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STATE FARM MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 2, 2017

St. Louis, Missouri - Arch Madness

THE MODERATOR: No. 6 seeded Missouri State Bears are with us. Paul Lusk is here, the head coach. Jordan Martin, Obediah Church represent the student-athletes. We're going to have Paul open up with a statement on his team being here in St. Louis and the tournament. Then we'll go to questions for all three Bears.

PAUL LUSK: We're excited to play tomorrow. Looking forward to the game. We've had two very close contests with Northern Iowa. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Jake and their program. They've got three guys in particular on their team that have won this tournament, have been very successful. So it will be a great challenge for us. We're looking forward to it.

Q. Obe, you guys split with UNI. Can you talk about playing them again and how important it is to know you can compete with these guys and beat these guys?
OBEDIAH CHURCH: Like Coach said, both contests was really close, and this tournament is really just to see who can grind it out the most. I know it's going to be a very good, physical game.

Q. Jordan, can you just talk about the mindset of the team and put the regular season behind you and get ready for the tournament now?
JORDAN MARTIN: Going into this game, we know it's a new season coming into the tournament. We're just locked in and focused, anxious, ready to go.

Q. Coach, how much do you go back and look at the previous two games against Northern Iowa before this one?
PAUL LUSK: Well, I mean, all coaches watch a lot of tape, probably too much. But the first one is such a long time ago, plus our team has changed, and we haven't watched much of that. But we certainly watched the last time we played them. It was a very low-scoring game in Springfield. Jeremy Morgan was terrific. He had five shots. He hadn't been shooting it well, but we know he's very capable. And then we watched their most recent game. So we watch a lot of film.

Q. Coach, how important is it for you guys -- I know you struggled a little bit down the stretch, but is it a case where you try to say it's a new slate, new season, and get your guys to forget what's happened in the past?
PAUL LUSK: Well, I don't -- I mean, you have to be locked in to what's happening right now with the new season. Northern Iowa has lost a couple down the stretch. You still try to learn from those games. We just finished watching some of the Wichita game with our guys about things we can learn from.

I think for the most part, excludeing one game, our effort was where it needed to be. We came up short some games, and we didn't get the result we needed. You have to put good basketball together right now, and guys have to play well, guys have to compete at a very high level because, if you lose, you go home.

Q. Coach, you mentioned those close games. How important are those like leading into March and especially Arch Madness?
PAUL LUSK: All games are important. You can learn a lot from a close loss or a close win or you can learn a lot from getting blown out or blowing a team out and continuing not to execute. So I think all of those lessons, hopefully, those experiences that our guys have gone through will help us and help them individually. You've got to hope they learn from those experiences, whether they're good or bad, and move forward in the right direction and play very good basketball at this time of the year.

Q. Paul, a couple minutes ago you made a comment kind of jokingly, I think, was kind of about watching too much video. I'm curious how serious you are about that, and is there, with all the video that's out there and all the time you spend with it, is there a point of diminishing returns?
PAUL LUSK: Well, I'll say this, I believe there is with your team. I think coaches are going to do what coaches do. I think each group is different. We know that young people don't have the longest attention span any more these days, my children included. So we have really tried with this particular group to focus more on ourselves. So when we do watch film, not micromanaging everything the other team's doing, but kind of looking at what we're doing. I think it's different for each and every group and each and every program. These guys could probably speak about it, but last year we probably watched a lot more film.

We have pretty much concentrated on ourself, but I would agree, at some point, it can be too much. It can be overwhelming, and at the end of the day, you have to go out and play and produce, and you don't want to bog your guys down too much.

Q. I'd like to go ahead and follow with both you players, Jordan and Obediah. Do you feel sometimes, when you're going through video, I've seen enough, I get the message already? Or are you always hungry for more?
JORDAN MARTIN: Of course I'm always hungry for more, but that's a part of it. It's just being able to stay locked in and worry about what's going on in the moment.

OBEDIAH CHURCH: Yeah, it's definitely sometimes -- like Coach said last year, we watched a lot more film than this year. Also, he said it depends on what type of group you have and what group we had last year compared to this year. Just he has to know, and the assistants have to know like how much we can buy in, how much we can actually pay attention during that film session.

PAUL LUSK: I think the one thing that we've always tried to do, though, some guys learn visually, some guys learn by actually going through the process. I think this group has been a pretty good visual learner, but we always try -- if it's not in a group setting. We keep our group film sessions a little bit shorter. We always try to get them with their particular coach they're associated with to watch their individual clips because I do think that that can be a good learning environment.

Sometimes when you're watching film as a whole, you're pointing out the good things, but you're also pointing out the bad things. Well, sometimes when you point out the bad things in a group setting, sometimes maybe that can -- a player can take that a little bit personal which sometimes that's a good thing, but when they're one-on-one with their coaches, I think that's a great opportunity to grow and learn. I think our guys enjoy getting with the coaches and watching a lot of film individually.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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