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STATE FARM MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 2, 2017

St. Louis, Missouri - Arch Madness

THE MODERATOR: The Loyola Ramblers are up first. Student body is represented by Ben Richardson and Milton Doyle, first Team All-Conference Milton Doyle, and the head coach Porter Moser. We're going to ask Porter to open up with a statement on his team and being here in St. Louis and the tournament in general.

PORTER MOSER: It's no secret I'm biased to the Valley and biased to the tournament. I think the way the Valley runs this tournament and how the fans in St. Louis have embraced this tournament, it's awesome. Just like all the other teams, we're excited to be here and ready to get going. Anything can happen in these next couple days. Our guys are in a good place mentally.

Q. (No microphone)?
PORTER MOSER: We've talked all year long about shrinking our mistakes. In the big picture, our coaching staff took over, and there was two or three winning seasons in 30-some years.

Now here we are again. We're off Thursday night. That's not our goal. Our goal is to win this thing. That's what these guys are focused on.

I like the mentality. A couple years ago, our goal might have been get off Thursday night. Our goal coming in here is let's string three games in a row. We've come a long way mentally in terms of where our expectations are as a program.

Q. Milton, being an in-state product, how excited are you that your four years have culminated to the fact that expectations have grown for the Rambler program?
MILTON DOYLE: It feels good just to know coming in. We've got high expectations. First coming to Loyola, things weren't looking too good. So knowing that we set a tone to be expected to do great things is just something to set our sights on and hope to finish it out on a strong note.

Q. Coach, obviously, closing with Southern, the last team of the year, is that kind of a blessing to see some things you can use tomorrow afternoon, or does it kind of not really matter going into the matchup?
PORTER MOSER: You know, you can look at it a lot of different ways. Obviously, we'll both know each other, having a familiarity with it, but we've still got to play the game. We've got to find ways, whoever we play, you play anybody twice. I know the question is three of the games are matchups that just happened. We haven't spent a lot of time talking about, hey, we just played them there. We're talking about what do we got to do to be better? Because they beat us twice. That's the big picture. They beat us twice. We've got to find ways to win, find ways to compete better, and that's kind of been our focus.

Q. For Milton and Coach. Coach, since coming in 2011, how important is it locally to try to build back the program from what it was and regaining that sort of excitement back in the Chicagoland area? Milton, four years at Loyola, being a Chicago native, how exciting is it knowing that you guys are building something more momentum locally?
MILTON DOYLE: It's exciting because Loyola has a great culture coming in with the history. So knowing we can bring the culture back and have the fans and students having to uplift us while we do great things is a exciting, especially being here. So our fan base has grown, and our team has gotten better every year.

PORTER MOSER: This is an amazing stat to me when I took the job. We're Loyola of Chicago, and there was a 10- to 11-year window that Loyola did not have a Chicago player on its roster. That's unbelievable with the talent base in Chicago. Milton was the first one. We got the job that said I'm on board.

The career he's had, the imprint he's had -- he's got his degree. That's going to last him the rest of his life. He's got a degree from Loyola-Chicago, a top flight school.

A lot of people in the city know Milt. For other kids to say, Milt has a ton of family, a ton of friends that come and watch every game. That's a really cool thing. He had an impact. We talk in recruiting all the time. We said it to him. So many people think that the level of where they go justifies them being a player. The splash of signing day lasts one day. Go to a place where you're going to make a splash on game day. Have 130 game days. Milt's had 130 game days, and he's left his splash on Loyola basketball.

So that to go forward, I think, has changed the perception of Loyola-Chicago basketball for Chicago kids. The next year we've got Donte Ingram from Simeon. Now Donte's Third Team All-League. Now here's two kids from the city that all of a sudden are having a ton of success, going to get a great degree, and every game have friends and family there.

So that legacy hopefully will stay on and continue to roll on to other kids in town because they know what these two are. So that imprint is a big change for the direction we're going for Chicago kids to stay home.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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