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STATE FARM MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 3, 2016Brian WardleDonte ThomasRonnie SuggsSt. Louis, Missouri - Arch Madness Loyola-74, Bradley-66 THE MODERATOR: Bradley Braves are here. We have Donte Thomas and Ronnie Suggs with us, and we'll finish up with Coach Wardle. COACH WARDLE: First, I'll talk about this game briefly and then this group of young men. Tough loss. I loved our effort. I loved our competitiveness from these guys. Give Loyola a lot of credit. Obviously, Montel James was a handful for us with 20 and 17 but they made some big shots at big moments, and I thought there were some tough ones too. So I give them a lot of credit for that. It obviously came down to all season for us, but definitely in this game the turnovers hurt us. That stretch from the 12-minute mark in the second half to the 8-minute mark, where Loyola went on a run. We just stalled out. Give them a lot of credit. Wish them the best. This group of young men, I've loved coaching all year despite our record. High character, great effort, great attitudes every day. Enthusiastic to play. Enthusiastic to get coached. I've coached teams that have won that I didn't enjoy going to work every day to coach. I think every head coach could sit here and say that at some point. But not this group. This group got better, worked. We don't look at the left column or the right column with this group this year. We really studied film. And our habits, our culture, our foundation, it was laid with these high character young men. So very proud of them. THE MODERATOR: Note their rebounding totals, Donte Thomas with 14 and Ronnie Suggs with 10, are both career highs. Q. Ronnie, Coach was just alluding to that 12-minute mark in the second half. The game was tied, and then they hit a little run there and kind of pulled away. What do you feel from you guys' standpoint was happening during that stretch? And then you were able to regroup and get back in the game. But just tell me what was happening during that time? RONNIE SUGGS: Well, he made a run to get back to a small margin, and I felt like we had a couple of turnovers down the stretch, and that kind of got them back into a little bit of a rhythm. But we kept our heads, and I felt like we fought back into the game by starting to play smart, figuring out when to take the ball into the hole, when not to, and when to move the ball and when to attack. That was probably the main reason how we got back into the game late. Q. Donte, 14 rebounds kind of speaks for itself, but describe your mindset coming into this tournament. Were you really -- well, just leave it at that. DONTE THOMAS: I really wanted to go out there and play my hardest. After the game, I wanted to look at myself in the mirror and ask myself, do I feel like I gave it all my effort? And I felt like it did. We had a Bradley great come in and talk to us before the game, Anthony Parker, and he really shared great words with us, and I really took that to heart, and I think it helped me play out there. Q. What did he say? DONTE THOMAS: He said that -- one of the quotes he said was the quiet team is a scary team, and I felt like we did talk before the game and we were communicating all through the game with my great teammates. I love those guys. Q. With the potential you guys have as young sophomores and freshmen, how hungry does the result of this kind of game make you going forward with the potential and upside? RONNIE SUGGS: Very hungry. We've seen the ups and downs, and we know now what it takes to win at a college level. It's like, in the beginning of the year, what we had in mind wasn't exactly what the reality was. But going through this long season, we're definitely hungry for some more wins, and we will get them this next season. We've just got to keep playing all season, get back to the film study, and be ready for next year, but we will be back, and we will be ready. DONTE THOMAS: We struggled through some adversity this year, but we always played tough, I thought. We've got a great group of players on my team and a great group of coaches, and they're just going to push us even harder this off-season. I can't wait. Q. Ronnie, you guys are mostly a team of freshmen, but yet you came out at the gate really looking like you're ready to play. Can you kind of explain that? Because maybe a lot of freshmen wouldn't be that ready that quickly in an environment like this. RONNIE SUGGS: Well, yeah, I mean, it's Arch Madness. Who doesn't get excited for that, first of all? But also, Coach told us before the games just to go and play free. Play your game and play how you know how to play. He wants us to be in attack mode. And I think from the beginning of the game, everybody was in attack mode, and everybody was bought in. It goes back to what Anthony Parker was talking about. We were loud, clapping, and the energy was there. So that kind of helped out the team and the crowd, our fans coming out, that gave us a lot of energy, as well, to perform right out of the gate. Q. And the season's over, but could you just kind of sum up how it's gone overall, how much growth you feel you put in this year? DONTE THOMAS: It's been great. I wouldn't want to be on this court with another five or have another group of teammates ever. I think we're going to grow. We're going to keep growing, and we're just ready for this off-season. RONNIE SUGGS: Yeah, I second that. It's been fun. We've had a good time, but the reality of it is we're going to go back to the summer, and we're going to work our hardest like we've never done before. And we're going to get back to trying to get more wins and bring the crowd out to more of our games. But the teammates, the support, the cheerleaders, everybody, it's been fun. Can't wait to get back at it next year. Q. Just what I asked Ronnie, just in terms of a young team like this who's never been in this kind of a setting and to come out as ready, they made their first five shots. They looked very ready out there. COACH WARDLE: They were excited in practice. We had two good days of prep. I agree. I love having guest speakers. I love having alumni and former players say a few words to the team. These young guys respond to that. I thought Anthony had some good wisdom passed along to them, which they really took to heart. But they were ready to go in practice, I thought, excited to play. It was the third season. All it takes is the better two hours than the other team. They knew that. We made that very clear. We were a confident group. We were confident at halftime. Just kind of our Achilles heel this year is our offense and turnovers. We had moments of shooting the ball really well and reaching our potential shooting the ball, but we just had those five- to eight-minute spurts offensively that just really hurt us. But the competitiveness level went up all year. The toughness, I think, went up. The understanding of preparation and the work put in to prepare for league games and in season increased. The work ethics increased. Like I said all year, there's victories within every win and loss, and we definitely found a lot of victories and kept them positive. And they were a positive group that came in with great effort every day. Q. Coach, what's your feeling as a coach knowing these young guys that you're so proud of the way they went out and competed as mostly freshmen and a few sophomores, that this is a group that you're going to get to continue to build a program with at Bradley over the next several seasons? COACH WARDLE: Well, this is a high character group in that locker room, all of them, and we recruited that for this reason to build this year with. We knew the schedule was tough. We knew the Valley was loaded with upperclassmen teams, but we wanted character that we could push and work and build a foundation around. I pushed these guys this year. Year one, I'm always consciously very hard on them in a way because we need to set a foundation and need to set a standard, and that's not always to do. We did that, and I'm grateful I had high character kids to work with, and I told them that. But it doesn't mean anything if you don't put the work in in the off-season. I'm smart enough to know, just because we have freshmen and people see flashes of their talent and what they do, doesn't mean they are going to do that as sophomores. Nose to the grindstone. To hear Donte say, I can't wait for the coaches to coach me, you should see the strides that young man has made. Ronnie, you can sense already they know they're going to get back in the gym soon, back in the weight room because we're going to work. We're going to work on our weaknesses. We're going to strengthen our strengths. We're going to understand and be grateful for this opportunity at Bradley and understand that a lot comes with it, as a student and as an athlete. Where much is given, much is expected. I tell them that all the time. And they'll be expected, high expectations this off-season in the work. Q. Just to elaborate a little more in the second half. You mentioned the offense kind of stalled out. On the other side, Ingram was really hurting you. What was happening with him, with your defense? COACH WARDLE: We only lost him, I think, about once. But to be quite honest, we wanted certain guys to beat us from three, and they did. I told the team that's on the coaches. That's on me. That's our scouting report. I give Ingram a lot of credit. Last five game stats we really look at overall in conference, when guys are shooting under 35 percent, you can put a hand up and let them get the threes. We were trying to take it out of James' hands the best we can, but he's playing all Valley play, especially the second part of Valley play, he's been playing at a high level. That's why he's an all league guy. He definitely got my vote. But the three Peterson hit with three minutes to go, Ingram's threes, Turk made a couple of tough ones. I thought Pittman was right in him, and he hit a couple of tough threes. I wouldn't say Loyola is a three-point shooting team at all, and they made ten threes today. I don't know if they've done that in Valley play that much, but I give them a lot of credit for stepping up and making those big shots. Q. A couple of hustle plays that really kind of backfired. It's unfortunate how it played out, but particularly the one with Richardson just throwing the ball back for James for the layup. COACH WARDLE: Yeah, kind of -- it didn't break our back, though. You've got to understand all the -- these guys are one of the most resilient groups I've coached. 18, 19 years old, a lot of those plays could break your back. They could lose effort on the defensive end. They could break down mentally. They could start feeling sorry for themselves. I thought this year, for the most part, other than a couple games, they're a very resilient group, and they would fight, fight, fight till the end. I think they know they've got coaches that fight and coach with a chip on their shoulder. They're starting to play and hate to lose and have a chip on their shoulder now, which is a good thing. But there were 50-50 balls that just were unlucky bounces that went to them, and I think they got points off most of them. Sometimes the ball doesn't bounce your way, and I give Loyola credit. They played hard. Porter gets those guys to play really hard. I thought both teams laid it on the line. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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