HELENA — With Carroll College riding a four-game winning streak and coming off a home victory over No. 18 Mayville State, MTN Sports' Jonny Walker sat down with Fighting Saints head coach Rachelle Sayers.
A full transcript from the video interview is available below:
MTN Sports: What a win. The No. 18 team in the country comes in here and you guys knock them off. What does it mean to have a win of that quality?
Rachelle Sayers: Well, it was really big for this young team == and a group that has battled through some adversity and a lot of changes. And to play a team like Mayville that is a veteran team that's had some big wins already said a lot about our team.
MTN Sports: Coming off of that game you have the offensive player of the week, Kyndall Keller. How good is she? What makes her so good?
Rachelle Sayers: Well, her scoring ability is something I think everybody sees. But I think her playmaking ability and her ability to make everyone around her better is what really sets her apart.
And if you look at the last play of the game, when Addi Ekstrom hit that big 3, that put us up three. Kyndall made that play for her in the zone; she created that shot for her. And Addie knocked down a huge 3.
MTN Sports: You got two weeks off here before your next game — just about two weeks. How are you going to be able to use that time?
Rachelle Sayers: Well, working on us. I mean, we had so many games in a short span of time where it was kind of recovery, game prep, recovery, game prep. You know, this is finals week and most of the students will be out of here on Thursday, and we'll be the only ones left.
And so being here in the dorms by yourself, when all your friends are home or on vacation, that's when basketball gets hard. And so being able to keep them motivated and excited to come every day and get better, that's also a big part of it.
MTN Sports: And then next time you guys do play, it won't be here. It'll be down in Arizona for the Cactus Classic. What's it like getting to play in an event like that and see those other teams?
Rachelle Sayers: Well, we open up with Campbellsville (Ky.), who's third in the country, been a powerhouse in the NAIA for a lot of years. And so, we've been in a situation the last four or five years where I always say we were the hunted. We never got to be the hunter.
Everybody was coming after us. We were that top ranked team. We were the No. 1 team, you know, in the conference. And people kept coming for us. And so, it's nice to be able to feel like, you know, we're the hunter now. We get to go after people. We get to try to knock people off and play without pressure and really try to go out there and see what we can do.
