HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — The Marshall University women’s basketball team is back in Huntington after securing a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
Marshall coach Kim Caldwell said she plans to take a few days to reflect on her team’s 95-92 overtime win over James Madison University in Monday night’s Sunbelt Conference Tournament in Pensacola, Florida before preparing for the Big Dance.
“Trying to get back to work, just trying to keep getting better and when we find out who we play, we’ll continue to celebrate to make everyone here in Huntington proud,” Caldwell said during an appearance on Tuesday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
Caldwell said it’s a big accomplishment for her first season leading the Herd. She said the team’s success stems from their attitude and desire to get better each day.
“I think our expectation was to do this from the very beginning. That was the goal. We wanted to win our regular season, wanted to win our tournament and we wanted to go to the NCAA Tournament. I think that’s every team’s goal, but we talked about it a lot,” she said.
As a first-year coach, Caldwell said her team learned to adapt.
“They said alright well we have this new coach and it’s a little bit different, but this is what we’re going to do and we’re going to do it all in. They’ve done it to perfection and that’s hard. That’s just not the culture. That’s very rare for people to do that in this day in age,” she said.
In Monday night’s game, Aislynn Hayes connected on a three-point shot with 2:02 left in overtime to give her team the lead for good. Caldwell said Hayes called that shot.
“Aislynn Hayes actually looked at me and said ‘Coach, the next one’s going in’ and then two seconds later she caught the ball, shot it and looked at me,” Caldwell said. “Some of those story lines you just can’t make up.”
The Herd got off to a rough start to the season, Caldwell said, but the team used those challenges as teaching moments to improve.
“I think all of us started to question things early on when we were 2 and 4, but I just have a great group of kids that just worked really, really hard and we took it game by game and kept getting better and better,” she said.
This will be Marshall’s second trip to the NCAA Tournament in the school’s history. The last time the Herd was in the tournament was 1997.