PRESSER: Larry Vickers addresses the media at SEC Tip Off '27

Ike Jones (0:00)

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SPEAKER_2 (0:30)

Do you have remarks or questions?

Larry Vickers (0:32)

I can go over remarks first.

Jeff Shear (0:33)

Questions, is this up to you?

SPEAKER_2 (0:34)

Sure.

Jeff Shear (0:35)

I'll go ahead.

Larry Vickers (0:36)

Hello. Good morning.

Ike Jones (0:39)

Hope all is well.

Larry Vickers (0:41)

War Eagle.

Just standing up here a year or two, everybody's asking me, what's the difference? Just being comfortable, just being familiar with the league, just being familiar with this process. I knew exactly what today was going to look like pre-season. So that's some of the big things early on. I am extremely excited about this basketball year. Next year, I have to have Tiffany be able to talk a lot more about basketball. I think that'll be a goal of mine. Obviously, as I heard my intro, we have to win a lot more basketball games, and that's our goal. So as we go through this process now in year two, and we begin to put together teams that I want to be staples in Larry Vickers' basketball teams.

We just want to grow day in and day out on the floor from top to bottom. We feel like we did that with our recruiting class. We added eight new players. Sometimes when I talk, I talk about nine new players cuz Quinare Montague, she wasn't able to play with us last year after the injury. So we kind of have nine new players in our fold, two freshmen, Ashley and Zaniya, and then our six transfers. Kind of going into our recruiting process this year, it was important for us to get stronger as a basketball team. You know, get more hips, just more strength all across the board. And I feel like we were able to do that.

You know, adding Jessica Peterson to our team, she was the leading rebounder in the ACC two years ago. Adding, I already talked about Quinare being healthy. You know, she had a double-double in our league before, so she knows what it takes to rebound in our league. And bringing Savannah Scott back, who was also familiar with the SEC and then Danielle Osho. I think our forward room has improved a ton.

And I think for us, you know, I make the joke all the time. I didn't know it was possible to win, or to lose a rebounding battle on the glass by 30, and we've done that. And I never want that to absolutely happen again. So I thought we were able to do that with adding that forward room, allowing Kaitlyn Duhan to get back to our natural position at the three, adding Sarah Chaneau, who's going to be a huge piece of what we were going to do this year. I mean, she is an unbelievable SEC talent, one of the best 10 two-way players, two-way players in our league, you know. So we felt like overall across the board, we've just been, we've just improved, and we're excited about the product that we're going to put on the floor moving forward.

SPEAKER_2 (3:25)

First question, third row, then pass it behind you.

Tyler Riley (3:28)

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

Larry Vickers (3:48)

Well, it was definitely an unfortunate injury, and she, you know, she's working hard every day in PT. I mean, she would have played 32 plus minutes for us, even with the guard depth that we had. You know, she's just an unbelievable player, and we were excited about her growth, and she kind of had her team. You know, she's played with remarkable guards the last few years, and this was kind of going to be, you know, her show. You know, so obviously, just losing her is a huge piece for us. But I do think our team kind of had that the next woman up mentality, and I could see some of the focus on some of our guards after she went down and proved from day to day as they look to just now know that they're going to have to do a lot more for us to achieve a lot of our team goals going into the year.