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WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

March 25, 2019

Gregg Marshall

Bloomington, Indiana

GREGG MARSHALL: We are just excited to be here in Bloomington, playing for the right to go to Madison Square Garden. Obviously to be playing this late into March, regardless of how old your young or new or old, veteran, inexperienced your basketball team is, it's great.

We had a nice little practice today. Our practice before the Clemson game was our best of the year, so my guys are enjoying playing. I'm enjoying coaching them. As long as we can continue to do that and win, we'll play till there are no games left.

Q. When you look at this Indiana team, what things stand out to you the most? Who do you look at and say those are the main drivers of this team?
GREGG MARSHALL: You got a lottery pick who has not played the last couple of games. You start with him. Juwan Morgan, you're familiar with him if you watch college basketball the last several years. You'd start with those two guys. I mean, really, really good.

But there's other players averaging between 8 and 11 or 12 points a game. All your starters. Your two guard really shoots it well, a tremendous scorer. Your point guard has tremendous acceleration going both ways. Your wing is a strong kid that drives it, gets to the rim. Looks very athletic.

I mean, they're all very impressive to me.

Q. Looking at the trajectory for you this season, started out slow, turned it around to close out the season. Was there a message sent that you flipped a switch?
GREGG MARSHALL: I think the biggest thing for us was we would go on the road early on and for 10 of my scholarship players, it was the first time they had played in a college basketball game on the road, whoever that first game was. Since 2010, prior to this year, we had been the single best road team in the country percentage-wise. Obviously we're not that any more because we did lose a handful or more this year on the road early.

We just played scared. We played tentative. If we didn't make a shot or two, we stopped defending, stopped rebounding. Quite frankly, some games got out of control. That hasn't been the case, but this year early on it was.

You have to have a short memory as a college basketball player because it's not like football where you are able to turn it over, go over on the side, look at your iPad over there, figure out what you did wrong, send the defense on. You have to get back and play defense, you have to rebound. Then you have to go down and try to right your own wrongs quickly.

You only have X amount of timeouts as coaches. I'm not crazy about using timeouts anyway. I don't usually have much good to say during a timeout.

Our guys weren't very good at that. They got better at they got more understanding of what we were trying to get them to do. I want them to fight through adversity. I want them to, as much as they possibly can.

I did use more timeouts early in the year to try to settle a very young team. As they've gotten better and a better understanding, they've just physically been able to make more plays, make more shots, we haven't needed that.

We've been better on the road because of that. It's just been fun to watch this team evolve. We've gotten a lot, lot better in the last eight weeks.

Q. (Question about older players.)
GREGG MARSHALL: Jaime is a junior college transfer. This is his first year with us. He is an older player, as is Ricky Torres, first year in Division I. I count those as far as the 10 new guys.

I've answered this one a couple of ways all year long. Markis McDuffie and Samaje Haynes-Jones have been invaluable for us. Markis is used to winning 25 or more games, going to the NCAA tournament, having a lot of success. It didn't look like our season was headed that way early on. Samaje Haynes-Jones played about 200 minutes last year. He was my second-most experienced player returning, but he was a senior and had played in games.

Those two guys never wavered. They didn't throw the young kids under the bus. They were positive. They were disgruntled. They were upset, angry at times, as we all were. They never threw anyone under the bus.

Markis McDuffie, I always will be very appreciative of him because I think he will be the bridge from one very nice era to another hopefully nice era coming up soon. Samaje and he have been tremendous leaders. Neither one had been leaders prior to this. They had never been forced to lead. In fact, they were followers. They were happy-go-lucky guys that went along with the flow.

This year, this will be a very big life lesson for them because they've had to develop leadership skills. They've done a wonderful job.

Q. Speak to the American Athletic in light of UCF nearly knocking off Duke.
GREGG MARSHALL: They did knock off Duke, didn't they? That's what I saw (smiling).

Q. Do you think it's an underrated league?
GREGG MARSHALL: Oh, yeah, it's a good league, man. It's the best league I've ever coached in. Not only do you have tremendous players, you've got a kid like Aubrey Dawkins yesterday, Johnny's son, he may have played himself into an early entry type situation yesterday. From what I saw, he was phenomenal.

Last year we had three early entry players in our league. It's only 60 draft picks, something like that. We had three early entries from our league, two in the first round and one in the early second round. One was on our team, Lambry Shamet. He would have been a junior for us. We would have looked a whole lot better in November and December if we had him. I understand. That's the way college basketball is these days.

For us, me personally, it's the first time I had to deal with it. Obviously I wasn't prepared.

It's a great league. When you have Landry Shamet, doing great things with the Clippers, you have Jacob Evans in the first round with the Warriors, Melvin Frazier went early from Tulane. I saw arguably the first or second best player from Tulane last year, a senior. I'm drawing a blank on his name right now. Cameron something. He just signed a long-term contract with the NBA.

The league's got very, very good players. Great coaches. National championship caliber coaches. Guys that have won national championships or could win national championships one day. It just seems to be getting better and better.

Q. Jamie Echenique, he was one of the new faces early in the year, his rebounding percentages are really impressive, good around the rim. These last couple games he's been good for you. How have you seen him grow this season?
GREGG MARSHALL: We had three post players. We had Midtgaard in the program as a freshman, he played 80 minutes. My third most experienced player coming into the year after playing 80 minutes. We has Poor Bear-Chandler in prep school. We signed him. We love this kid Morris Edeze, playing as a true freshman early. Out now, had shoulder surgery, the labrum situation.

That being said, I saw Jamie Echenique at a junior college workout and I said, We have to have this kid. He has a real high ceiling. I love what he's able to do. He became our best post player early on. He was really, really good at one point early, then he hurt his foot. He had plantar fascitis. We were up 7 at VCU and he went down. He didn't miss any games, but he wasn't healthy either. I should have just said, No, you're not playing, you're not healthy. He kept saying, I can, I can, I can. He wanted to help. He's got a great heart. But he wasn't able to help us.

We weren't nearly as good because I was playing him, and he was probably 60%. It's probably what Archie is dealing with now with Romeo because of the back. Do you play him? Is he 100%? Is it the right thing to do?

But we would not have been nearly as good as we were early in the year without Jaime. We wouldn't be nearly as good as we are now. He's not 100%. That thing is going to take a while. I've had the same foot ailment, and it takes a while to go away. I mean, six months, a year, I don't know.

I can't imagine playing basketball with it. His was much worse than mine. As big as your fist, a big black spot on the bottom of his foot where it was bruised.

He's been great. He was wonderful in the Clemson game. Between he and Dexter Dennis, they held Marcquise Reed to five for 20, he averages 20 points in the ACC, and Elijah Thomas two for eight. Between those two guys, their best two players, went a combined seven for 28. The defense by Dexter Dennis and Jaime, Jaime having a good offensive game, as well.

Q. Is this your first time in Assembly Hall?
GREGG MARSHALL: Yes. I've only been to Bloomington one other time. When I was an assistant coach at the College of Charleston, I drove up, we did everything by car. There were three events in a triangle. One in Louisville, Kentucky. Somewhere else. Maybe Cincinnati. Then here. Like for five days, I just went in between the three events.

While I was here, I forget who was running those events back in the day, but it was a good event, at a big center where they have like eight courts somewhere in town. I drove over here on my own, grabbed a bite to eat.

As I drove over by Assembly Hall, I actually saw Bob Knight walk out. It was in the evening. He was walking out of a practice, his office, whatever he was doing. Didn't know him at the time. I've met him since. But I did see him. I didn't speak to him.

But I've never been inside. This is my first time inside. Quite a building, quite impressive building.

Q. You saw one of Archie's teams a couple years ago in the tournament.
GREGG MARSHALL: Dayton.

Q. As you prepare for this, do you notice any similarities personality-wise?
GREGG MARSHALL: To be honest with you, I broke down the Clemson film last night. I'm going to start breaking down a little Indiana film today. I can't tell you about that right now. My staff has been poring over it. We did a scouting report for Indiana this morning, did a little walk-through in our practice today. I can't tell you how similar or dissimilar they are to Dayton at this point.

I will tell you his teams play really hard. That group that we played was at the end of an era. He had a bunch of seniors on that Dayton team. We were fortunate enough to beat them in a game that could have gone either way. We made a big three down the stretch. We beat them. I think we lost in the next round to Kentucky. Always Kentucky.

Q. We saw how your fans travel so well in the NCAAs. Are they going to the NIT games?
GREGG MARSHALL: We had a great support in South Carolina on Wednesday, then Clemson on Sunday. I don't know how much of that is how well they travel, my family just dressing up in yellow and black. That was in my backyard. We had a lot of fans.

But our fans do travel really, really well. But this is hard because there's not a whole lot of notice. You don't know when the games are sometimes. At least we knew when this game was, but only a 48-hour turnaround, actually a little longer. We played 2:00 on Sunday, this will be 7:00 on Tuesday.

A couple jets are fueling up right now, friends of mine, people I know in town, they're filling up their planes and heading this way.

I don't think it will be a predominant yellow and black crowd based on how you guys draw.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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