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STATE FARM MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 4, 2016

St. Louis, Missouri - Arch Madness

Evansville-66, Missouri State-56

THE MODERATOR: The victorious Evansville Aces are with us. They have a date in tomorrow's semifinal game against the winner of Illinois State and Indiana State. That will be the second game on our docket on Saturday. D.J. Balentine and Adam Wing represent the student body. We're going to ask Coach Marty Simmons to make a statement on the game.

COACH SIMMONS: Tough game. I want to give Paul and his staff and his team a lot of credit. They've battled through a lot of adversity this year with injuries. They certainly don't make excuses, and they played extremely hard. That was a very, very competitive game.

Also, I'd like to say something about Dorrian. We have competed against him for four years, and you hate to see that happen to any player, but that guy is one of the most competitive guys we've played in the Missouri Valley Conference. What determination he showed to be out there playing tonight.

From our side, we're extremely happy, pleased to move on. Felt like we did some good things, but then we were careless with the basketball at times. It's always good to advance.

Q. D.J., that stretch where Egidijus picked up four and went to the bench for a while, you guys actually extended their lead, went small. I think that's when you hit your two threes. But with him on the bench, did you know that was a time that you had to look to take some shots?
D.J. BALENTINE: Yeah, yeah. Any time Egidijus goes down, it's going to hurt us. He's such a big part of our team. But we played small, and we moved the ball around. I got a few open looks, some contested. But shots just started falling. We played really well together, though.

Q. D.J., put yourself in Dorrian Williams' shoes for just a second. How much respect do you have for him? What do you think about him coming out and playing here tonight?
D.J. BALENTINE: Me and him are pretty close. We came in together. We played at their place freshman year. He told me he respected me a lot. After that, we kind of fought each other on social media and talked here and there.

I just told him out there, congratulations. You're about to graduate. You've worked so hard. I'm proud of him. He told me to keep going, don't stop. I have a lot of respect for him. He's a very tough competitor. It's very unfortunate what happened.

Q. For both players, one of the knocks on this program in the past has been you guys struggled to win here in St. Louis. So what does it mean for this program to get back to the semifinals?
ADAM WING: Definitely, like Coach said, we're just extremely thankful just to advance to the semis. I know this senior class with D.J., Egidijus, and I, we've never made it to the semifinals, but we're thankful to be in the position we're in. I know it's not going to be an easy road ahead, but we've got a good group of guys. I think we've got to get refocused here and play Indiana State or Illinois State.

D.J. BALENTINE: Like Adam said, it's our first Saturday, Arch Madness. We're really looking forward to it. Whoever we get to play, we're going to be ready to go.

Q. You guys obviously started really quickly. I think you hit 12 of your first 18. What went well there? Was there anything they did differently to kind of slow you guys down toward the end of the first half and start of the second?
D.J. BALENTINE: Yeah, we just, we're ready to play. We got a lot of good looks, knocking shots down. Coach told us before the game, everybody be ready to shoot, because we kind of planned on them playing some sort of zone. When we got open looks, everybody was ready to play. That contributed to the fast start we got off to.

ADAM WING: I thought the main thing was we were getting out and running. Transition was key for us. I know Coach always harps on it every game to get out and run. We didn't get the stops we would like, but luckily, we were getting out and getting easy buckets.

Q. Marty, what did you see in the stretch where you got slowed down? And then what kind of brought you back out of it to pull away again there at the end?
COACH SIMMONS: I'm not sure we ever totally broke out of it. I mean, the start was terrific. I thought we had great ball movement. We weren't stopping them on the defensive end. So certainly we're getting up and down. The rhythm of the game was pretty good, but we shared it. Guys were ready. We were knocking in shots. They picked up their intensity a little bit. They were really active. We turned it over a little bit. We missed some open looks. We missed some shots at the rim.

When you go through stretches like that, usually, it's not one thing. It's a multiple of things. A lot of things that we were doing really well at the beginning, we quit doing well, and we dribbled it a lot more instead of moving the basketball. I felt like, when we moved it and we cut, we were better. When we tried to dribble it around the perimeter, they do a great job of matching up with you.

Q. Coach, how much of a surprise was Camyn Boone coming out with 26 points and 10 rebounds?
COACH SIMMONS: None. I'm sorry I didn't mention him in the beginning. He was outstanding. He was a ton. But he plays like that. We scouted him like that. We just didn't do a very good job of executing. The guy can make 15- to 17-footers. He's good on the dribble drive. We just didn't do a good job of limiting his touches in the scoring zone. And he's got a great basketball IQ, got a great touch. He's probably a four playing the five. He's really skilled, great passer, knows how to play the game. He was outstanding.

Q. I heard you get on J.B. a little bit in the second half to kind of get his head back in it, and then he took a charge and hit some free throws down the stretch. His first double figure game in a while too. Just how important is it have him going for you guys to make a run here in this tournament?
COACH SIMMONS: Yeah, he was really good. He's a big, big reason that we've had a successful season. Dequon, he's a tough matchup. He was dynamite last night with the tempo against Drake. That was a real concern. I thought for the most part J.B. did a pretty good job of trying to contain his penetration, put some pressure on his shots, but that's a tough matchup. Then J.B. has four assists and one turnover. I think that's an outstanding stat for him.

Q. The two threes from D.J. when Egidijus was on the bench with four fouls, those seemed to be just really important at the time?
COACH SIMMONS: Yeah, you've seen him for four years now. He loves the moment, and he's as confident as any player that we've ever coached. He stepped up and made two big ones there.

Q. Coach, what do you think it says about your team's potential to move forward in this tournament? When you get your senior leaders come out in the very first game of the tournament, Egidijus and D.J., playing as well as they did. Where do you think you'll be able to take that with those guys coming out as strong as they did in the first game?
COACH SIMMONS: Well, we've got to build on it. They understand what they're playing for. They understand this is their last go round. They've been absolutely terrific for four years. But we've got to build on it. We've got to play better. No matter who we play, it's going to be a difficult matchup, and taking care of the basketball will be a key again.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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