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BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL MEDIA DAY

October 25, 2016

Steve Prohm

Kansas City, Missouri

THE MODERATOR: We're now joined by Coach Steve Prohm of Iowa State. Coach, your thoughts about the upcoming season?

STEVE PROHM: Good morning. Thank you, guys, for being here. It's great to be back. Obviously a lot more settled than I was a year ago at this time, family and just being situated. So it feels good. But really excited about this season. Brought four seniors with me. MontÃ© Morris, Matt Thomas, Nazareth Mitrou-Long, and Deonte Burton. And those four guys I've really spent a lot of time since the season ended from April to now of really continuing to grow our relationship, build our relationship, and really entrust in them in the leadership of this basketball team. As many new guys, new faces we have on this team, we do have a lot of experience returning. I'm going to entrust in those guys.

Deonte Burton, starting with him, probably the most improved, has really changed his mindset, his approach, his focus, his work ethic. He's had a great, great off-season and looking forward to him having a really big year for us. He's a guy that I think we can utilize him, similar to Niang in a way of just a mismatch guy.

Matt Thomas, consistent every single day. You know what you're going to get out of him. One of the top returning three-point shooters in the country. His character is off the charts, his work ethic is second to none.

Naz, bringing Naz back for a fifth year. The next two guys I didn't think we'd be talking about this year. I thought they'd both be gone when I was sitting here last year. But to have these guys back is great. Naz is probably as good of an emotional leader and representative as a student-athlete as I've been around. Shooting well, he's healthy, and I think he's really focused for a great senior year.

And Morris has had an outstanding summer. Gotten bigger, gotten stronger. Worked on his shot. So he's really -- we're going to need him to take a bigger offensive role for this team because of what we lost.

But those four guys are what I'm really going to lean on and rely on. I think if it's their team, if we let them lead this team, I think that gives us the best opportunity to be successful.

We do have some new faces, Nick Babb, a guy that sat out last year I'm really excited about it. And some other new guys, Merrill Holden, Darrell Bowie, fifth-year guys, Donovan Jackson, a junior college point guard that really, really shoots the basketball well.

But excited about this group defensively. We're trying to get our defensive culture still intact. Going to change the way we play a little bit this year in the half court, picking up three-quarter court pressure. And then offense, I think you'll see a lot of the same. If we can push tempo, really go early on offense, really kick the ball up the sidelines and attack early, we want to do that. If not, we want to play off ball screens, but Monte really spaced the floor. But I think you'll see a lot of things we've done offensively over the last couple of years, not much of that will change outside of trying to get Naz and Matt a little bit more involved off pin down, staggers, and different actions like that. But excited about this group. I'll open it up for questions.

Q. Steve, can you talk about the transition last year? What were the bigger difficulties? We've got three first-year coaches in the league this year. What do they have to look forward to?
STEVE PROHM: Well, they've got to look forward to a really good league with really good coaches and tough environments. I think everybody takes over a different job. Everyone has unique circumstances and each their own job. Mine was you don't usually walk into immediate success with a team ready to win and win at a high level like I was fortunate to do with Niang, and Nader and Nikay (phonetic) as seniors, and some really good upperclassmen, the guys I touched on, Morris and Naz and Matt and Deonte. So my situation was a little different, replacing Fred and really trying to understand how these guys did things. So I think each one of those coaches has their own path.

But when you look at the league, one through ten, it's really good. And obviously Kansas has been the standard for many, many years, but one through ten in this league is very good, and it's very difficult to win home and on the road.

Q. Coach, obviously you're used to winning from your former school. What's the transition been, your learning curve going from that conference to the Big 12, seeing that you made the postseason last year, and what's it going to take to make that jump to win the championship this season?
STEVE PROHM: I think the biggest thing we've got to do is be consistent in our efforts. The four seniors I touched on, they have to be consistent every day, from both ends of the floor, offensively and defensively. And we have to get new guys to come along as the season goes. I think it will give our team an opportunity to be challenged and really grow as a team. We've got some fifth-year guys, Merrill Holden and Darrell Bowie that we're going to count on, but they haven't been with us before. So to integrate them into our program and our team and a couple new guys, Babb and Jackson and Solomon Young up front. It's just going to be a process of building those guys and getting our chemistry. But if we can get to where we can defend, and play on transition, we'll have an opportunity to do some very good things.

Q. Steve, I thought Deonte Burton did some kind of uncommon things last year. Is this just a matter of trying to maximize his ability that you're talking about with him and trying to improve him?
STEVE PROHM: Yeah, and I try to meet with him as much as I can to just really challenge him to leave no stone unturned, have no regrets when he finishes his senior year. Like I said, he's totally changed his approach, his work ethic, he's a great kid, super smart. Going to graduate in May, and I probably should have played him maybe more at times last year. That can be on me at times.

But his role, 19 minutes a game, I think he averaged right at nine points, four, five rebounds, his role is going to expand this year. Obviously, when you look at minutes played and in the points and rebounds, production that we're going to need are him, when he keeps the game simple and he's direct, A to B with his drives and playing, he's a power athlete, what I call. There are athletes, and he's a powerful athlete. When he's playing powerful. I think he's got a chance to be a very, very effective and good player in this league.

Like I said, he's a mismatch guy because if we do go small, he can play the five at times really with our team this year. And we go small, he's going to be a tough cover.

Q. Coach, your team appeared to play very comfortable here at Sprint Center. Could you address that?
STEVE PROHM: We lost one game last year, but Niang made a great run. Oklahoma games, I think we played three games with them last year, and every game was decided in the last possession. But I know prior to me getting here, Fred and those guys won two Big 12 Tournament championships. So I think you just you've got good experience and good players. You have an opportunity to do really good things. These guys believe they can win. They've been to two out of the last Sweet Sixteens. They've won games at a high level. This senior class has an opportunity with 23 wins to be the winningest class in the history of the school.

So I think it's a confident bunch. But I think they understand there is a lot of work to still be done.

What I think the number one factor coming over here is being just three hours from here, that Cyclone Nation really makes this -- Hilton South is what they call it, it's an unbelievable atmosphere here. I think that obviously goes a long way in winning games in this arena.

Q. Especially when they play Kansas in this arena, it was all new to you last year coming in. I'm just wondering, those two regular season games against Kansas, were those, intensity level-wise, as good as you've seen in basketball?
STEVE PROHM: Yeah, I thought both games were really well played. We were fortunate to beat them at our place. Then we went to their place last game of the regular season and actually really played well. I think we led by three with three minutes to go. But when you're playing Kansas, you're playing elite teams, you have to make tough plays down the stretch and you have to finish games. We weren't able to do it up there this past season.

But obviously Kansas is the standard, like I touched on, and our goal is to continue to put ourselves in a position to challenge them.

But Allen Fieldhouse, Hilton Coliseum, there's probably, like I said, not five better places to play college basketball.

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