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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: SEATTLEMarch 19, 2015Nate BussBen JacobsonMax MartinoDeon MitchellMarvin SingletonSeth TuttleSEATTLE, WASHINGTON THE MODERATOR: We'll get started with questions for the student-athletes. Q. For Seth, you guys are aware of what happened to Iowa State today? SETH TUTTLE: Yeah. Yeah, we got to watch the end of it. We had a practice while it started, so we got to catch the tail end of it. But it's madness. It's part of it, so... Q. Seth, adding on to that, how much are you able to -- this is a great day for college basketball with the tournament starting. How much are you able to watch the games with everything else you got going on? SETH TUTTLE: Yeah, if we're in the hotel, we're watching games. On the way on the bus, we're following games. As long as it doesn't interfere with what we're doing in our preparation to get ready to go, we're pretty much locked into what's going on in the NCAA Tournament. Q. Seth, in your film study of Larry Nance Jr., what strikes you about him? What's kind of the strategy against him? SETH TUTTLE: He's a good player. Pretty versatile. He can do a little bit of everything. The way they use him makes him pretty hard to guard, pretty tough to game plan against. He likes to catch it mid post and just kind of work the defense. He's kind of -- he's not a strict block, but he's not just a three-point shooter too. So he does a little bit of everything. We have been working pretty hard in our preparation to prepare for him, and obviously the rest of his teammates are great players as well. So it will be interesting tomorrow to see how we do. Q. For really any of you guys, Northern Iowa has a legacy in this tournament with one of the great moments, one of the great upsets in NCAA Tournament history. How much are you guys versed in that, what happened five years ago, and does it -- do you think about it? Has it been mentioned to you a lot, especially coming into the tournament, or is it something you've chosen or decided to ignore? NATE BUSS: Well, man, it's been -- I've been here for five years and I've been hearing a lot about it ever since I got here. Obviously because we came in on the tail end of it. Something like that is always going to be brought up and mentioned, whether you're Northern Iowa or if you're anybody else. If you're a Mid Major, people are going to talk about it because, like you said, it's one of the biggest upsets in school history. But right now we're not worried about that. We're not thinking about that while we are here. We are here to play our game. We're our own team. We focus on how we play and we focus on our own legacy. Q. Nate, adding on to that, how excited are you to have the opportunity to kind of create a new legacy for UNI this weekend? NATE BUSS: That's the dream when you show up on campus for your first day of freshman year is to make your mark on the school. You go to a school because you fit together well with the team and you fit together well with their program and their style of play. You go there because you know you have a chance to be successful. I think that every single one of our guys on our team understands that, and I think that's why we play so well together. I think that's why we have such a good opportunity to make a mark like we do. Q. Marvin, how has Seth developed in the time that you've been with him? MARVIN SINGLETON: Seth has -- his game improved year by year. He's putting on a lot more weight to be able to battle down in the post. He can score on multiple areas of the floor. He can read defenses and he's able to handle double teams like we faced a lot this year, like box and ones this year as well. He improved on his outside shooting as well. So he's becoming that much more of an impact offensively and that much harder to guard. Q. Max and Deon, none of you guys have played in the tournament. How much have you heard from other guys, who have you heard from, just kind of what to expect? MAX MARTINO: Well, Johnny has been around. We played with Johnny Tuttle and -- we have all played with Johnny, actually. So we have heard a lot from Johnny. Joe had joined us this semester, and all the coaches have been through it. And Coach Jake has talked a little bit about it. So we have heard what to expect, that it's fun, that it's new, and that we should soak in everything, but also that we are here on a business trip. We are here to win two games. So, we have heard a lot about it, but we are here to experience our own tournament. DEON MITCHELL: Just being prepared every game. Like you saw earlier today, anything's possible. Any team could get hot at any moment. So just being prepared and ready for every game. Q. Seth, two parts: One, came from a real small town. Were you at all concerned that you might not be discovered or recruited heavily? Second of all, you've been called a point forward. Do you like that responsibility of kind of the offense going through you? SETH TUTTLE: Yeah, people an hour away from my hometown don't know where my hometown is. So it's pretty small. But I like that. I'm proud of where I came from. Yeah, if I didn't join the Iowa Barnstormers, my AAU program, I probably wouldn't have gotten recognized as much as I got to thanks to those guys. I'm grateful for that opportunity as well. Our team runs -- most of the time the offense does have to do with me or touching, me touching the ball at different points in it, which obviously I enjoy, but at the same time I understand that we got five people on the floor at all times who can put the ball in the hoop and who can make the right read. That's what what's made our team so special this year. We got a whole bunch of different weapons, and we're all very willing to make the extra pass to get the best look on the floor every time down. Q. Deon, Iowa State loses today after winning the Big 12 and have to come right back and play on Thursday down in Louisville. You guys win the Valley tournament, you have a week off. Can you talk about what you would prefer or any thoughts you might have about a quick turnaround as opposed to having a layoff which could leave you stale or rested. How do you see that? DEON MITCHELL: Having a week off, with some teams, it could hurt you, but if you prepare the right way and you take it day by day, rest some days and practice hard some days and just approach it the right way, it can help you. Iowa State having to come back and play Thursday, it's tough because you came off three big games you have to play. So it just depends how you approach the situation. It could hurt you or it could help you. Q. Marvin and Seth, in your travels and in watching maybe television or on the Internet, do you find that people know much about Northern Iowa and do people think that you're just another directional or another Mid Major, or do people realize that you're a Top-10 team and a No. 5 seed? MARVIN SINGLETON: I think this year a lot of people have given us a lot of national attention, so a lot more people are starting to recognize who we are and who we're becoming as a program. But before that, probably not. Probably people just look at us like a regular Mid Major, but we don't look at ourself like a Mid Major. You still got to play the game. Everybody is equal once you get inside those lines. So I don't think we're a Mid Major, but this year we got a lot more national attention. SETH TUTTLE: Probably before that, 2010 team that made that run, people probably didn't know that much about Northern Iowa. That team was able to put our community and our university on the map a little bit. And this year and this season we have gotten to just do that a little bit more. We have been getting enough press and enough media to allow people to get to know us a little bit better. We have appreciated that and we have enjoyed that. But Marvin said it best: Once the ball gets thrown up in the air, it doesn't matter if we're 30th in the nation, if we're 15th, or if we're No. 4. None that have matters. Obviously, that Iowa State game that we talked about today proves that. Once you get this far, it's just go time. Q. Deon, can you talk about just a follow up to what I asked you earlier about how Coach Jake walked you through the last 10, 12 days which would prevent and maybe mitigate any staleness tomorrow. Can you get specific? DEON MITCHELL: A few days we would go hard, we would lift in the morning and have like a hard practice, then we would do like ice tub and ice bath or stuff like that. Then the next day we would do the same thing, and then we would have a day off or something like that. He just went back and forth. Our strength coach, Andrea, probably talked to him about some different ways to approach that, keep our legs fresh and keep us prepared where we're not stalling out or getting too stiff and just being active every other day. THE MODERATOR: All right, thank you. We'll take questions for Coach. Q. What did you see in Seth when you were recruiting him? He came from a real small town. What did you see in him that maybe others had missed and how has he improved over the years? COACH JACOBSON: He always had a lot of versatility to his game. When we watched him in high school, he wasn't a big scorer. I didn't know what kind of scorer he would be for us or at this level, but really active. A lot of versatility. Always been a good passer. Then of course that size and that mobility for us makes a really good prospect and a guy that you hope develops into an All-Conference type of guy. So that was most of it. Then what he's done is really gotten to work. He improved offensively and he's become a guy that we throw him the ball 90-plus percent of the time. So he's worked hard to get to the point where we can do that. The thing that he does have, he's got a tremendous feel for how to play. He really involves his teammates. He's a guy who could take more shots but he doesn't. He knows he's going to get the ball and he knows he's got to get his teammates involved. Q. Obviously UNI got a ton of attention in 2010 for the upsets it pulled, but how much has what maybe Creighton and Wichita State done the past few years helped your program get more attention this year for the accomplishments you've had? COACH JACOBSON: I think that's been extremely important, any time you've got -- really for, I will tell you, a couple reasons. One, for the national recognition and that kind of exposure. When we got started this year, and the win at Stephen F. Austin kind of jump started things for us, but as that continued, and obviously Wichita State was backing up another great year, allowed us to jump into that national spotlight with them. So, no question, the things that those two programs have done helped us this year. So people around the country understand the quality of play within our league. The other thing it does is I think it drives your own guys. It motivates your own guys to want to get into that national spotlight, to want to get to rise up to that challenge and meet that challenge, to put yourself in a position to -- the national recognition is important and it's good, but to put yourself in a position to win a conference championship, if you're doing that recently in the Valley, that means you're going to have to win -- this year you had to win 17 games. Last year you would have had to win them all. With that comes a lot of national recognition. Q. You've been through this before as a Mid Major, so-called underdog. What's it like now being a favorite? COACH JACOBSON: It hasn't been a lot different from my standpoint. That is mostly because from a coaching staff, the guys that we have, we have been to the tournament, this is the sixth time for us now in 12 years. Just the respect and understanding for how good everybody is in this tournament, so from my standpoint it hasn't changed anything. From our guys' standpoint, this is the first time that this group has been to the NCAA Tournament. So these guys don't know any different. They haven't been in a situation where they have been a 9 seed or higher. So for them, they don't know any different. They have done a great job all year of approaching things in a businesslike manner and just kind of taking the next thing that's on the schedule for them. And no different. These guys, they have got as much respect and appreciation for preparation and opponents as we have gone through the year as any team I've been a part of. So I don't have any concerns about our guys when it comes to playing Wyoming tomorrow, because they -- again, they respect and appreciate everything to do with the people we have played and they know how good Wyoming is. Q. Seth gets so much attention, is it equal parts for your offense to have six, seven, eight guys who are a threat on the three-point line? COACH JACOBSON: Yeah, that really makes it work for us. The way -- people asked me a lot the last 10 days probably, some of the national radio and TV, they have asked me to describe our team. When I talk about offense, I say, look, Deon or Wes is going to have the ball in transition or to start our offense, somebody's going to throw it to Seth 90 percent of the time. Then the rest of the guys just kind of wait to get it, wherever that might be. To have guys not only that are unselfish enough and understand that that's the way we have been able to do things and have success, to have them do that I think is one thing, but for them to be good enough for us to win 30 games and be ranked 10th or 9th in the country, when you combine that, when you're not Wes or Deon who has the ball all the time and you're not Seth who has the ball all the time, but the guys in between them -- and they don't need credit. They don't ask for it, and they don't need it. But, boy, they deserve a lot of it. Q. What does Larry Nance look like on film and in the matchup with Seth? What's going to be the key for Seth? COACH JACOBSON: Yeah, the two guys are very similar in terms of -- I suppose if you went right down to it, if you want to talk about who is a little more athletic or a little less or who is a little more skilled or a little less, I just think they're so close that that's a real thin dividing line. Then they both -- it appears to me -- obviously I understand how we use Seth better than I would understand I guess how Coach uses Nance, but it appears watching them that that part of it is very similar as well. They catch the ball on the three-point line and shoot it if they have some room. They will drive it from that spot. They will get isolated in that 12 to 15 feet where it's kind of do you go double them or don't you. As soon as you do, they're both pretty good passers, and then they're both really good scoring on the block. So I don't see a lot of differences. I'm sure there's a couple in terms of who is a little more athletic or a little less, some of that. But, boy, watching them, I just think there's a lot more similarities than differences. Q. What's the key for Seth? COACH JACOBSON: I think for us and for Seth is that he just keeps playing and doing the things he's been doing for our team. He's had as we know he gets the basketball a lot and he's been defended a lot of different ways. So for him to continue to play with the confidence in what he's doing and the confidence in his teammates, if he's going to get doubled a bunch tomorrow or if he isn't going to get doubled a bunch tomorrow. We have seen both. So, for Seth, it's more of having the confidence to play against either one of those things and just continue to play the way he has for us. Now, in terms of playing against Nance and guarding him, that's going to be a challenge. That's going to be hard, to defend a guy that has that kind of versatility. Q. Your thoughts first on Iowa State getting upset and, secondly, one of your old schools, North Dakota State, has a tall order against Gonzaga. What does it take to pull off an upset like that? COACH JACOBSON: The first part with Iowa State, I haven't seen all the other scores from the day. I know a couple of them were very close. Notre Dame and Northeastern was a one-possession game. And there will be a lot more of that today, and there's going to be a lot of that tomorrow. I think the thing that I've learned being in this tournament is that it happens every year, right? I mean, that -- it happens. People kind of look at it and say, well, how could Iowa State get beat as a 3 seed? Well, the team they're playing is probably pretty good. To get in this tournament you had to do something really good, either be good for four months or win three games in your tournament. Neither one of those two things is easy. So everybody's good enough to win. Then with North Dakota State playing against Gonzaga, boy, the only reference I guess I would have -- and we were a 9 seed that year when we played Kansas as a 1 seed, and our guys did a great job. Kansas was just going out and being themselves, and we went out there and tried to do our stuff as good as we could. And it was good enough on that day. Q. The pace of play of both teams is fairly similar. Is that an advantage or disadvantage? Would you rather face a team like that or maybe do you like the contrast against a run-and-gun team? COACH JACOBSON: Yeah, in a lot of ways I would rather play against a different style. In a lot of ways. I really would. I don't know if that's personal preference or if that's the coaching preference I have. Not specific to this team, I guess, because this team has been able to play whichever way has been needed. We're going to work hard to score in transition. Outside of that, we'll take our time. I think Wyoming is the same that way. So if we were just going to meet in the middle and play, I would rather play somebody who plays a different style so that we have got some different things going on on the other side of the ball. That won't be the case tomorrow. We're very similar. THE MODERATOR: All right. Thank you. COACH JACOBSON: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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