Landon Donovan’s press conference with the media on Saturday:

• There have been “good open, honest conversations” between Donovan, Jill Ellis and Camille Ashton on Donovan being promoted to full-time head coach. There will be more talks after the upcoming three matches they have in the next seven days.

When Donovan became the interim head coach in August, the Wave hadn’t won in nine NWSL matches, scoring just five goals during that span. Their only win at all during that span was a 3-1 win in the Summer Cup against Bay FC and didn’t score another goal in two other Summer Cup matches. Now they’re somehow still in the thick of the playoff race and could potentially be on their way to the FIFA Club World Cup in 2026 despite losing some key pieces to this team.

• Jaedyn Shaw is fully healthy and there will be no limitations on her minutes on Sunday. She played in 82 minutes in Wave’s Champions Cup win on Oct. 1 and the entire second half on Oct. 5 in Cary, N.C.

• Savannah McCaskill is also “fully available” tomorrow after she made her return on Oct. 5 in Cary.

• On Houston as an opponent: “Yeah, it's a tricky game because they're way better than their record shows. So, one making sure the team is aware of that and you do that through mostly just showing film and how good they are. What they lack is what probably half the teams lack in the league and that's just a superstar attacking player. So in this league outside of North Carolina, basically most teams are the same between the boxes and then they if you have a killer who can really make special plays on the offensive end, then you're a top half team, and if you don't, you're fighting for a playoff spot, and that's kind of the way I, as a general statement, classify the league, so they haven't had that, but they do have some good attacking pieces.”