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STATE FARM MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 3, 2016

St. Louis, Missouri - Arch Madness

Loyola-74, Bradley-66

THE MODERATOR: Welcome back to the Bryan Burwell Memorial interview room. The victorious Ramblers of Loyola are with us. They will meet the No. 1 seed Wichita Shockers tomorrow at noon. The victory improves Loyola to 15-16 this season and 3-2 all time in this tournament. The Ramblers have won at least one tournament game in each of their three years in the MVC.

COACH MOSER: Really proud that we found a way to win. It wasn't a pretty effort, but as anybody who's been in these tournament settings, that doesn't matter. It's about winning, surviving, and advancing. Proud of our guys that we found a way to do that.

You've got to give a lot of credit to Bradley. They fought hard. They clawed all game. I'm really proud that we can survive and advance with not a not so great performance, but that's what it's all about in the tournament.

Q. Montel, I just wonder if you had a thought -- I thought that play by Richardson, which wound up with you getting an uncontested lay-in, was really kind of, if not a back breaker, certainly a key play there down the stretch.
MONTEL JAMES: I think Richardson dived for the ball, and he dived for it with great effort and passion, like he just had to have the ball. That just shows how much character he has and how bad he wants to win. I'm grateful to have somebody like that on my team who doesn't care about getting down and dirty. He dives on the floor. He hustles for every ball, and I appreciate his hustle.

Q. Donte, the second half you really picked up your game offensively. Did you feel the need to do that with some of your teammates struggling to score? Or were you seeing some things defensively? What was happening for you out there?
DONTE INGRAM: Well, the first half, we were pretty sluggish, and I know I could have been better and helped our team. And the second half, I just wanted to come out and be aggressive whenever I could. Any chance I got, I would take it. It just worked out for the best for me.

Q. Coach, to win with Milton --
THE MODERATOR: Questions for the two student-athletes until there are no more for them.

Q. This is for either one of you guys, but I wondered if you had a thought about how competitive you -- if this was the kind of game you were expecting. It seems like all your games with them, certainly this year anyway, have been competitive regardless of records. I mean, was this the kind of game you were expecting?
MONTEL JAMES: Of course this is a game I was expecting because this is a great atmosphere in an MVC Tournament. It's win or go home. I'm sure nobody wants to go home. Most teams are just going to play our heart out like it's their last.

DONTE INGRAM: Yeah, it was like a sense of desperation for both teams. We know we could have played a lot better, cleaned up a lot of things, especially rebounding. But like Montel said, it's like win or go home. Both teams have that sense of desperation, and it was a hard-fought game.

Q. For Montel, thoughts on the quick turnaround to play Wichita State tomorrow? And for Donte, playing them for the third time this year, what do you think about that?
MONTEL JAMES: We're just looking forward. We're not going to dwell on this game, we're just going to move forward and do everything we can to prepare for their game plan -- or prepare our game plan to go against them. With them, we've just got to stay looking forward and just go into tomorrow with a great mindset that anything could happen. Anything can happen, so we've just got to go into the game tomorrow and play aggressive.

DONTE INGRAM: Obviously, we lost to them twice this year, and we didn't play how we could have played. Right now we're just taking one game at a time, and I know the coaches are going to do their job getting the game plan for us, and it's up to us to execute it.

Q. Coach, to win with Milton Doyle in foul trouble, arguably your best player, what does that say about your guys' team and to rally around in a bad situation to come out with the win?
COACH MOSER: We had some guys that were stepping up that have been on this stage before. You remember Milton missed all those games last year. But it was kind of wild. Every time he got in, it seemed like he got a foul the first minute. I told him, let's look at the glass half full. You're going to be fresh against Wichita. That's what I told him. Milt, sometimes his numbers don't show what he means to us a lot of times.

If you noticed, we were okay against the press. We had a little bit of a glitch all of a sudden when he fouled out. All of a sudden, Montel took it out the one time and then turned it over. And then all of a sudden we caught -- we weren't catching the deep corner, and all of a sudden we caught one in the deep corner, and it resulted in a jump ball. Milton kind of calms us down. He's really good usually against the press, taking it out.

I don't think it phased the guys. We weren't talking about, hey, we've got to find a way to do this without Milt. It was never brought up. It was next man up. It was next guy up. Earl's played a lot of minutes before, Turk, Ben Richardson. We were one guard down. That's where it kind of hurt. Tyson Smith tore his ACL. We've been rotating six guards. And the last game against Drake, Earl and Tyson were out, and then (indiscernible) came back, but then Milton got in foul trouble.

We literally have not had this problem all year long in terms of rotating our guards until the last two games, with the injury and then that's the worst foul trouble for a guard all year. I haven't had to play a guard with two fouls in the first half. I don't think I've put a guard or anybody in with two fouls all year long. I felt like I needed to.

My mindset was to try to get Milt going because he was so frustrated. Maybe, if he can make a play or two and he gets out, I can put him in the second half. Then he got fouled the first play. That was a great coaching move.

Q. Porter, Donte described your first half as sluggish. Do you agree with that?
COACH MOSER: I don't agree that it's sluggish. You know what I liked about Donte's game? Donte was posting up really hard, and he didn't get it, and he got a little frustrated. I could see, he had that look in his eye like he really wanted the ball. There was two times where he got mad at Montel and got mad at somebody else because he didn't get it.

We talked about it at halftime. Focus on the right things. The right thing is keep going hard for the ball. Keep posting up. Keep stepping to your shot.

I didn't think we were sluggish. I think Bradley came out, like we all should do in a tournament, ready to play. I do disagree with that. I don't think we were sluggish. I thought Bradley came out very aggressive trying to take us off -- they got 11 points by the first media, and they ended up with 29. But I thought we settled down a little bit guarding them. They came out really, really aggressive. We picked up a couple of fouls. I didn't think we were sluggish, we just -- I think it was more of credit to both teams were playing hard.

Q. Coach, it seemed like every time in the second half that you guys tried to pull away, and it seemed like you might. They just kept kind of hanging around and hanging in there, and just in the end, it really was no dagger. But they just ran out of time really, and you guys just staved them off. What was the mindset there, where the team is just trying to pull away but recognizing they've got to fend off a team that's hungry and trying to stay alive?
COACH MOSER: You've got to give them credit because those young kids, they've got them believing. Sometimes a young team, three minutes left, you're down eight or nine, they can kind of pack it in. They never felt that way.

And Jeff White had that turnover that resulted in Suggs' three. It was a senior. And Montel didn't take it out, he was kind of fatigued, and just kind of threw it. That was five points we kind of gave them to give them a little bit of life. Two seniors made those two turnovers, and you can't do that in situational games and especially in it a tournament setting. But we didn't make a tremendous amount of free throws. We made enough.

But I will say this about that effort play that Ben made. Ben Richardson, there's a reason why you love to recruit kids that have won before. He's won two State Championships. And if you look at his line, his stat line, he hit a big three in the second half, but he had eight points, five assists, and six steals, and he made that great effort play. He means a lot to us. He's one of our better defenders, really solid defensively. But that was one of those winning plays that you make.

Q. Coach, I would just ask you the same question I asked your players about. I mean, I know it's a tournament game and you're expecting a war, but the other factor is your history with Bradley, and I wonder if the character of this game was like exactly what you were expecting?
COACH MOSER: The other two games were dogfights. It came right -- you know, both games. And the one thing that Bradley does, they're not underrated by us. I don't know if people talk about it as much, but I think they're a very good rebounding team. They really go. And they put a lot of pressure on you because they've got long guards that just go. Suggs having ten rebounds. Thomas was a beast. I thought him at 14 and 14, what a couple of rebounds that he had.

But 100 percent, the moment we knew we drew Bradley, we knew it was going to be a very grind out game. They've held us to shooting under 40. We did a heck of a job adjusting to that. We're .4 over 40, we're 40.4. We didn't shoot over 40 percent the first two games. So we know they're gritty defensively. So just pleased to survive and advance, and that's what you have to do.

This one, no matter how it looks, how it went down, you get to survive and advance. We've got to get ready for Wichita. Do we have to play better? Heck, yeah, we've got to play better. They're going to come pressing us. We have to be physical. We have to get some other people to rebound besides Montel James. Two Achilles heels that stuck out tonight in our year this year is our shooting percentage and our rebounding. Those have been an Achilles heel all year long for us.

Q. Coach, what was it like to see Montel dominate again after he struggled against Drake?
COACH MOSER: I thought Donte really stepped up and made some shots. We talked to Montel, when he just tried to go nowhere with his dribble and back them in, they really did a good job. Barker is hard to move. Those big guys do a really good job of getting low. We really talk about Montel has to go somewhere, use his quickness.

I think he kind of -- I don't look at Montel saying, gosh, he just dominated that game. I think he plugged away all game long and made enough plays on the offense I have end, but defensively, we leaned on him a lot because he went up by the rim to get a bunch of rebounds. We got to get -- Donte Ingram's got to rebound. We just talked about it. He's got to provide some rebounding for us.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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STATE FARM MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 3, 2016

Porter Moser

Montel James

Donte Ingram