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MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 5, 2015Nate BussBen JacobsonMax MartinoDeon MitchellMarvin SingletonSeth TuttleST. LOUIS, MISSOURI THE MODERATOR: 3:15 session and the final session today features the No.2 seeded Northern Iowa Panthers. They will play the winner of the Drake‑Bradley game tonight at 8:30. The five seniors are up on the dais, Nate Buss, Max Martino, Deon Mitchell, Marvin Singleton, and Seth Tuttle. Coach of the Year, Ben Jacobson, is with us. We're going to ask him to make a statement about his club, being back here in St. Louis, and we'll go to questions for anyone on the dais, all six. COACH JACOBSON: Thanks. Congrats on your award today, very well deserved. We've had a terrific run. These guys have been great. I don't know that I could ask for really anything more than what these guys have done for themselves and their teammates and our program and our fans. They've just been terrific. We're anxious to get going tomorrow. Highly motivated and anxious to get going tomorrow. With that, I would leave it and open it up or send it back. Q. This is for all five players. If you guys could‑‑ coach has said a lot about you guys the last couple of days. Could you kind of maybe return the favor, speak to what he's meant to you as players, as a team, and just comment on him being named Coach of the Year. THE MODERATOR: Marvin, we're going to start with you and come this way. MARVIN SINGLETON: First and foremost, congratulations to Coach Jake on being Coach of the Year. He's a well‑deserved coach. He pushes us each and every day off and on the court to be the best we can be. He tells us every day to keep building and continue to grow stronger together. Here UNI Panthers, we're all a big family. We're just a team that pushes each other each day. Coach Jake pushes us, and we push him to be the best that we can be. He means a lot to us as a program and as seniors. MAX MARTINO: The Coach of the Year is well deserved for Coach Jake. He's a phenomenal coach. More than just that, he makes us better men. He wants us to be all around great people. So not just on the floor, but off the floor, he pushes us be to the best self we can be, academically, socially with our family. Really he's not just pushing us, he wants us to be the best we can be. I couldn't ask for anything else. Thank you. NATE BUSS: Yeah, congrats, Coach. You know I've said it to you. Very well‑deserved for being Coach of the Year. When I first got here, I didn't realize how much growing up I had to do until I met Coach Jake and went through our first practice, but he made me do it quickly. I respect him for helping me make that transition from being a boy to really becoming a man. He's helped me out in all aspects on the court and off the court. I just really respect him for that, and I'll always be thankful for that. SETH TUTTLE: Pretty much, these guys have mentioned everything. He's focused on us in basketball and us as individuals. Obviously, as players, sometimes we don't look at that too closely. When we look back on it, we're going to be appreciative of that. On the floor, our success this year, directly, obviously, goes right back to Coach Jake and his mindset and how he helped us change our mindset towards the game. Obviously, we have a lot to be thankful for to have him as our head coach. DEON MITCHELL: Like most of these guys said, what Coach Jake has been doing for this program, on and off the court, he pushes us each and every day. I respect him at a high level, and I'm sure most of these guys do as well. We're really thankful what he's been doing for us. Q. Coach, you have the award today. Such a great regular season. How along the way have you been able to maybe enjoy the process, just enjoy the season? COACH JACOBSON: This has been highly enjoyable for me. They've taken‑‑ starting with these five guys, they've taken so much ownership in our team and in our program. Regardless of what we've done, who we've beat, or how many games in a row we've won, they've wanted more. Every time they come back to practice, every time we line up to play another game, it's just been a feeling of, all right, what can we do better? How can we do it better? Let's go get somebody else. Just continued to want more. So from my standpoint, having been through this a couple times, I couldn't have asked for anything more than guys that just want to keep going and keep finding more things to get done. So it's been very enjoyable. Like I said, having gone through this a couple of times, I'm amazed that these guys have been able to do it without having really any of the stress come into it. They've handled it remarkably well. Q. Coach, I wanted to ask you, you touched on it in the speech this morning a little about fishing with your boys and the best‑‑ the most fun basketball games and shootarounds. What makes Cedar Falls kind of that perfect place for you? When did you realize it, or when did you kind of say this is pretty cool? COACH JACOBSON: There's so many things. The one I'll start with is it's a place that we can recruit these guys to. That is, from a basketball standpoint, from a program standpoint, that's the biggest thing. We've got enough on campus, we've got enough with our program, we've got enough with our community, that we can recruit these kinds of guys so we can have a program that's got a strong foundation. We can continue to come back year after year after year. We're going to miss these guys, but there's going to be other guys. Next year it will be different guys. And I think we're able to do that because we've got so much going for us in town and on campus and able to get guys just like these five. That's the biggest thing when it comes to the basketball part of it. Q. Guys, Doug Elgin said that last Saturday's game is the loudest he's heard at any time at any place. Is he correct in that? How much would it mean to get Wichita State again for a rubber game? THE MODERATOR: Deon and Nate will answer that in that order. DEON MITCHELL: It's a pretty crazy game. It gets loud in there. Last time we prepared for it and were ready to go. What was the other question you had? Q. [No microphone]? DEON MITCHELL: That's something that will be fun for us. We've got to take each game one at a time. Going into tomorrow, if we don't win, we won't get there. We've got to take it one game at a time. If we match up with them again, then we'll be ready. NATE BUSS: It really was the loudest environment I've ever been a part of. My ears were ringing going into halftime and after the game. But facing them again, it would be great for us just because I know, as competitors, we all like to face the best competition, and we know that Wichita State's the best competition for us right now. But like Deon said, we're going to take it one game at a time. We're preparing for tomorrow's game right now, and then we'll prepare for the next game. And if it comes to it, we'll prepare for Wichita. Q. Seth, if you could just comment on your progress over the last four years and winning Valley player of the year. Coach, just on how he's grown over the years. SETH TUTTLE: I've matured in all aspects of my game. Over the first couple years, the main thing was just the game slowed down, and my body, I was able to put on weight and muscle and just be able to battle inside with those guys. That was the main thing early on. And then, obviously, over the last two years, Coach Jake has talked to me‑‑ we've had meetings about not allowing myself to give in to being tired, not allowing myself to skip a rep in the off‑season, all this stuff that he helped me change my mindset towards some things. If you're going to play at a high level, you have to have the right mindset at all time. It's a little bit of everything. Obviously, I had to get stronger and bigger. And then Coach Jake, on the mental side of things, Xs and Os and all that stuff, he's the one that really pushed me to the top. COACH JACOBSON: I would tell you that the things Seth just talked about with himself, I think I could go down the line with all five of them. There's been a real change in‑‑ Deon's made a tremendous and a terrific change in his workouts and the kind of conditioning that he did this year to get ready, the same for Marvin. Those two guys are in the very best shape they've ever been in to start the season. And Max and Nate‑‑ Max, as everybody knows, he's not in our rotation, but he comes in every day and shoots 300, 400 shots every single day with the guys that are in the rotation, but he doesn't miss a day. Nate's growing into a guy‑‑ and I've said it this month. I don't know if these guys have heard me say it, but there were days early on when Nate and I didn't necessarily enjoy being in the same room with each other, and I really look forward to being around Nate right now. It's kind of fun. So we've come a ways. And back to Seth, he took on a lot of leadership last year at the end of the season and carried that forward. The thing that I've appreciated most about it and the thing I respect the most about it is that the guys will go back and forth. Seth will give it, but he'll also take it. This is a group deal. Because he is the leader of our team and our best player, he doesn't sit off to the side or on a different spot. They're all the same, and he understands that as well as anybody in our program, and he knows he's going to touch the ball a lot on offense, but he makes sure that the ball gets to all the other guys. He doesn't touch the ball or want the ball so that he can shoot it every time. He just wants us to play good offense. He knows he's got to get his teammates involved because he has it a lot. So the respect that they have for each other and the way in which they go about it and the leadership that Seth has shown has certainly increased through his career. Then he talked about his work ethic and changing some of those things this summer, and that's really important. I just like the relationship these guys have with each other. Q. Coach, Wichita State players were in here a little earlier and expressed significant frustration about the awards and how they came out, suggesting that both went to the wrong people. How does that come across to you, and what does that say about mindset going forward? COACH JACOBSON: I don't‑‑ I think everybody's pretty competitive. So I'll stay away from that. I think we've got competitive guys sitting up here, and I think they've got competitive guys in their locker room. I'll leave it at that. Q. For Seth, have you ever been a bulletin board material type player? Or has anybody on your team been that way? If not, where does your motivation stem from? SETH TUTTLE: I don't think so. We just focus on‑‑ Coach mentioned a little bit. We focus on the next game, and if it's a win or a lose, we'll learn from it, and we focus on the next one. That's been our motto kind of going throughout the year. Before every game, Coach always mentions keep building, and we really worked on just continuing to build and build and build so that we can be playing our best basketball now and throughout the end of the season. So I wouldn't say we put too much focus on anything other than the next game and what's to come. Q. Could you assess each of your potential opponents tomorrow. COACH JACOBSON: We saw Drake two weeks or so ago at our place. They won three in a row coming into our game. Ray has done a terrific job of bringing them along. They do have five seniors, and those guys have really played well for them. But they're young guys. Timmer and some of the other young players have really come along. So to struggle for a long time and then win three in a row, and they've played well since our game. So they're playing as good as they've played all year. And extremely well‑coached. I think that's one of the things that people around the league have realized about Ray and his staff, they're going to do everything right at both ends of the floor, and they're going to play extremely hard. So we know that that would be part of that game. Bradley played us, it was a one or two possession game into the second half at our place, and, obviously, we've been playing very good basketball for a long time. Geno's gone to some different zones and trying to find a way to get his guys in the best position to have success. I give him‑‑ as I said after our game, I give him a lot of credit for that, trying to find a way to get them over the hump. So if it's Bradley, we'll take a hard look at that film and see if there's some things that we can pick out of it, if we're going to see that same type of defense in particular. Q. For the five seniors, this is your last go around here at the conference tournament. Seth, on your teleconference call the other day with the league, you reminded us that you guys haven't won a game yet here at St. Louis. I'm just wondering, how different does it feel now, the fourth time here, to play and it's your final time? Where's the confidence level, the mindset last go around here in St. Louis for you guys? THE MODERATOR: We're going to start with Deon and go that way. DEON MITCHELL: Being it's the last year, we came in here every year with the same expectations to come in and try to get a championship. We fell short the past three years. I think our confidence is high as it has been since the first time we came in here. So I don't think anything has changed. We just have the same confidence. SETH TUTTLE: There's a special feeling that you get when you get on the bus to head down to St. Louis every year. We've obviously not had the success that we've wanted over the last three years, but there's no reason that our team doesn't have full motivation, momentum, confidence going forward. Right now we know we're a heck of a ball team, and we hope to come down here and show that a little bit and obviously, make a run to Sunday. NATE BUSS: Yeah, it's been a long time. I've been coming down here for four years, Max and I have been, just to keep it short. It's just been a great season, and we're all extremely motivated, and we just want to end the season the right way. MAX MARTINO: I know personally last year, when we lost the game, Chip Rank was my roommate, one of my best friends, and he never won a game down here. For me, that feeling of knowing that one of my best friends never won a game down here, it just killed me. So we have a chance to change that this year, and we have all the confidence in the world. This has been a special team from day one, but we never let expectations or anything affect us. We've always been down to business. So this is another business trip for us. MARVIN SINGLETON: Going off what Max said, confidence at a high level, and this is a business trip. But one thing that Coach Jake talked about at the beginning of the season was‑‑ that stand out to me is this team‑‑ he always asks us what do‑‑ how do you want to be remembered? By what last year's team did or the team before that or next year's team? How does next year's team want to be remembered? This group of five seniors, we want to be remembered differently. We want to go out there and play our hardest and come out victorious. Q. This is for Coach. UNI is back on the stage now where they haven't been since maybe 2010 to a lot of people. Was it ever difficult, or did you guys ever, either you or Seth, find yourselves, not maybe haunted by that, but trying to get back to that spot? Just people dealing with the expectations created maybe four or five years ago? SETH TUTTLE: I wouldn't say we were haunted by it. We had‑‑ obviously, our fans and supporters around Cedar Falls and obviously all over the place, they've been waiting for another trip like they had in 2010 with that team. Obviously, any fan base and supporters for your team would be wanting that back. I haven't felt haunted or anything like that. Obviously, I've wanted to experience it, and you'll see pictures on our walls or in our team lounge that those teams got to experience it. For myself, it wasn't a haunting, it was more a motivation to be able to run over to the middle of a court and hug Deon or jump up and chest bump with Nate, just to experience it with these guys and rest of our team and have a memory that those guys got to share. COACH JACOBSON: I would say that that's the thing that I'm most excited about us or most happy about. These five guys are on quite a run in this‑‑ sometimes I think it's‑‑ I don't know if easy is the right word, but I think that sometimes people feel like, because it's been done, it should just happen every year. You go out and do it, and everyone gets to go to the Sweet 16. I'm going to tell you something, it's hard. It's a hard thing to do, to get to the NCAA Tournament, to win a championship in our league, those are difficult things to do. Saying that, that doesn't mean we shy away from that as our expectations. When we start every year, as I talked about a little bit, I'm really proud of the program that we have and the foundation that we have, and we should be in the hunt every single year, and the reason is because of these five guys that are sitting here and their teammates. So we don't shy away from those expectations, but at no time does it‑‑ I guess the word that you use‑‑ haunt us in any way. That's what this is about. You're going to get up in the morning and be a part of this program. You're going to be striving for a championship. That's the way it is, and that's what these guys have done so well. And they've driven each other and driven our program to another big time season, and I'm awfully proud of that. Like I said, we've got guys that are cranked up to get going tomorrow night. THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, thank you very much. Best of luck. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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