.

Really, really excited to talk about it.

Doesn't get any better than that.

So let's work our way back to the beginning of the season and even maybe before the season.

But coming off the year before, you're 15 and 11 and what's the mindset?

What are you thinking as a head coach in terms of expectations for this team and kind of just where were you at with them as a group thinking about what their potential might be going into the season?

Yeah, I think we're really excited about the group that we had returning.

I mean, we had a little bit of struggles with injury that year prior and knew that we, if we could get some people healthy like Ada Todi tore her ACL in that previous season, the first five minutes of our first game.

And Annalie Mad Twenge wasn't really healthy a ton that year.

So we knew if we could get healthy, we had the ability to do some really special things.

But it wasn't like something that we talked about at the beginning of the season like, hey, we want to win a national championship or hey, we want to go to a final four.

I really think we were very process driven this past season and I think that helped us just take it day by day and game by game.

I don't think we really ever looked too far ahead, which I know can sometimes be the tricky.

The tricky part as a coach is to keep them focused on the present moment.

But I think that was kind of an X factor for us this year because everybody was just focused in practices on getting a little bit better each day.

And I think it's a beautiful thing now at the Division 3 level that we get those eight days before October 15th to work with our team.

I think it really helps, especially those first years, get into the habits of each other, know what the offensive and defensive systems are going to be like.

So we were really excited.

I think Molly Duraghi came in as a first year for us and watching her, we were like, oh, we can press this year.

Like, she is wicked fast.

She is all over the place and had some really talented freshmen come in and so that was really fun to be able to see in the fall.

But I think we had just talked about being really process oriented and not letting outcomes determine, you know, because each season has peaks and valleys and we knew that we were going to have to ride those.

But if we could stay healthy and really continue to build the systems that we had put into place in the years prior, we could do some really special things.

Did you use all 8 of your days in the fall leading into preseason practice, or do you save one or two for after the season, or do you just use all eight?

We use six.

We use six.

That's been a fun thing since that new rule to try to figure out, you know, do you want to save a couple for the spring?

Because I want to help them as they head into the summer, have a really good idea.

So being able to do some individuals or small group stuff kind of retrospectively though.

I mean, we ended our season in that late March, and so they only had like six weeks on campus before they're in finals mode.

So I'm thinking maybe now maybe I save one, you know, for the spring.

But it's.

It's a different, different thing trying to figure out.

Because you want to let them adjust a little bit in the fall, too.

So I thought, like, going two times a week in the fall was really helpful and it helped us kind of progressively ramp up as opposed to like, you know, everything is player led in the fall and then having to ramp up October 15th and go six out of seven days.

I thought it eased them into it a little bit more, but might use seven or eight next fall.

So you talked a little bit about personnel wise, just kind of making some tweaks or thoughts of, hey, maybe we can do a little bit more of this, or maybe we can't do as much of that just because of the personnel from year to year.

So when you came into this year, you talk about, hey, maybe we want to press a little bit.

But just in general, your philosophy from year to year, how much of it is, this is the way I want my teams to play, and we're going to play that way versus how much of it is.

I look at my roster and obviously at the college level, unlike at the high school level, you have some control over who the players are that become a part of your program.

But how much tweaking do you generally do and how much did you do this year compared to the previous season, obviously, with players coming back from injury and just the personnel that you had available?

Yeah, I think when I got to Denison, they averaged around like 56 points a game.

They were very much used to every time down, walking it, running a set, and then two, three, zone on a make, man to man on a miss.

So we felt like.

I felt like for us to compete at the national level, we had to pick up our pace a lot.

So, you know, we ran the dribble drive since I got to Denison and I had a great mentor that taught me that system at Oberlin.

So we were trying to figure out how to, how to implement that at Denison and it was something that we didn't really have necessarily the pieces to do that super well my first year and then brought in that first recruiting class and year two we went 20 and seven and definitely were able to play that style a little bit more, a little bit better, but we didn't necessarily have the depth.

I think that year we started three first years so it was definitely an adjustment period for the whole program.

And so I think for us the key.

And then like third year had a little bit of injuries, but some other people really stepped up and we had some really great senior leadership that year too.

It just sometimes it didn't fall the right way for us and it was.

The conference has been so good in the ncac.

But this year I think we really had the depth and the ability to do some really special things.

Like we were really strong.

Like we had nine, 10 players that we could play at any point and, and we didn't have a huge drop off.

So we knew playing that uptempo style, we were able to like filter people through and keep legs fresh throughout the course of the season.

And it's tough basketball season.

I know your son's playing right now at OWU and it's a long season going from October to potentially March.

And so having that depth and being able to keep people healthy this year, not having to ride our point guard for 40 minutes every single game is really helpful.

So we've still stuck to the dribble drive system and made tweaks to that every year based on who we want to get shots and like what type of drivers do we want to set up those, those gaps for.

But defensively I think was where we made the biggest adjustment this year.

We've never had the depth to be able to press for 40 minutes.

You know, we always had like a handful of players, but we never had the ability like 1 through 10 to be able to do that really, really well.

So when I like I said when I saw Molly in that, that setting in the, in the first eight days, I was like woo, we might be able to do this.

And Brooke Toy goes a really athletic guard for us and we have, have some speed and some length and we had some really good athleticism at the post because that's always been the tricky part too.

If you don't have a five player that can move well and get up and get up like full court and press a little bit.

That's always a tricky system to play.

So we had it this year and so we've been.

I think it's, it's fine.

And tweaks and different things each year.

I don't want to be like, oh, I'm a systems coach and like this is what I'm going to do.

I think you have to adapt and grow every year.

Just like we ask our players to develop each off season.

I think as coaches we always have to find new ways to think about things and make sure that we're catering it to what we have.

But I think we found a really good like framework here at Denison that we'll start continuing to recruit too and kind of be known for.

So you talked a little bit about the process, right?

That, that's kind of way the way you approached the season.

And then when I think about pressing teams, right.

And then putting that together into a practice.

What did the process of teaching your team that pressing style and trying to get where you're playing that all the time, which obviously requires you as a coach to I don't know if let go a little bit but obviously you're playing much more uptempo.

It's not we're walking the ball up.

It's not we're trying to get in the half court.

We're trying to get up and down which means players are making decisions and all those kinds of things both on offense and defense.

When you're playing that fast up tempo pace.

So how do you structure practice?

Especially I'm thinking in the preseason as you're kind of putting that system in place, what does that look like?

How do you think about that process?

Yeah, I think that's a great question because you're trying to figure it out.

We ran obviously a man to man press so it's, it's not predictable.

Like a zone, you have to have players make those right reads within the press.

It was a lot of film for us, I think being able to see how five people move on the court at the same time because they're like, well I, I thought I was moving here correctly.

But then it's sometimes the next rotation over, right.

That we have to be able to show them the big picture.

So I think film, we have a TV in the, in the practice area that we could just point to things, stop and be like, hey, you didn't see this because it's tough.

Like they don't recognize necessarily the whole piece of it.

And I think that's what makes a press effective because if one or two people are on the same page and the other three are not, it's, it's a really tough thing to do.

Well.

So I think having we did a lot of film breakdowns and then they started to teach each other which I think is, is the great mark of like a team is when the players are able to make those corrections and it's not coach led where we have to start practice and correct them all the time.

They started to really pick up on it.

And I think that's the beauty of Denison too is we have really high IQ players that are able to do that.

But it was, it was trial and error and I think that's the best way to learn in the press too.

It's not a lot of like let's break it down 2v2 3vt.

We did that a little bit.

But a lot of it was 5v5 and live settings and figuring out when to go, when not to go, how to play off of each other and how to build that chemistry.

So we do it off of free throws, off of dead balls, off of misses and just practicing different scenarios that they would see.

I'm a big believer in like every practice drill needs to be competitive.

There's not a lot of fluff in our practices at Denison.

It's all decision making drills.

It's live.

You're either competing against each other, the clock or a score that you're trying to get.

So we really, we really try to teach them those decisions and put those in those scenarios so that they can be successful in game day when we, they have to make those calls themselves.

Yeah, it makes sense.

And I think when you start talking about again the decision making process and then I love what you said about the players teaching one another.

I was fortunate enough to have Easton Bazoli from Gannon on and his team presses again 40 minutes up and down the floor all the time.

And one of the things that I talked to him, I asked him basically the same question I asked you what does that look like in terms of practicing?

And he had an interesting answer which I'm sure you'll echo in in some fashion.

You may not have said it directly to your team in the same way, but his thing was when we're putting it in, when we're putting in the system, he's like the first week or two, we're just trying to get them to understand how hard you have to play in that system in order to make sure that you're not just giving up layups at the other end when a trap gets beat or when something doesn't go perfectly.

There's just things that you have to do to play hard.

He said a kid asked him a question like, hey, I'm here, but I didn't know if I was supposed to be there.

And he just said in the first week or two, we just say don't worry.

But that's a detail that you don't have to worry about right now.

You're just not playing hard enough.

And until you play hard enough, all this other, the little, the last 5% of the details of here or there, we're going to mask a lot of that by, by just getting our kids to play as hard as I can.

I'm sure that's the same thing for you, right, that you can't, you cannot play an up tempo, pressing style and go up and down the floor offensively and defensively and not have your kids playing as hard as they can.

So is there, what's the secret sauce for you to get kids to play hard?

How do you approach that?

How do you think about that?

Yeah, I love that.

I love that mindset because we always talk about making aggressive mistakes like we can't be robots.

Even if you make the wrong read, if you do it aggressively like, and you communicate what you're doing to your teammates, they're going to be able to clean it up.

Because our press rotations weren't perfect every year.

Like we just, or every, every game that we played this year, it was just, we made that aggressiveness.

And I think we've recruited really competitive kids.

They want to win and our practices are really fiery, really competitive.

And I think that's the beauty of our program is we've kind of found that balance of competitiveness and joy.

They can get after each other, they can go hard, you know, it can get, get intense in there.

But then they come back together.

We do positive touches in between each drill in practice where no matter who wins or loses, they give each other some high fives each of their teammates before we head to the next drill.

And it's a nice reminder to them that even though we're going really hard, we're coming back together at the end of each, each of these, and we're on the same team.

But I think, yeah, getting kids to, to play at that level and to compete for 40 minutes like that and not have any let up, I think it's come down to depth and like practice really does translate to games like they really get after it each with each other each day.

And that really helps us so that when it comes to games, they're not shocked by it.

Usually other teams are reacting to that and we set the tone and we always talk about that as like we want to play Dennis and women's basketball.

We don't want to react to what other people are doing.

We want to dictate the tempo and we want to dictate the pace and the physicality of the game.

So they've really bought into that.

And I think, I think pressing style is so fun too because it's a mental aspect when you can kind of get teams to maybe make a couple mistakes in a row and you can feel, feel the momentum.

We always talk about how basketball is a game of runs in our program and we want to make sure that we go on our runs and cut their short as much as possible.

And I think pressing and being able to dictate a lot of what other teams have to do and speed them up is, is a really fun system to play into.

When you see teams that are outstanding pressing teams and you watch their opponents, you definitely see what you just described, right?

That they are playing at a pace that they're not comfortable playing.

And when you get a team sped up, then passes that normally would hit somebody right here are over here and then the next one is way over here and then the next one is, is flying out of bounds or into your team's hands.

And you can just feel that like with a team again, that that's good at pressing, that it just is a cumulative effect that, yeah, maybe you score on it this time or maybe you break it, but the cumulative nature of what you do just keeps building and building.

Especially with a team like yours where you have depth, where player nine and player four, there's not that much difference in those two players.

When that's the case and you're coming at them in waves, it just.

What I often see too is right, you can force the ball into players hands who don't want to have it against pressure.

And then you force teams to do things that again, they don't want to do.

And then I always think that a big advantage of oppressing team is there's no real way, if you are not a pressing team yourself, there's no real way to replicate that in practice for the opposing coach, right?

There's no way that if you're a really good pressing team, that a team who's not can't put that in in two days with their scout team and have it remotely resemble what it's going to actually look and feel like when they play against a good, pressing team.

And so I'm sure that that's something that you work to your advantage throughout the entire season, and you'll continue to do that with the.

With the system that you have in place.

Talking about your players, and I kind of asked you earlier about your mindset as a coach and kind of where you were in terms of expectations heading into the season.

In your conversations with your players, I don't know if you formally set goals with them on an individual or team basis or what your system is set up for to communicate with your individual players on your team.

But what was some of the conversation amongst your team?

Where were their.

What was their expectation heading into the season?

Obviously, I'm sure they weren't necessarily saying, hey, we know we're going to win the national championship, but obviously they're feeling good about where their team is.

But just what was the conversation like amongst the players, whether that was player to player or player to coach?

Yeah, I think at the beginning of the year, there was just so much excitement, and I think we've created a culture where they truly are each other's best friends and they.

They enjoy all of the.

The stuff off the court and on the court.

And I think that translates when they have that closeness to the chemistry that they build when they're on the floor together.

So I think people were really just excited because we'd gotten, obviously some people that were injured back and heading into a season where we didn't have quite as much adversity initially.

And, you know, I think the preseason scrimmages are always really fun.

We were able to play everybody and introduce this new substitution and pressing style.

And I think we saw the effects of it and they were like, whoa, wow.

Like, this is really.

This is really clicking at all cylinders.

And I think there was just a lot of joy at the beginning.

Beginning of the season because they knew we had the pieces to do some really special stuff.

And we talked about, I think we were like, preseason supposed to be number two.

And the NCAC obviously deposit an amazing program, and I think they were the.

The number one in the preseason.

But we talked about, like, there's a little bit more pressure.

Like my first year at Denison, you know, we were supposed to kind of be middle of the road, and we've always kind of inched our way up, but we're in a different scenario now.

That pressure is a privilege that, like, people are going to have their eyes on us.

And even though we weren't necessarily in the top 25 high preseason rankings, like, this is something where there's expectations for this program now and, like, how we handle that and how we show up is really important.

And that doesn't mean that we get too far ahead of ourselves, but it means that we have a responsibility to each other to show up every day.

And I think that is the hardest thing to do as a player in college when you're pulled in so many different directions academically, outside of basketball, to stay focused and to stay locked in for the many, many months of the season, especially in the Ohio.

Cold weather is tricky at times, and so I think they really did a good job at the beginning of this year.

Talking about, hey, we have the ability to do some really great things, but it's going to take all 18 of us if a couple people drop off or, you know, if not, if we find that, like, people are getting upset with their rules, like, that was a really beautiful thing, is, like, we had some people that didn't get the game minutes necessarily, or we have people that could start on other teams that came off the bench for us this year.

But there was a lot of sacrifice, too, because everybody wanted to win for each other.

It wasn't about, hey, I want to get this individual SAT or I want to do this individual thing.

It was like, what we can do together is going to be incredible if we all kind of put our individual agendas aside and we come together.

And they did that really, really well this year.

I think better than any team I've ever coached.

Is that a conversation that you have, especially once you get into the season?

Right.

I think at the Division 3 level, especially where your roster is bigger than it might be at other levels, the odds of you having more kids who don't get the minutes that they would hope to be able to get makes it tough on them.

So what do you do again, not just this year, but just in general as a head coach, what do you try to do to make sure that those kids who are number 15, 16, 17, 18 on your roster, who don't get as many minutes as I'm sure they would like, how do you keep those kids engaged?

How do you keep those kids rowing the boat in the same direction?

What's the process in your mind for.

For making them feel like they're still a part of it, even though, again, they're not getting the minutes that they might want to get?

Yeah, I think our players across the board there's so much respect for each other, no matter, like, we don't have the whole hierarchy in our program.

Like, everybody is on the same playing field, whether you make the game winning bucket or you're the last person coming off the bench.

And I think our bench energy, if you watch any of our games, they did a lot of coordinated celebrations.

They did the Rockettes, they did star jumps.

And they, they were really like, they took that role really seriously.

And our team fed off of their energy.

And I think, I don't know if you've heard of the term mudita, but it's like taking joy in other people's success.

And I think our team really lived that this year.

And it wasn't about who did it.

It was a matter of getting the job done.

But I think they've really done a good job of their role.

Not equating to, to their value or how many minutes they play doesn't necessarily mean that one person's more important than the other.

And I think we had a lot of people step up, some of our best vocal leaders and, and people that came that were big stepping up big for us in huddles and things didn't necessarily play on the court.

Like, they're talking at halftime still.

They're getting people pumped up for the games and, you know, they're rebounding for their teammates that are going to get those game shots.

And I think that's.

That's a really unique thing where people are that selfless to be able to be able to put that aside.

And we didn't have a lot of like, resentment buildup either.

And I think people understood their roles and I think that helped when the players had conversations about that.

And for us as coaches, we take a lot of practice stats.

I think we take about 26 different practice stats.

And it's not just the stuff that shows up in the traditional box score.

Some of it's like subjective shot selection things or like box outs.

One box out, two box outs lost.

We track o boards, which is a big one for us.

And I think that lets us like, have an objective look at like, who was getting the game minutes based on like, how people were performing over time.

It wasn't just, hey, coaches feeling this way.

This is why this person's playing.

So I think that's really helped us to be able to have some of those playing time conversations early in the season because we have those, those eight, six to eight days in the fall and then early in the season before we get into scrimmage mode to Be able to build up some data to figure out, like, who's really excelling in certain areas.

And I think, you know, everybody has bought into their role over the course of the season, and of course they want to expand it or.

Or do different things.

But I think that's been a really key to our success, too.

Do you track those stats off of film from practice?

Yes.

Yeah, we got a huddle camera, which is so nice.

We have amazing managers that'll help.

And my assistant coach, Liv, would do hours and hours of just, you know, some of that stuff is really easy.

You can do it in real time with the huddle cam.

We have sports code, but then some of the more subjective ones, she would spend time on a Sunday or a late evening, or Andrew or Brody would look at some of that stuff and be able to.

To track some of that.

So each week we gave practice awards that kind of rewarded, like our oh boards was something we called a court vision award of we track assists and potential assists.

So even just making the right pass, we tracked paint touches because that's obviously really key to our off.

We did some practice awards, too, each week that we give out to the player that's kind of standing out in that area, which is nice, making that objective.

So you have something that, again, you may have your eye test opinion, right, as a coach, and maybe that is ultimately the decision that you make right from your gut, but the fact that when you have a conversation with one of your players that you can point to, hey, here's 29 different statistics that point out X, Y or Z and whatever, to be able to have a little bit of that objectivity along with the subjectivity of just making a decision, I'm sure is helpful in the conversation.

And again, because your players know that that's something that's out there, that they're consciously aware of it.

They know, and I'm sure they're trying to do whatever they can to.

To boost the things that are.

That are helpful that you're trying to get them to do.

Right?

Which is the whole point of getting them to.

To perform in a way that's going to help your team collectively to perform better.

And so it's amazing what the huddle camera and just the.

The modernity of coaching, the way that film has.

The way that film has changed.

I. I tell people, Maureen, all the time, like, I still remember as a player and like in my early years as a coach of being in a film session with the VHS tapes and the coach coach me, like, all right, we're going to watch this play again, and then you'd hit the rewind button and it would go like three minutes past that play.

So then you'd have to watch this three minutes of things to get back to the clip and then coach, like, play that again.

And then the assistant.

It was just, you know, and you think about how inefficient.

I always just marvel at, again, the systems that we have now and how much easier.

And then in some ways, right, it just.

Now you just watch five games instead of two when you're trying to scout.

So I'm not sure it saves you much time.

I guess it makes you more efficient for sure, though.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

Huddle.

I mean, you can get lost in the analytics.

There's so much that's tracked and there's so much access film nowadays, but I can't imagine having to.

To do the rewind and the.

The VHS and dvd that would be.

That would make my life a lot more difficult.

Credit to the coaches that went through that.

Yeah, it definitely was.

I still remember, like, when I was playing that Gas would go and they'd have to do like, a film exchange.

They'd go and they'd do a FedEx drop, like, of the VHS tape, and then they'd have to pick.

It was just.

It.

It was a mess.

So, yeah, much, much, much better system that we have today.

All right, let me ask you about getting into the season.

Was there a moment or multiple moments early on, halfway through, three quarters of the way through, where you felt like, you know what?

I think everything that I thought this team could be, they're kind of.

I'm starting to see it in real time.

Was there.

I don't know if there's a one moment.

Was it a gradual build?

When you think about just the moment where you kind of knew, like, I don't know if we're going to win the national championship, but this team's pretty good.

Somebody's got to play really well in order to beat us.

Yeah.

It's kind of funny, when I was going through scheduling our, you know, you do it, you know, 12 months in advance, typically.

I was like, you know, we have.

We had a player whose sister was on Roanoke's team.

And so I was like, let's go down to Salem, Virginia, and it's.

It's actually where the Final Four is going to be played that year.

Why don't we just, you know, play in that gym?

Obviously.

Beautiful area, amazing arena.

Let's go check it out.

Let's let's see what this tournament could be all about.

And so we went down to Roanoke this past year and I think we got to experience what that arena was like.

And obviously that was like the December time period.

So we'd been, I think we got to like 17 and oh, before we had our first loss this past season.

And you know, being able to go on a six hour bus ride and then step off and be able to perform, I think is always a really, really tricky thing.

Credit to a lot of those teams that have the long conference travel.

But when we went down there, I think we had gotten down against Roanoke at half, like, pretty significantly.

And I remember, like, obviously as, as coaches, we had had like adjustments, but I remember the team being in a locker room a little bit longer than typical before they would come back out.

And I think there were some players stepping up in the locker room in that moment.

And we came back out after halftime and we, we just took over.

And so I think like at that moment and there was funny, like, one of the sports information directors was like, hey, maybe we'll see you back here in a few months.

And I was like, maybe, maybe you will.

And I was like, wow, this, this, this is something that we could really do.

And we talked about, you know, this is where the Final Four is going to be played.

You get the opportunity to play two games here and then let's earn the right to come back here.

So that was kind of the verbiage that we used as a staff with the team.

It wasn't like, hey, we got to make the Final Four.

Hey, we got to win the national championship.

But we said, hey, let's earn the right to come back here.

So I think that was a moment that I was like, wow, like when he was saying that and like just getting some, some people kind of putting that bug in our ear, I was like, wow, he's, he's right.

We could see him in a little bit.

And I think we.

The response to our first loss this past year.

So obviously you're very familiar with Ohio Wesleyan.

Great program, great team, played at their place and they got that, that arena completely packed.

I don't think there was a seat left in the house.

And that was such a cool experience for our team because it was their biggest game and our biggest game and you felt it.

And so, you know, we, we were up, I think 10 with a good chunk of time left, maybe five minutes left, and we lost.

We lost.

And like, I remember just the environment being like, I felt sped up as a Coach and I was trying to help them navigate and keep composure down that stretch, and we ended up letting it slip through our fingers.

But I think the reaction in the locker room was like, hey, it's not one person's fault.

It's not the coach's fault, it's not a player's fault.

Like, it's not the end of the world.

Yes, we went on that win streak, but let's turn around and come back and get back to work.

And I think our first practice, we always talked about this year, you shouldn't be able to tell if you won or lost by the next practice.

Like, if you're really, truly committed to the process, you're going to show up the same way every day.

And that's, like we said, really tough to do.

But our response and, like, the way that we showed up that next.

I think that was that next Monday, I was like, wow.

Like, we are really learning from our mistakes and we're not letting a loss define us.

So I would say those two moments, both one with adversity and thing and one with, like, things going well in Salem.

Like, I was like, wow, we could really do this.

Talk a little bit about the quality of your league and just how good that league has been and how you feel like it helped prepare you for what you were eventually able to do in the NCAA Tournament.

Obviously, you just touched on a couple games with, you know, the game with Ohio Wesleyan that you.

That you lost, and then you come back and beat them in the.

The final of the regular season.

But just talk about how the schedule and the league helped you to be prepared come, you know, come March and come the tournament.

It was fantastic this year.

I think as a player, I played at Kenyon back in the day.

I don't think I've seen an NCAC like this throughout my time and even hopefully before I got there.

I think it.

It was a gauntlet.

It was every.

Every night was battle tested.

And, you know, DePauw is obviously the one that gets a lot of the national attention.

And what Chris Huffman's done there, I mean, absolutely legendary.

She's amazing.

They're awesome.

Extremely well coached.

I mean, John Carroll coming into the conference this year was awesome, awesome for us.

And I remember people being like, oh, you didn't want them to stay in the oac.

And I was like, wow.

I mean, like, best a great coach and they're great program to be able to come into.

They had, I think, seven or eight seniors this past year, so we knew that they were Going to be really good and playing them this year.

And then Cody coming in at Ohio, Wesland, awesome, awesome job.

And then, you know, I mean, Wit Oberlin, you know, Kenyon and Worcester, like, everybody had gotten so much better.

Everybody had put in a lot of work, so we knew that like there was never a day or a game off.

And I think that really prepared us because everybody had different styles too.

Like, I think, you know, us and John Carroll were very three point, heavy up pace tempo like depos, very like just like runs their stuff so well.

Really intense defensive team.

They're not going to let you get to option 1, 2.

They're going to make option 3, 4, beat you, you know.

So we just had, we experienced a lot of different styles of basketball.

So I thought when we got to the NCAA tournament, nothing really like hit us or surprised us that maybe we hadn't seen in our league.

So it was cool to get four teams into the NCAA Tournament.

I don't think that's ever happened happened on the women's side.

And I think besides maybe the UAA and the Wisconsin conferences, I think there's a, a really strong argument that the NCAC was one of the best conferences in the country this year.

Yeah, I mean, again, as you said, getting four teams in unusual and, and certainly something that again, is a feather in the cap of, of your program and the other programs in the, in the NCAC.

Talk a little bit about the loss to DePauw in the NCAC tournament and then how that, how did, how did you utilize that then heading into the NCAA tournament?

What was the, what was the mood like for, for you, your staff, the players?

Obviously there's a disappointment, but then seems like there probably was a resolve that, hey, we let this one get away, but let's see what we can do to, to move this thing forward.

Going into the NCAA tournaments.

Just what was the mindset after that game and, and where you were at?

Yeah, I think it took.

Adversity can sometimes take you to a place that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

And I think heading into that NCAC tournament, I think there was a lot of pressure.

We felt the pressure being the number one seed, doing it on our home floor.

And I don't, we, I don't think we took the Paul lightly at all.

I mean, like, we talked about great program, so well coached and we knew how good they were going into it.

I think we just, we didn't play very well.

We just, they outplayed us, they out hustled us and I Think it was a little bit of a wake up call for our team because it really clicked for us.

Like, it could end in an instant, right?

This season could just be over before you know it.

And I think we had just ridden the wave of like, oh, my gosh, you know, we got this game to look forward to, or we have, we have another week of practice, whatever it is.

And I think it hit us that, like, oh, my gosh, if we don't bring it every single game, like, somebody's going to take it away from us.

And I think we, we have such a close knit team where they truly wanted just more time.

They were fighting for more time.

And so when that happened, we sat down after the weekend and it was really cool because I was like, you know, you don't have to go watch John Carroll DePaul on our home floor.

You don't have to do it.

Our entire team showed up.

Our entire team showed up and they watched it and it wasn't like, oh, this is punishment.

You guys didn't get the job done.

It was like, let's watch it, let's see it.

My staff came and we watched it happen.

And so it lit a fire in us, I think, to be able to watch someone cut down our own nets and win on our home floor.

And we got back to it on Monday.

We had a conversation.

We watched the film of it.

I said, you can't act like this is a fluke.

It wasn't a fluke.

We didn't get it done.

Like, what do we gotta do and how do we look in the mirror to be ready for what's next?

Because we had such a great season that we had a good chance of an at large bid.

So we had a team conversation, talked about how we handle pressure a little bit better.

We watched the film on where depauw just took advantage of, of, of some things.

So we addressed those.

And then we had Sarah Brink, our women's soccer coach, who was a great player at Williams, had just experienced every aspect of the NCAA tournament, come talk to our team.

And she talked about how some teams, when it's the end of the regular season or the conference tournament, they're just ready for it to be over.

They're like, oh, I'm ready to, to go to my spring break trip, or I'm ready to, to do something else.

And there's some teams that have the mindset that a new season is just beginning.

And I think that really hit home with our players because they wanted to practice, they wanted to continue to play together.

They loved each other so much that they were fighting for another week, another shoot around, and that really fueled us in the NCAA tournament.

How important was it for you to have that, those early rounds at home?

And what did that, what did that mean for you?

Kind of going into it, clearly you'd rather be at home than on the road, but just were you surprised at all that you were chosen to be able to host?

And just what did that mean for kind of fueling the beginning of the run?

Yeah, I think we knew from MPI that we had a good chance at hosting, which is a nice thing with all the calculations, but our crowds at Denison this past year were nothing like I've ever seen in my four years.

And I think as a, as even a player in the ncac, the environments that we were creating, so special, like so many people from the community, other sports teams, we had pack packed houses like every home game this past year.

And I think that was.

There was such an excitement about our team, and I think it speaks to the type of people that they were too, that there were so many people showing up for us.

And so we really created a home court advantage.

I mean, that Southern Virginia game, we knew they were really, I mean, probably one of the longest teams.

Like, I felt like everybody on their roster was like over 6 foot and so lanky.

And we, we.

This, this was the first NCAA team double A tournament game that anybody on our roster had ever played.

So even though we were hosting, we were, we were newbies at this, so we knew we had to come out and set the tone and luckily got.

Got out to a really good lead.

But then, you know, everybody's like, man, you got trying on your side of the bracket here.

This is, this is going to be tough.

Obviously, really good team, experienced, well coached, and that was a battle.

I mean, that was probably the most physical defense we've ever played.

Maybe them and DePaul were like on par for that, but they were, it was a tough, tough matchup and they gave us everything they had and you know, we were able to.

To contain some of their scores and shooters.

But to come out and be able to then earn that first Sweet 16 berth on our home court, I mean, it was, it was so special to be able to do that and to do it on our home floor in front of our home fans, that was awesome.

And you get a league opponent in the sweet 16, so you get somebody that you're, that you're very familiar with.

Was that in your mind when you first Kind of saw the brackets come out, and you thought, hey, this could maybe happen.

Did you think good thing, bad thing?

Obviously, you're not thinking that far ahead, but once you get there, seeing a team three times.

Good, bad.

Where.

Where were we at on that?

Yeah, we were like, oh, my gosh.

It felt.

It felt early, right?

To.

To see another NCAC team.

And as we've experienced, it's really tough to beat a good team three times.

You know, we had had some really good battles with them throughout the course of the regular season.

And so when we saw that, it was.

It was like, wow, okay, let's.

This is what we're going to do.

Obviously, we had confidence.

We know we went two and oh.

In the regular season, but we knew we were going to get their absolute best.

And so, you know, we really prepared, but I think we didn't make it bigger than it needed to be.

Like, it was like, we won these first two games.

Like, we got to look at this opponent, and obviously we know them really well, but if we.

We can't make it bigger than it is.

And playing on a neutral floor at W and L, we knew both of us had to make that trip.

It was so funny.

We actually, when we went to.

To Lexington, we went to the same restaurant and actually, like, shared a room with John Carroll.

The night before our game, we went to this little Italian restaurant, and Beth and I were joking.

Like, great minds think alike.

We're literally sharing a.

Sharing a meal, both coming from Ohio, driving down to Virginia to.

To play this game.

So, I mean, so much respect for them and their program and knew it'd be.

It'd be a really big battle for us.

Yeah, I think when you get the familiarity.

And that kind of leads into my next question, which is I always think it's interesting to talk about sort of the rhythm, right?

You get into a rhythm, especially in the conference part of the season where you're playing, and everybody kind of feels like, okay, we know we got this practice, this practice and game, and it kind of feels the same.

And then you get in the tournament and the rhythm changes a little bit.

And obviously you have opponents, not in the case of John Carroll, but most of your opponents are teams that you haven't seen before.

And so what does the prep look like for you?

What does the practice schedule look like?

How do you try to manage the time in between games to be able to make sure that you're maximizing what you want to do as a coach in terms of getting to know the opponent and Watching film and then relaying that to your team, but also keeping them fresh.

Just how do you handle the practice film work, preparation for a game while you're in the midst of that tournament run?

Yeah, I think that's a great question because we do like midseason check ins with all of our players.

And it was funny.

Like, I think we had someone go down with maybe like an ankle or some type of injury in that, like, January time period.

And it was like the time of the year where it's like, oh, you, you're.

You're not feeling fresh right now.

Everybody's going through something.

Ankles aren't feeling good, knees, whatever, whatever it is.

And we have a great athletic trainer that was helping them work through it.

But I remember them telling us, I feel like basically they said to me, I feel like we're taking maybe our foot off the gas a little bit.

We were doing a lot heavier reps, practices.

We weren't doing as much of our live drills.

We were doing more shooting reps. And so that really helped us.

I think that, that our players felt comfortable enough to be able to say, hey, coach, I think we're taking like, maybe a few, like, not practices off, but I think we can push a little bit harder.

So I think as we got into the tournament, we really just focused on quality over quantity.

We weren't on the court for more than typically an hour and a half max, usually an hour, hour, 15.

But the intensity of the practice was the same thing that we had in October, November.

It was just, we'd have really short spurts and we'd be like, okay, I want you to go hard for these, you know, three reps and then get off and like, let them.

We'll shoot, you know, pressure free throws, and we'll still get our reps in.

But we, we did a lot more live.

It was just more condensed version.

I think that really helped our players so that they, their legs weren't tired, but they were translating all those, like, hard, competitive drills.

And like, we talked about the live pressing drills, the, you know, contained scrimmages, the transition is what we relied on a lot this year.

So they had to get those reps.

It just had to be in a little bit more of a condensed piece of it.

And I think the film, I had a great staff.

We would watch so much practice film of ourselves.

And I think that really helped us this year because I think in previous years I would spend a lot of time on opponent scouting, which is obviously a really key piece.

But I think what helped us this year is we watched a lot of ourselves in being able to see what we did well and also where we needed to work on it wasn't just all the negative stuff.

So I think in the tournament we also did a lot of, a lot of highlights for the team, for them to see them do things really well throughout the course of the regular season and into the tournament.

Before each tournament game, we give them a highlight of the game or the couple games prior so that they had that confidence that they were seeing themselves do things well.

How much of the opponent scout do you typically give to players?

How much can they digest in that short period of time between games in the ncaa, NCAA tournament?

Obviously you as a coach, there's lots of things that you want to know and understand about your opponent.

How much of that, of what you take in do you translate for the players that they can actually put to use and help them perform, perform better?

I always feel like there's, there's a fine line there between like let's do what we do well versus let's be over prepared for what our opponent does.

So how do you strike that balance?

Yeah, I think you're right.

It's.

The key is, is finding that threshold.

Usually our film sessions, we tried to keep them to 30 minutes.

I think once you get past that 30 minute threshold kind of just rushes over them.

So I mean we would, I would probably watch each opponent like five or six games and try to always like keep our film relatively to that like 25, 30 minutes as much as possible, but then give them clips to them watch on their own.

And I think that's player to player.

Some like to watch more personnel clips or like to see the pattern in other teams offenses.

So we let them do that on their own and so we tried to be really efficient.

Like here are like the, the three things for each player that like they do really well.

But then I think we did a really good job of showing them also the film of like here's what we can exploit.

This is where we do what we do in our systems.

We can really take advant.

And I think that gave our team a lot of confidence heading into the tournament because we had areas to be able to be like, okay, this is what we do do well.

Like whether it's you know, pressuring the ball handler and pressing certain people or forcing other people to bring the ball up, getting other people off the block, whatever the game plan was, being able to have a little confidence going into that and then giving them opportunities to watch the film on their own, and then just understanding what type of team are we.

Are we playing?

If it's a very set heavy team, there's no way we're going to have our kids remember 10 sets, but what are the two or three that they run the most this tournament and who's getting those shots?

So I think it's a lot of understanding personnel and who are the two, three players that we really have to focus on and make them have to take hard shots?

And then what are they trying to do offensively as a team that we can really try to.

To contain as much as possible or kind of blow things up in their offensive systems?

And then we really talk about the cumulative aspect of our press.

If we make other opposing point guards have to make decisions for 40 minutes, there's just.

That's really, really tough to do.

So we take a lot of pride in not letting teams also get into their offensive flow.

So showing them maybe how they've.

How other teams have tried to break presses or what their press breaks have looked, and that was really nice because once we got into the tournament, there was really not a type of press break that we hadn't seen or different ways that people had tried to break it.

So I think we took a lot of confidence from that too, understanding the.

US part of it, right?

We know what we want to execute and how we want to do that, and we can adapt and adjust to what our opponent does.

And again, I always feel like as a coach, when you yourself are prepared, watching five or six films of an opponent, you have an idea of what you're seeing.

So if there is an adjustment that needs to be made within game, you can make that.

And yet at the same time, you're not forcing your players, as you said, to carry around 10 sets or we got to memorize this exact press break.

It's like, let's do what we do, and then we can make adjustments as, as we move along.

When you finally get to the Final Four, what is the approach that you take in talking to your team?

Is it.

The Final Four is a business trip.

We've got things we have to do.

We try to keep it the same as we always do.

Or was there a little bit of let's make sure that we enjoy the Final Four?

Is it a balance between the two?

Maybe I'm completely off on either one of those ways that you.

You thought about it or talked about it with your team, but just obviously getting to the Final Four is a great accomplishment for any team at any level.

So how did you talk about that with your team heading into the semifinal games?

I think the emphasis to our team was really just enjoy the moment and be really present in this because it's not.

There's, there's no guarantees in life.

There's no guarantees in anything.

Obviously we've built a really great program but I wanted them advantage of just the time that they have together.

I mean we spelled, we spent 12 days in Virginia together and it was the, the meals, the bus rides, the, the media day that the NCAA had us do at the Final Four.

You know just the little small touches that they got.

I mean the, the gift boxes that they got from the ncaa.

I just wanted them to, to really be present in, in the experience that they were going to have in that Final Four.

And I think taken a lot of confidence that we were already 20 on that court this this season and, and knowing that like we had earned that right but the job wasn't finished.

And I think a lot of the narrative at the Division 3 level was obviously about NYU and Scranton.

Two undefeated amazing programs and the streak that NYU went on this past year.

I mean absolutely amazing.

So I think we kind of slipped under the radar a little bit and obviously Oshkosh it was going back to back final fours and incredibly well coached team that we knew is the clash of two different styles.

One very uptempo, fast paced us and then Oshkosh a very like just I mean they only average like nine turnovers a game this past year.

So we knew it was going to be a battle of two different things.

But I think the approach with our team and what we said to them is you deserve to be here, you deserve to be here.

You deserve this opportunity.

You have worked for this.

And let's show, let's show the show the world and make sure that we take, take it one possession at a time.

We don't have to, to worry about any other anything other than the game in front of us and let's fight for shoot around Tomorrow was kind of the narrative that we talked about with our team and we approached each game throughout the tournament the same way.

We didn't make anything, we didn't downplay anything, we didn't play anything up.

It was this is the preparation, this is how the pre practice structure is.

We did the exact same thing.

The shoot arounds looked really like similar.

So I think that helped our team get into a little bit of expectations and routines so that it just felt like another game and it didn't make the Moment bigger than it was.

I think that's probably the right approach.

Right.

You want your kids to enjoy it and appreciate the moment and at the same time understand that we have games to play and there's an opportunity in front of us, that there's lots of kids that dream about that for a long, long time that don't ever get the opportunity to, to put themselves into that position.

And obviously you guys made the most of it and, and ended up winning the title.

You beat Oshkosh in the semifinals and then the, the final game against Scranton.

You hold the one point in the second quarter and then it comes down to close, you know, close going into the fourth and then you guys, you know, outscore them in the fourth to, to wrap it up and obviously a low scoring game from your team standpoint, considering the way that you played all year to, to.

To win a final championship game, 55 to 41, you know, compared to your season averages much, much lower.

So just talk about just how do you feel as a coach on the sideline in that game with kind of the up and down nature of the way that that game went.

And obviously when you're that close in the championship game, there's a piece of you, right, that you're just.

You want it to get there.

You want it to get there.

Especially I'm sure in the fourth quarter, the clock couldn't move fast enough as you build that lead.

But just tell me what you were thinking about throughout that game as it was going on.

And again, just being played at a different tempo maybe than, you know, than you guys would have played in all year if you had your, you know, if you had your way.

Yeah, I mean, talk about a defensive battle.

I mean, when I was looking up at the, the halftime score, 19 to 11, I'm like, are, are you kidd me?

What are we.

What's happening?

You know, and obviously neither team shot the ball very well.

But I think we anticipated that big third quarter run because we've always talked about like each team's going to go on their run and obviously when you look at the Oshkosh game, we shot really, really well in the first half.

And I knew we always talk about playing the basketball math.

It's not going to be like the momentum is going to swing back one way or the other.

And our team has been able to, to buy into that and understand that.

So we knew that Scranton was going to come out in the third quarter and go on a big run.

And I think we, we were focusing on trying to get the right players on their team to take those shots and try to shut down.

They're all Americans and limit number ones offensive boards.

I mean, she's 5 4, but I think she had like 11 offensive boards or something in the first half.

I'm like, this is insane.

Like, such a cool type of player.

Like, so much credit to her and in their program.

But, I mean, they missed a lot of shots, but a lot of them were like, the right people.

We wanted to take them, and they were really contested, so we knew, like, our defense was putting us in a position to be successful.

And then we knew coming out, like, we just had to hit a few more shots.

And it's.

It's fun as a coach to coach Abby Koosh, Ada Todi, you know, Violet Mitchell.

Like, we just have kids on our team that I'm like, they're just such competitors and they.

They live for the pressure moments.

And even though our team had not made the NCAA tournament or been in that.

That moment before, I think as a coach, I just had a lot of confidence in our players and what they'd be able to do in that moment, because we've experienced it.

They've experienced adversity off the court, they've experienced it on the court.

And so nothing really phased us or our staff.

We just had to.

To keep composure down the stretch and take it one play at a time.

And luckily, you saw some really big plays by players like Abby and Ada and Adeline Moore had a huge steal and hit some really important threes for us.

So I just think our depth and different people stepping up in those moments gave us the opportunity to win it.

And so I think when Abby Cooch hit that, like, dagger three in the fourth quarter, that's when it hit me.

But up until then, I was like, we got to keep our foot on the gas.

They're going to make their run.

And so I think it's a credit to our players, though, and just their approach and how hard they work and the competitive edge that they've played with.

And it's been really, really fun to have them and to be on top of the mountain with them at the end of the season.

Spoken like a true coach.

And it circles all the way back to the very first thing you talked about, right in the preseason of the type of players that you had, the depth that you had, and how you believed in all that right from the beginning.

And then you go all the way to the final game and those same things that you talked about in the preseason.

Are things that came through for you when the moment and the lights were the brightest.

And so you win that thing and then you go in the locker room and I talked to both of the championship coaches that I've talked to so far about just what do you say to your team in the locker room?

Because typically, again, like you talked about with your three seniors, right, there's only three seniors that get to win their last game and move on and have that.

And there's only one coach that gets to have that conversation of, we won, we didn't lose our.

We didn't lose our last game, we won the championship.

So usually the speech that you have to give is consoling everybody and talking about what a great season it was.

But we didn't quite get to where we wanted to get to.

But you got to where you wanted to get to.

So what did you talk about?

Did you think about what you were going to talk about beforehand if you won the game?

Did you allow yourself to have that internal dialogue that, hey, if we win, maybe this is what I'll say?

Just how did you approach the locker room after the game?

Yeah, I think I don't do a lot of rehearsed speeches.

I really try to speak from the heart.

And our team.

Chuckles I definitely have, like, certain terminology that I always use.

My.

The same filler words my staff gives me.

They giggle about it with me too.

But I think in the locker room, it was just a really authentic, like, love for each other.

I think there were like, happy tears because it was like three seniors careers just ended and, you know, they're untying their shoes for the last time.

And that's like a really special thing, but to be able to do it on top.

But there was obviously a big, big water dump.

I got soaked.

My entire suit was soaked.

But I think there was just such an excitement amongst the team for what they did together.

And I think there was an appreciation for everybody and what they did to contribute to that across from, you know, our athletic trainer up to like, you know, people that had huge games for us throughout the tournament.

So I think there was a lot of just gratitude and appreciation.

And I think my emphasis to them was we've.

We've demanded the respect on the national stage and like, just so proud of them for that.

And they earned everything that came with this national championship.

And it was really cool for me because this junior class was my first recruiting class at Denison, and I talked to them in that process when we were my first year, 10 and 16 so they're walking into a team that hadn't had a winning season.

And I said, you know, we're going to be a top 25 team.

And the ceiling for this program is national championships.

And, you know, those eight in that junior class said, yep, sign me up.

Like, we can do this and I want to be a part of it.

And so that was kind of emotional for me because we had talked about it and for it to come to fruition in that moment, absolutely amazing.

Those three seniors stuck with it even though they didn't go through the recruiting process with me and were so bought into everything I did from a culture standpoint.

And then the sophomore first year class, like, it just has trickled down where people want to be a part of it.

And we hadn't made.

Made history in that way before as a program.

So I think there was a lot of just appreciation for the people that you get to do it with.

Like the women that were on my staff that sacrificed so much time with their families, money, whatever it may be.

There's so many people that stepped up in those moments.

So the locker room was just filled with a lot, A lot of happy tears and gratitude and.

And a lot of fun too.

Absolutely.

Was there a moment after you step away from the locker room, the team, when you're in your own head a day or two later, does it hit you in any kind of a different way than maybe it did right in the moment where the emotions are running high?

I think initially, like, our team was like, wait, we don't have a scout to go to.

Like, we don't have practice the next day.

We don't have something to do.

Because I think we were just like tunnel vision throughout the run.

We were like taking it really one day at a time.

And we had spent, like I said, 12 days in Virginia, so they were.

They were like just kind of in.

In like a certain mode.

So I think I had to pinch myself for.

For weeks.

It.

It didn't really hit me until we were on the bus ride back and we had a whole group of people across the Denison community come in to.

To welcome us back to campus.

And we got to take the trophy out of like, the bottom of the bus and the players got to hold it up for all their friends and community members.

So that was like, oh my gosh, look what we did.

And this past weekend we got to celebrate the national championship with some of our alums and parents.

And it was just so cool to see, like, different alums taking pictures with it.

And the interaction between women who had played in this program for years and the current team.

So I still have to pinch myself sometimes because, you know, it just still hasn't hit me at some moments.

But I think it's been.

It's been so fun and just so, so happy for the university and what we've been able to do.

Yeah, again, to be able to get to the top of that mountain, it's something that everybody.

Right.

Aspires to, and it's something that everybody wants to try to be able to accomplish with their team, for their kids, for their university.

And I'll say it again, congratulations to you for actually accomplishing that.

Now you got to go out and do it again.

But, you know, it's.

It's one of those things, right.

That sports just never, you know, it never stops.

And I think it goes back to what you talked about right at the very beginning, which is, you know, the process of doing it is.

Is where the joy is as well.

Right.

There's joy in winning it, but there's also joy in just the process that you went through with your team.

And you could hear it as you're talking, just the affinity that you have for the players on your team and what special young women they are to you, being a part of their team.

And again, this team will always be connected to one another and connected to you.

And I think that's one of the things that's strong, you know, both as a player and as a coach, those bonds are strong.

Even when you don't win a championship, the connection between teammates and players and coaches is always strong just because of the intensity of what you do.

But to be able to have it thrown in that this is a national championship team, you're all going to be connected for the rest of your lives.

So again, I'll say to you, congratulations on, on winning it this year.

And I'm sure there are.

I'm not going to say there are more to come, but there, there's certainly more success to come.

How about if I just.

How about if I put it that way?

Not that I don't have confidence that there are more to come.

There probably are.

But I'm not going to put the pressure on you that you're going to.

You're going to go on a John Wooden streak and, you know, or a Gino Ariema streak and win that many.

But.

But nonetheless, again, congratulations to you.

I want to flip gears now and just kind of go into more of your personal story.

So let's start by going back in time to when you were a kid.

Tell me about your introduction to the game of basketball.

Who brought you to it first?

What are some of your early memories from, from the game?

Yeah, I think it started out with like YMCA basketball when I was about 5 years old.

You know, rocking the, my pants were up, up way above my waist, the tiny little basketballs and my dad, dad was my coach and I think I just really loved it.

I, I felt like my hand, eye coordination was, was pretty good.

So my parents put me in softball, volleyball, basketball and I, I love, I still appreciate multi sport athletes because you're, you're moving your body in different ways.

But I, I picked up a ball pretty early and basketball is one that I had a little bit more of a, a focus and intensity about.

Um, I was, I've always been really competitive and my dad probably had to tame me down sometimes on some of those younger teams because some people are out there just to have fun and play and I'm like locked in.

I'm like, we gotta win this game.

Whatever I gotta do, whether it's a basketball game, whether it's a card game, I want to win it.

So very early introduction and then as I started getting into middle school, got into more of like the AAU and tried to continue to play multi sports like I was, continued softball and volleyball.

So those early memories I think were, were a lot of, a lot of long weekends and Saturdays playing different sports and running from one thing to the other.

My parents grabbing Gatorades, you know, trying to wash jerseys and hotels.

So a lot of those fun memories early with just teammates and running around playing sports.

They're a coach, maybe even your dad, that when you think about what they did for you or how they went about their business coaching you and your teammates at a young age, is there anything that you can point to that you've taken from again, either your dad when he was coaching you or somebody else that coached you, the middle school, high school, aau that you feel like when you think about yourself as a coach, you say, oh yeah, I can see that from this coach in me.

Yeah, I think it's so important to have a coach like that.

Right.

That instills, instills confidence in you and gives you that love for the game.

I think there's a lot of narratives right now where it's the flip, right?

Coach is taking away my love for the game.

So that's something as a coach I always really try to emphasize is I always want to make sure people continue to love basketball.

And enjoy doing it.

But I think I had a really good high school coach.

She really helped me.

And I was playing my first year softball, volleyball, basketball, and she's like, hey, if you want to play in college, it's time to lock in on aau.

This is what you got to do.

But she was someone that, you know, I would come in at 6am trying to get extra shots up shooting on the shooting machine and would want to stay after practice and had really high aspirations.

And she was always someone that I could talk to too, and, you know, pop into her office and truly talk about life or basketball.

And she developed a relationship with me holistically, not just what I would do on the basketball court, and really was a mentor to me.

And she obviously taught at the school and was my coach for three out of my four years and really helped me, like, build my confidence and continue to.

To develop my game throughout those, those off seasons.

And she really helped me in the college recruiting process to like, just being my biggest advocate and helping me navigate that.

I think that's so important at a young age as.

As he gets younger and younger.

And recruiting process starts early and earlier to have the right people in your ear, giving you really thoughtful advice.

And she played at Ball State back in the day, so she was someone that I think really helped me early on and, and took a lot from her.

And the importance of being a coach is also being a mentor and being a teacher, and she did those things really well.

Talk about the decision to go to Kenyon and just a little bit about what your recruiting process was like and maybe how it compares and contrasts with what the recruiting process looks like for you now as a coach.

Yeah, my recruiting process was kind of wild.

I. I was not very decisive.

I didn't go early decision.

And now at Denison, we love early decision.

Like, it's, we want people that want to be.

Want to be here.

And it's where we have the most say in the admissions process, being at like, I think 20% now admissions rate at Denison.

But for my recruiting process, I didn't decide until like, April of my senior year.

And I had bounced around different AAU programs and, you know, had talked to some of the Ivy League, the Patriot League, and I didn't necessarily have the, the great test scores for the Ivy League, but I was talking to some of the Patriot Leagues, like Bucknell Navy, and then Case Western was in at Hope College.

And then I had never heard of Kenyon before.

I was like, wait, where is this school?

It's in Ohio.

And I remember people telling me, well, it's a great academic school, good program and stuff.

So I was like, okay, I'll.

I'll go check it out.

And, you know, you.

It's kind of in the middle of nowhere.

Gambier, Ohio.

And so went there, but fell in love with the campus.

Absolutely loved the coach.

I know she was going to be someone that was going to be in my corner for the rest of my life and fell in love with the team.

Like, we watched March Madness on one of my visits and, you know, had some people that were really dedicated to basketball, but, like, I think I came down to.

For me, like, Hope College, Kenyon, or like, Case Western.

All really good coaches, good programs.

But then my.

My high school coach was in conversations, and her husband were in conversations with Western Michigan.

I guess someone had fallen off.

Fallen off, like, the list.

And they ended up having a late spot open.

And so she was like, hey, I know.

And there's.

For a lot of people, the goal is Division 1 basketball.

That's the dream.

I want to go play and get.

Get a scholarship and have college paid for.

So I went up, I think, in that, like, April time period to Western Michigan, played open gym with the team, went on a visit.

And, you know, the coach.

I remember the coach asked me, like, why haven't you been picked up by anybody?

And I was like, I don't know.

I just haven't been seen.

You know, I. I don't.

You know, sometimes things fall through the cracks.

And so I got a call the next day, and she said, hey, we're offering you a scholarship.

You have 48 hours to s. To decide before we go to the next person.

So my parents were sitting down with me, going back and forth with it, and I ended up being like, why would I turn down Division One?

You know, how could I.

How could I do that?

So I ended up calling the Western Michigan coach, being like, hey, I'm coming.

He's like, what?

The assistant coach is like, what number do you want?

I'm like, okay, I'll take 20.

Hang up the phone.

And then I sit on the couch, and I distinctly remember this moment with my dad.

And I just start crying.

I start bawling, and I'm like, I really want to go to Kenyon.

I want to go play for Coach Hel Fan at Kenyon.

I'm making this decision for all the wrong reasons.

And my dad was like, well, call him back.

Your heart's at Kenyon.

Like, we'll.

We'll make it work financially.

And so many parents probably in that situation would have been like, heck, heck, no.

Like, you gotta go there.

You gotta do this.

And they truly let me make the decision.

So I called Western Michigan back, and he's like, okay.

And so I went to Kenyon and had an amazing experience.

I wouldn't.

I wouldn't change it for the world, but it was.

Definitely had some peaks and some valleys throughout that process.

Yeah, there always is, right.

I don't think that anybody.

Right.

It's not a perfect.

It's not a perfect science.

It's not a perfect science from the coaches end of it.

And it's definitely not a perfect science from the players end of it in terms of figuring out, you know, what's the right spot for me.

And then I always feel like there's probably lots of places that you could have had a great experience and done lots of good things.

So it's.

But it's hard.

It's a hard.

It's a hard decision for.

For players and families to work their way through.

And then you throw in the opportunities at different levels, and that can make it even more complex.

And so, yeah, there's always a lot of.

A lot of back and forth to figuring out where.

Where is the right spot for you to.

To end up?

And.

And for you, it sounds like it ended up being.

It sounds like it ended up being the right place.

Were you thinking about coaching at all while you were still playing?

Was that something that was on your radar or where.

Where was your mindset while you were playing?

Because I. I always say to people that it's kind of like there's.

There's two paths, right?

There's the kid that is 8 and knows they're going to be a coach and they're drawing up their plays and they're coaching their teammates and they're thinking the game like a coach, and then they become a coach, and then there's other people who are just playing and they're playing.

They're playing and playing, and all of a sudden the playing career is over and they're like, I need more basketball.

How can I stay in it?

And then that's when coaching comes into play.

So I don't know if either one.

Either one of those rings true for you, but just where was your mind at with.

With the coaching piece of it?

I think I really resisted it initially.

I was like, you know, basketball has been such a huge part of my life.

Who am I without basketball?

I really struggled with that when my career was over at Kenyan.

That spring was so hard because I was, I was like, what am I training for?

What am I doing?

Like, what is my purpose in life?

And I think the loss of identity is.

Isn't talked about enough, I think when people are done with their careers.

And so I really struggled and I was like, I gotta, I gotta get my life together.

I think going to such a great academic school like Kenyon, everybody was getting jobs at JPMorgan.

They're moving to New York, they're moving to DC, they're going to LA and they're getting these big awesome jobs.

And I was like, man, I need, I need to have my act together and do something.

So I was lucky to get one of the NCAA postgraduate scholarships, so I was going to be able to get some, some help for grad school.

So I was like, okay, let's go to school, let's get a job, let's do these things.

So I was like, let's move down to Cincinnati, Ohio.

And I got into the advertising world for a little bit.

Worked at a small ad agency and then I was getting my master's in marketing on the side.

So I thought I was going to be in the corporate world and consumer or like market research.

And I just started coaching on the side.

Coached 8th grade boys basketball, you know, and it was in a sea of dads, you know, a lot of dads coaching in the middle school age.

And I'm this, you know, young, just graduated from college and, you know, trying to draw up things.

And I remember like sitting at my corporate job thinking about, like, what I could do against a 131 or what press break we could run.

And so I'm like, wow, I really, I really love this.

And it started to consume me.

And then kind of from there, built a basketball skills and performance training company down in Cincinnati where it was, you know, originally getting paid in vanilla milkshake, something on the side, really fun to do.

And a lot of parents would be like, hey, can you stay, you know, an hour, half an hour after practice with my kid and help them get better, do some drills that work for you?

But then I was like, wow, this is something that there's, there's a niche here that we can really help more players in a higher volume.

So developed the LLC down in Cincinnati and really enjoyed it.

Fell in love with player development and seeing someone be able to take, take a lesson, do it on their own, and then implement it into their game, that was such a fulfilling process for me.

So was doing that.

I quit my advertising job.

I Graduated with my master's and I was like, let's do it full time.

Loved it.

I mean, it's 14, 16 hour days, training, driving all over and it was, it was tough, but it was a lot of fun.

You should give her a call because you'll still be able to do player development but get back into college athletics.

And took the call with Stephanie Dunmeier at Oberlin.

Absolutely loved her and you know, really connected with her and was there for, for three years prior to getting this head coaching job here at Denison.

So kind of a crazy journey.

Yeah, it's always right, there's, there's always, there's all these different pieces.

Right.

The training piece of it is, is certainly a, a unique piece that I've done myself.

I see lots of people doing it.

There's all different, there's all different levels, let's just say, of people that are hanging up a shingle and calling themselves a trainer and good for, for better or for better or for worse, let's put it that way.

So there's that aspect of the business and then obviously what you're doing now and getting into the college side of it, which again, a different feel, right.

A different, different flow.

As you said, as a trainer, if you're going to make a full time living, yeah, you have to be working lots and lots and lots of hours and be willing to go lots and lots of places and be available pretty much 24, 7, except when kids are in school.

You got to make yourself available and then you get into the college world and there's again, you're focused on basketball and there's all the time that you talked about watching film and scouting and preparing practices and all that kind of stuff.

So you talked about how much you love the coaching right away, coaching the eighth grade team and thinking about, I got to do this, I got to do that.

Did you know immediately when you got into the college at Oberlin and you got into college coaching, was it just as instantaneous that you're like, yeah, I think I've found, I think I've found where I belong?

Absolutely.

It was like a light bulb moment for me, I think just getting, getting to, to coach under stuff and like getting back into the X's and O's and figuring out game plans.

But I think the, the part of coaching that I got the most joy out of is just the relationships with the players and being able to help them navigate.

I think college coaching is, you know, such an impactful time in their lives where they're trying to figure out who they are, trying to excel on the basketball court and doing all these.

These things in the community and academically.

So I was.

It was a really fulfilling process to be able to.

To recruit and see someone grow across their.

Their years with you.

That was such a fun process.

And you know, I still got the player development.

I would be on the court with them playing one on one, doing shooting contests.

But it was really, really fun to be able to see people progress over time and get to work under somebody that gave me.

And I think that's the Beauty of Division 3.

I got my hands in everything.

X's and O's, player development, film, administrative logistics stuff.

Stuff really gave me the opportunity to do a lot of different things, which was really helpful.

When you got the head coaching job at Denison, what was the most surprising thing to you about being a head coach versus being an assistant coach?

And I know that everybody I talk to always says the learning curve is immense because you don't really realize as an assistant all the things that the head coach is doing that you don't even as an assistant coach that you don't always see or realize.

So the typical answer is everything.

So I, I'm not going to let you.

I'm not going to let you say everything.

But give me what was one thing that you were surprised going from being an assistant to a head coach.

Here you're like, man, I didn't realize that my head coach spent as much time doing this or this is something that I never really thought was going to be something that I had to deal with, but now I do as a head coach.

That's such a funny question because even just getting into college coaching, I don't think our players actually understand what we do.

I think they think we just practice, plan and we watch a little film and then we come to practice.

Like I was telling somebody this week, I was like, I feel like maybe like 10% of my job is actually like on the court and games.

I feel like 90% is doing, you know, recruiting, all the logistics, administrative piece of it.

But I think it was really an interesting jump for me in that, like you, you can give your opinion as an assistant coach, but at, at the end of the day, like, being the person that has to make the decision was a huge jump for me because, you know, I could be like, well, I think we should do this, I think we should do that.

And some opinions are taken, some aren't.

Not, are not.

But at the end of the day as a head coach, whether it's a culture decision, whether it's a, it's an X's and O's decision, you have to live with that and your name is on it at the end of the day.

And that was a big jump for me to be like.

Cause I sometimes deal with decision fatigue.

I'm like, I wanna think about this scenario, this scenario.

And I had to like tell myself, you just gotta make a decision and live with it.

And even though it might not be the right one, like this is what you have to do.

And then I would say the second part was just as an assistant, you know, you get some of those scenarios maybe in practice or in, you know, scrimmages or things like that.

But having to make the call too in games on what adjustments are gonna be made, how do you manage timeouts?

Because an assistant, maybe you're taking stats, maybe you', you're pulling players aside, but to be in that real game scenario and have to be the one to make those decisions too, that was an adjustment for me my first year and it's definitely gotten better throughout time.

But it was something as an assistant I don't think I fully appreciated.

Yeah, I think for me, the biggest difference in any time I've ever been an assistant coach versus being a head coach, as an assistant coach, I've always been able to very, very easily let go of the result of the game win loss.

After a few minutes I, I'm, I'm moving on to the next thing.

Whereas if I am a head coach and I don't care, when I was coaching my daughters or my son and they were in third grade and we lost a game eight to six and no, neither team could make a basket, I, I would literally lay in my bed and think what, you know, for the next three days until we played again, like what, what could I have done differently in this eight year old basketball game to try to help my team to perform better and to win that game.

And for me that was always the biggest difference was just as an assistant coach, still wanted to win, all the competitiveness was still there.

But I think because as you said, it didn't ultimately hang on my name.

Not that the record of my travel or AAU teams are hanging up anywhere.

But you understand what I'm saying that you felt the responsibility as the head coach for that result in a different way than you do as an assistant coach.

And I always felt like that was for me the biggest difference.

And I think you make a great point.

Just about it's easy to make suggestions and you can keep making those suggestions and coming up with ideas and whatever, but ultimately somebody else is going to decide and then they have to live with the decision even more than you do, even if it was your idea in the first place.

And so it's definitely a big jump from that assistant chair to the head coaching chair.

And yet there's such a challenge and joy and being able to be the person who makes those decisions because ultimately you get to steer the ship and when it the ship is going in the right direction, there's this feeling of satisfaction that hey, these things that I believed in and that I continue to believe in, that I have, the decisions I've made, they've worked.

And that's why we've been able to have the success that we've had.

Before we wrap up, Maureen, I want to ask you a final two part question.

So part one, when you think about the next year or two, what do you see as being the biggest challenge that you have in front of you?

And then the second part of the question which you've kind of already answered and I can predict what your answer is going to be, but the biggest joy.

What brings you the most joy about being the head coach at Denison University?

So your biggest challenge first and then your biggest joy.

I think the biggest challenge for our program now and what we've been able to do this past season is there's going to.

We're going to go from a different challenge of hunting to being hunted.

And that's going to be a mental battle more than maybe even a physical battle for us.

And we've talked about this year a lot.

How to, how to handle pressure is really important for our team and our success.

So I think it's going to be helping them navigate because I think we recruit and have a lot of perfectionists on our team.

They want to be the absolute best in every area of their life.

And I think the lesson that we took from this season is that adversity teaches you a lot, sometimes even more than a wind does.

So I think we're going to have to next season just continue to help them navigate how to continue to grow and not be complacent.

That's going to be a big thing.

We can't just say, oh, because we did it last year and this worked, that means it's going to work.

This year we're going to have to really fight that.

And you know, I'm telling our team as they head into the summer, don't just do what you did last summer.

Like, you got to find ways to grow.

We have to grow as a staff, you have to grow as players.

We got to come back in August and everybody be better.

And because everybody else is getting better, you know you're getting chased even though you don't see it right now.

Everybody's chasing you right now.

And having that sense of urgency and that, that not being complacent with where we are, I think is going to be the biggest challenge.

And navigating that next year, I think the biggest joy.

It's crazy to think that my first recruiting class is going to be seniors next year.

It makes, like I said, it makes me emotional because those kids really took a chance on me when I was a first year head coach.

Trying to figure out, as we've talked about, which way's up and what is my style and what is the system that we're developing.

What does it mean to be a Denison women's basketball player?

So it's gonna, it's every year like around this time.

Watching these players graduate is an emotional thing.

But it is such a joyous thing because I truly believe in the education that they get at Denison and what that's going to set them up for success, for life after basketball.

Like I just believe in this institution and what it does for people and the ability to do sport and play on a team sport here at Denison, there's just nothing like it.

So I think that's where I'll get a lot of joy.

Seeing them grow and develop and seeing my first class that I've had for four years now graduate this May and then the following year, that first recruiting class, it's going to be very bittersweet, but I think just really grateful for the people that I get to do it with every day.

And I think I'm really lucky to coach at Denison.

It really is the dream job.

That connection, like I said earlier, is going to be there forever.

Not just because of the championship, but as you said, just because again, you have that connection of your first recruiting class.

And just the process of going through a college basketball season is such an intense process and you spend so much time together that you can't help but develop those kinds of relationships.

And again, when, when you prioritize that, it makes everything worthwhile.

Before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share.

How can people connect with you?

Find out more about your program, share, email, social media, website, whatever you feel comfortable with.

And then after you do that I will jump back in and wrap things up.

Yeah, I think if anybody wants to talk, my email's hurt.

M H I R T m@denison edu.

I'm also on Twitter.

Great place to connect.

I'm always willing to talk about hoops, talk about the journey and yeah, appreciate people listening.

Absolutely.

One more time.

We appreciate it and we will catch you on the next one.

Thanks.

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Podcast presented by Head Start Basketball.