In the moments after the loss to the Yellow Jackets, Hayes was already reviewing what went wrong and how to fix it.
"We've got to box out. We've got to rebound," she said. "I feel like I could have made that shot in the corner. I'm always hard on myself when it comes to stuff like that, because I could have tied the game and maybe things would have been different, but there was a lot of other stuff that led up to it."
But as she trudged up the stairs, that couldn't matter. A crowd of 70 or so people from Chattanooga had made the trip of 100-plus miles, many of them from the Brainerd Recreation Center where Hayes grew up playing.
That group of fans had enjoyed themselves, with a whole section of McCamish Pavilion painted in red. A number of them were caught on the jumbotron "Swag Surfin'" during a timeout late in the game because — well, that's what you do when the song comes on.
"It was pretty cool," Hayes said. "Seeing the AAU team I started with, my high school, the rec center I went to, it was really fun to see them here supporting me and the team, because that brings more fan base to our team as well.
"I want to thank all the fans who came down. That was a big road trip."
