Auburn women's basketball: 3 takeaways from coach Larry Vickers' intro press conference

AUBURN — For the eighth time in program history, Auburn women's basketball has a new head coach.

Larry Vickers, who came to the Plains from the same role at Norfolk State, was introduced as the Tigers' new head coach Monday, a day removed from Auburn announcing his hire.

At 6-foot-8, Vickers' large frame and bright smile filled the Woltosz Football Performance Center in a way that several head-coaching hires have before him, whether that's softball coaches Kate and Chris Malveaux, soccer coach James Armstrong or football coach Hugh Freeze. But their prior circumstances were far different from his.

Armstrong, Freeze and the Malveaux's were each high-major movers and shakers before coming to Auburn. Vickers, as he noted Monday, spent the previous 23 years at Norfolk State, as a player or coach for two different basketball programs.

"Everybody thinks, 'Oh, Auburn was a no-brainer because of the money situation,'" Vickers said in his opening statement. "Auburn was a no-brainer because of the people, because of the staff. That's what made Auburn a no-brainer. The people."

Now, it's Vickers' task to turn a sizable corner with those people. His job is to return the Tigers to a mountain top they haven't seen reached the days of Joe Ciampi.

As he sets out to do so, here are three takeaways from his introductory press conference.

What made Auburn women's basketball Larry Vickers' next stop

As much as the people made Vickers' move a "no-brainer," he was asked directly why the time was now for a Norfolk State departure.

He had checked "everything" off his Norfolk State bucket list, he said.

"There's things on that bucket list that we did that I would have never planned," Vickers said. "I would have never planned for a low-major team to win 30 games. So, for me, it was, 'What's next?'"

That was not only Auburn, but the SEC, he explained.

"There's no better league that's going to test your Xs and Os, your ability to recruit, than this one," he said.

Auburn women's basketball is set to be defensive-minded

Of the things to know about Vickers and his coaching style ahead of Monday afternoon, it was clear he's strong defensively.

The Spartans had a top-three scoring defense in the nation two of the past three seasons. This year, they were top-30 in that mark, top-15 in opponent turnovers, top-10 in turnovers margin and top-15 in steals and blocks per game.

"I'm only sitting here because we hang our hat on defense," Vickers said. "Our defenses have generally been nationally ranked. The 1-2-2 (defense) causes a lot of the turnovers, or speeds teams up. Now they've got less time to run their sets. Now we can begin to blitz on the turnovers in different ways. It's a different level of guard all across the board every night, but we'll have a different level of player to execute that same vision, I think."

Larry Vickers' mid-major roots don't imply lacking understanding of high-major needs

For a coach who has spent two decades at a mid-major program in Norfolk State, it'd be rather easy to assume Vickers hasn't had the same handle or understanding on the changes coming to college athletics in the coming months.

Between the House vs. NCAA settlement, and what have become more general concepts like Name, Image and Likeness and the transfer portal, Vickers' resources at Norfolk State would presumably be limited and not require him to know all that much. But assumptions can only go so far.

"He was incredibly educated about everything," Auburn athletics director John Cohen said. "Every part of that; the dates, how things are going to work in the future, what FMV (fair market value) is going to look like in the future. Maybe of all the candidates we talked to, he might have had the best handle on where we think this thing is going to go moving forward. His ideas about it, and his creativity around that, I think is pretty high-level."

Adam Cole is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email at acole@gannett.com or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @colereporter.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: 3 thoughts on Auburn women's basketball coach Larry Vickers'

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Auburn women's basketball: 3 takeaways from coach Larry Vickers' intro press conference

What made Auburn women's basketball Larry Vickers' next stop

Auburn women's basketball is set to be defensive-minded

Larry Vickers' mid-major roots don't imply lacking understanding of high-major needs

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