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STATE FARM MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 3, 2017

St. Louis, Missouri - Arch Madness

Illinois State - 80

Evansville - 69

THE MODERATOR: I have a couple of notes from the game that just concluded. Team blocks for a single tournament game, Illinois State, 14 today, sets a tournament record. The previous mark was 11 in Wichita State versus Evansville in 2014.

Redbirds victory. They'll take on the winner of Southern Illinois and Loyola in the first semifinal game tomorrow at 2:30.

As mentioned, the victorious Redbirds are here. They have a date in tomorrow's semifinal game. Paris Lee, Deontae Hawkins, Keyshawn Evans represent the athletes for Illinois State. Dan Muller is the head coach.

DAN MULLER: Really good win for us. Credit to Evansville. I thought they played unbelievably hard. Not that it's a surprise. They competed. Had to keep fighting back. Had to make some big plays down the stretch. Had that turnover when they cut it to six. But Deontae makes that huge three, Paris free throws, and Keyshawn obviously played big, and that's a really good win for us.

Q. Paris, could you talk about the contribution of Keyshawn and D.J. off the bench. Even David and Madison really kind of did their roles too.
PARIS LEE: It's good to know, when starters go down, it's guys that can just come in and play big minutes like Keyshawn, Madison, Daouda, D.J. did. It was one play in the game when D.J. came in and made a backboard three and I think he got a layup. I think from right there we just got going. Keyshawn, he played unbelievable today. So kudos to my bro.

Q. Keyshawn, first time in St. Louis, just talk about your contribution. And also D.J. I mean, just coming here and making a statement.
KEYSHAWN EVANS: I guess you could just say me and D.J. take pride coming off the bench and trying to bring energy. A lot of guys in for the other team are usually tired when we get in. We kind of make it a big thing for us. We call each other six and seven all the time when we come in. It's big that we come in and give energy to everybody.

Q. Deontae, could you just talk a little bit about the end of the first half. I think you had about four straight baskets there. Could you also talk about defensively you guys blocked 14 shots today, which I guess is a school record and a tournament record.
DEONTAE HAWKINS: I just wanted to thank my teammates for finding me. We've been working on it a lot in practice, high-lows and ducking in and getting to my sweet spot. So I just want to thank my teammates. Man, we was on the help side like crazy. Jaylon likes the ball screens, and he likes to come over -- Coach told us to come over and block the shot. So we did that.

Q. Keyshawn, I think you said yesterday at practice you really liked the rims out there and just kind of the confidence you've been playing at. How was it out there shooting so well and just getting off to a comfortable start, and how well have you been playing? Just kind of describe that playing.
KEYSHAWN EVANS: First off, I get a lot of wide open looks too. It's not really me the whole time. So I get a lot of wide open looks. I try to -- Coach Muller and Coach O try to get me to focus on shooting it right and not worry about the makes and misses. So I shoot it and not focus on whether it goes in or not. I just focus on the next shot, and it just so happens I was hitting a lot of shots.

Q. Deontae, I just wanted to follow up kind of on the interior defense. What does it do emotionally for guys when you see someone step up and swat one into the third row?
DEONTAE HAWKINS: It's just like energy. It's energy given for one another, and we see one person get a huge block now, we amped up to get a block too. So it's just pass along to teammates and giving us the energy we need on the defensive end.

Q. Keyshawn, you definitely had a case to be on All-Bench team with D.J. Did you have a chip on your shoulder or any swagger heading into this one?
KEYSHAWN EVANS: No, I just play. I don't think about all the outside stuff.

PARIS LEE: Noise?

Q. Paris, you guys weren't quite able to put this game away. A little frustrating, or why weren't you guys able to do that?
PARIS LEE: Like Coach said, credit to Evansville. They came out and played hard. We don't try to worry about the score. We just try to chop wood. I think we did a good job of chopping wood and just playing throughout the course of the game.

Q. For you perimeter guys, what did you do to hold Jaylon Brown to a low percentage?
THE MODERATOR: Paris then Keyshawn.

PARIS LEE: That was all Tony Wills. Seriously, man, Tony Wills, like I said, unbelievable. He's relentless on defense. Man, he just got the perfect body to guard like little guards that's smaller than him. He honestly can guard anybody, if you ask me.

KEYSHAWN EVANS: I was going to say the same thing. You have the wrong person in here for that question. Madison and T. Wills kind of tag teamed him. I think they're just built and wired to play defense on anybody. I like having those two.

THE MODERATOR: We're going to stay here with Coach Dan Muller for a little while longer.

Q. Dan, off to a little bit of a slow start. I know that sometimes happens, especially when you're playing a team that's been on the court already. How were the guys able to just get back in the game? Obviously, it seemed like the bench was a big spark there.
DAN MULLER: Well, in that start -- and I thought it was some nerves. We missed four layups. MiKyle missed a layup, D.J. misses a layup, David misses a layup. So I thought it was nerves early, which is normal. It doesn't always happen, but it's normal. We went on a run when the bench was in. Keyshawn Evans with a huge spark. I think he hit two threes. D.J. played extremely well during that stretch. They got us going. I was watching the minutes a little bit, a little bit more than usual today, but it worked out.

Evansville fought. We didn't play a great game, obviously. We had some really good numbers, but, man, Evansville, they just competed so hard and kept competing no matter what. We settled in, though. I thought we really settled in, got a little rhythm. Deontae had that huge stretch down the end of the first half.

Q. Coach, when you hear about Illinois State, they talk about the senior leadership of the big three, but they have -- the bench is such a big factor. How important is that for you guys, especially moving forward, especially this weekend, that those guys got off to such a great start?
DAN MULLER: I talked about it. We're healthier now than we've been in over a month. Madison Williams, as you can see, is clearly healthy now. MiKyle is getting there. Obviously, didn't have a great MiKyle game, but he's getting healthier. We were always trusted our bench. Again, when MiKyle went down, those guys stepped up and made big plays.

We've got great leadership, but we also really trust those young guys. They've gotten good quality minutes. I would say this is -- we probably have two or three guys that had not very good games today, but we have enough depth and enough guys that can play multiple positions that we'll be okay usually.

Q. The rebounding numbers, Dan, don't look very good. How do you kind of get that corrected going forward this weekend?
DAN MULLER: Very disappointed. One number that sticks -- we blocked a lot. They had seven team rebounds that I think we blocked out of bounds probably five or six of them. So that skews it a little bit. But our rebounding was bad. A couple of our really good rebounders -- Phil, David, some guys -- they had uncharacteristically bad rebounding days. We know it's going to be very important for us. Rebounding and fouling was the worst thing we did for a stretch there, but that part was certainly disappointing. And I thought offensive rebounding was really bad.

Q. Kind of more qualitatively, we see the block numbers, but I know you like to have your hand in the intricacies of the defense. What did you see, kind of color commentary-wise, that maybe we missed that helped get those block numbers so high?
DAN MULLER: Every time we played Evansville this year, I think we had a lot of blocks. I think we had 11 the last game. It's just the way we play and the way they play. They don't take hardly any threes. So they're constantly attacking the rim and driving and driving and driving. We've got some length at those positions and situations. It truly is, I think, a matter of the matchups with blocks.

I think, if we played them again, we'd still get a lot of blocks. I thought we went for way too many shot fakes. We should have had more, to be honest. They're just relentless on how they curl and attack the rim and get the ball inside. Like I said, we've got good length, especially when MiKyle is healthy.

That's really all that it was. It's a matchup thing with this team.

Q. The players talked a little bit about Tony's defense on Jaylon Brown. Could you just kind of expand on that a little bit.
DAN MULLER: It feels like every time he makes a shot, like he's going off because he's so good, he's so relentless. Then you look down, and he's 7 for 25. Clearly, he's a great free-throw shooter, got to the line. It's hard to guard, he cuts so much. I think six of those free throws were off-the-ball falls, just kind of getting tangled up. Tony is relentless. Relentless defender. An unbelievable amount of pride in what he does. He's played against this offense for four years now. That helps. But he takes it personal. It's a team thing. We all know that.

I thought Madison did a great job on him also. That kid just played for 39 minutes and played 40 minutes tonight. It's incredible, the competitiveness that Jaylon Brown played with. But Tony, he's one of the best defenders in the league.

Q. Coach, one game underneath your belt. As the 1 seed, what's the message you're going to instill in your players to not look too far ahead?
DAN MULLER: We talked a lot about it. The fact we've been focusing on the process the last week and a half, which we talked about, no secret. And we're really trying to not worry about Sunday or the ring or the championship. We've been playing our best because we've been just focusing on the here and now. They've really bought into that. They talk it themselves. They talk about it in huddles. I'm pretty confident that we'll do that. We know we're going to play a quality opponent. We'll start the preparation when this game's over. As the guys said, we talk about it all the time, got to just keep chopping wood.

Q. Can you talk a little bit about managing the minutes tonight. Is that with the thing about maybe playing three games in three days? Is that maybe your philosophy there?
DAN MULLER: Yeah, it was. There was a point in the game when I knew I played whoever I needed to. You don't want to be stupid and lose the game, clearly. But if you're going to play three games in three days, you have to find minutes if you can. Not only that, like I said, we really trust our bench. But our highest was 29. Two guys at 29, a guy at 27. So we had a lot of guys that played less than their average minutes, and hopefully that will help us tomorrow.

Q. Will you let the guys watch this next game here? How are you going to work that?
DAN MULLER: I wouldn't care if we did, but we're going to take advantage of the time we have and start our rehab and get some things done that we do after games. They'll head back to the hotel. It's on TV too. They'll probably watch it on TV.

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