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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: INDIANAPOLISMarch 16, 2017Gregg MarshallMarkis McDuffieConner FrankampZach BrownIndianapolis, Indiana THE MODERATOR: We have Wichita State with us. We're going to take an opening statement from Coach Marshall, and then we'll go to the players. Gregg? COACH MARSHALL: We are glad to be here. We feel like we're playing well, and we know we have a tremendous challenge in front of us, starting tomorrow evening with Dayton. I've enjoyed coaching these guys tremendously all year. It's been a really fun season for us as we've watched this team blossom and mature and develop right in front of our very eyes. So we're excited, again, with the opportunity. We're glad it warmed up a little bit today. It was pretty cold when we got in last night, but it's a beautiful day, and we're ready to play. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the players, please. Q. Conner and Zach, do you guys feel disrespected by the seed? What was your reaction when you found you were a ten? CONNER FRANKAMP: We were a little surprised, but we knew we'd have to play good teams all tournament, so we're excited for the task at hand, and hopefully we can come out and play well. Like I said, we knew we were going to have to play a good team every round of this tournament. ZACH BROWN: Like Conner said, we were surprised, but the committee make the seeding for a reason. The only thing we can do is come out and play and do what we do. Q. Markis, what do you think of Dayton? What challenges do you think they bring to your guys? MARKIS McDUFFIE: Dayton is a great team. They push the ball well in transition, and they're very athletic. They're in the A10, a great conference. They play a lot of great teams, a lot of tough teams. We're just going to have to come out and play tough in order to win. Q. Zach, what have you seen in the development and growth of Shaquille Morris? You've been with him now for awhile. How far has he come as a player? ZACH BROWN: It's actually pretty amazing to see the transition from freshman year to all the way to the product you see now, just his body, his mindset. I'd say his position has gotten a whole lot better, a whole lot more active on defense, being more aggressive towards the rim instead of fading and really, really just being a monster in there. What he's done has completely helped us out throughout this whole season. To me, I'm very proud of him. THE MODERATOR: Further questions for the players? Thanks, guys. Question for Coach Marshall. Q. Gregg, what do you remember about John Brannen from the Marshall days? Did you have him pegged as a coach at that time? A. John Brannen, very, very hard worker, number one. He was the last guy to leave the gym, tremendous skills. He could shoot it and pass. He had a quirky jump shot and he'll laugh when he hears me say that, but it went in. And his fifth year, after transferring into Marshall, I was the first-year assistant coach, and he was an all-conference player. He was an all-tournament player in the southern conference, our last year in the southern conference, and we came within a tip-in at the buzzer of UT Chattanooga, a team that eventually went to the Sweet 16 of going to the NCAA tournament, something Marshall has not done in awhile. Coach D'Antoni got real close this year playing in the championship game. I watched that game. I was pulling for them. John Brannen was cerebral, Rhodes Scholar candidate as a graduate, and did not know he was going to get into coaching. I thought he would go into the corporate world and be very successful there, but had followed his progress and his coaching career. He obviously latched on with Anthony Grant, which is a great move at VCU and then Alabama. We've played against each other several times with high stakes, just really like John and his family. Got to know them as well. They're a wonderful family. He's obviously a fantastic young man and a great coach, and that program is now in its first year eligible for the tournament, second year for him as a head coach, and here they are. Q. Gregg, Archie Miller mentioned that he watched that Wichita State 2013 Final Four that provided a little bit of blueprint that a program similar to yours can play that way, get to those places. How often do you hear that from other coaches, and I guess that would be satisfying to hear that you've provided that kind of map for some of those schools? COACH MARSHALL: I don't hear that that often, but it was nice to hear that from him in our coaches' meeting today. This is a guy who has been inspirational in his own right. He was an inspiration to play in the ACC at North Carolina State. He's not the biggest guy in the world, but his heart and his talent supersede his size. Now he's doing it on the coaching level, so he's obviously been an inspiration to others as well. It's nice to hear him say that. That was a magical run, and it's something that we followed up with the undefeated season and then the Sweet 16 and a couple more wins in the tournament. So it was the impetus of what we're doing today. Q. Gregg, Cal was just here and said the selection committee did the best job seeding he's seen in the last eight years. What do you think? COACH MARSHALL: I'll defer to Cal on that. They're probably more likely to talk to him about seeding and where he wants seeds to be than they would to me. They don't call me and ask me anything. They probably don't care that I disagree with the seedings. It's a great tournament. I'm kind of used to the short end of the stick, if you will, on the seedings. But that being said, we usually wear the dark uniforms, and we've won nine games in the last four years. So as Conner mentioned, we're going to play great teams in this tournament regardless of where they seed you. I've enjoyed watching the games today, and there's been some great games with lower seeds either coming close to winning or winning. We know we've got a challenge tomorrow. The seeds could easily be flip-flopped. Still you're playing a great team and a well-coached team and a team with veterans and seniors. They've had their success in the NCAA tournament as well. It should be a tremendous game. Whoever wins gets the winner of Kentucky/Northern Kentucky. Q. How big of a wave of momentum are you guys riding into the tournament? COACH MARSHALL: I think we're playing very well. I don't know how the, I guess, 11 days, maybe 12 days since we've played on Sunday in our Valley championship on CBS two Sundays ago, what's that going to be? 12 days now. We've tried to keep them fresh mentally. We've tried to give their bodies some rest physically. But in the end, we haven't played anyone else for 12 days. So the layoff, it will be interesting to see how that affects us. Dayton's had some time off too. They probably had a week off. But the bottom line is you've got, again, two good teams, and we feel like we were really starting to peak in late February, early March. Hopefully, we can carry that over into mid-March. Q. Gregg, you've obviously talked a lot about some of the scheduling challenges. Archie Miller has had similar problems. Power Five teams aren't lining up to play you guys. What's the solution? What's to be done to make sure we have more of those match-ups in a nonconference season? COACH MARSHALL: It's a great question. I think you'd have to mandate that the Power Five teams have to play X amount of games on the road. They've got the money with the TV and the Bowl games and all that to do basically what they want. If they never have to leave their building or go play anyone, it's gotten easier for us in the past 4-5 years. For instance, this year, we scheduled Oklahoma, and we scheduled Oklahoma State. We're in the Bahamas tournament. Next year, we're in the Maui tournament. We're going back to the Bahamas tournament in 4 years. We're playing the best that we can, but we would like a few more of those. I sympathize. We play Tulsa home at home, St. Louis home at home. Those are regional rivals that generally are pretty good. But a couple of them had bad years this year. That's hard to predict when these schedules are made 2 and 3 years in advance. But we played Colorado State on the road, another good team. We want to play the best that we can. We try to go to the best exempt tournaments possible. We play the best Power Five or BCS schools that will play us home and home, and we're continually looking at that. But something we're trying to work on extending the series with Oklahoma. Coach Krueger's been awesome. Maybe we can schedule something with Dayton. Maybe that's the way to go. Maybe we can schedule something with Butler. We practiced in Hinkle Fieldhouse today. Those are probably the answers. But I think the BCS, Power Five teams, that don't have to go on the road -- and then they also have the opportunity for quality wins, but many of them get a lot of quality losses as well. Q. You've been openly critical of Shaquille Morris during parts of his career at Wichita State. What do you think was the trigger that got him to play in a way that you're now fairly satisfied with? COACH MARSHALL: I would say I'm more than fairly satisfied. Shaq is one of those guys that kind of got away with some things in high school because of his immense size and strength. He was like the bully on the playground, and it's not just the basketball court that we've had to push him, Bob. It's in academics as well. But I also -- I want to clarify that I've told him many times this year as he's made steps towards being the student and the player that he can be, how proud I am of him and his maturation process. He's come a long way. As a coach, the way we try to do it, we try to develop the person, the student and the player. He is a great, shining example of a guy that's come a long way in all three of those categories. Q. Every year, your name comes up when there's coaching vacancies and, obviously, that's kind of happening again this year. I'm wondering with those frustrations or challenges with scheduling and seeding, could that ever be a tipping point for you to go elsewhere? Are those things you consider when you're getting offers? COACH MARSHALL: Not really. First of all, I don't know what you're talking about. No one's talked to me or no one's talked to anybody that represents me. There's been no discussion of any of these jobs. In fact, I don't even know what jobs are open, to be honest. There's a lot of action that takes place every day and every week, it seems. We value the life that we lead. Whether we're taken care of, we've got a great administration at Wichita State. They've been very, very supportive and generous and kind to my family. I've got -- not just me, but I've got my family and I've got my players. We think we've got something really good going, so I don't really worry about it. I think it's very humbling to have your name mentioned with these jobs. Sometimes, I listen. Ultimately, maybe I'll take one. But right now, we're very, very happy where we are. The City of Wichita is a wonderful place to live, and it's treated my family and a lot of people very, very well. We're very content. But at the same time, we don't bury our head in the sand. I've said that before. We listen. Maybe there will be a time for to us make a move, but I don't know when that's going to be. Q. Going back to the scheduling topic, at this point, I mean, the way that the committee has treated you guys a couple years in a row, does it become something where you feel like maybe the Missouri Valley is being disrespected or you need to pursue other conference options? How do you think that can be remedied on the league side of things? COACH MARSHALL: You know, that's beyond my decision making level. That's a presidential deal as far as conference affiliation. I just think there's a little bit of a movement, it seems, by the committee to squeeze out the non-Power Five. I really feel that. And then if they're going to allow a lot of these Power Five teams in, then they're going to place them against one another in the tournament. I mean, we're playing Dayton. Gonzaga played -- who did they play? Who did Gonzaga play? VCU plays somebody. Winthrop played Butler. I mean, it's amazing. South Dakota State. They want to weed out the non-Power Fives as quickly as possible, it appears. When I left the room, it was Middle Tennessee was up nine against Minnesota. There's a lot of quality basketball being played at some of these places. I'll go a step further. There's a lot of bad basketball being played in the Power Five leagues. Q. Gregg, can I get your reaction to Dave Stallworth's passing? COACH MARSHALL: I was going to say something at the end if no one asked me about that, Bob. Perhaps, and I didn't get a chance to see him play for the Shockers, but I did get a chance to see him play for the Knicks. One of the greatest, if not the greatest Shockers of all time passed away last night, Dave "the Rave" Stallworth. Our sympathies go out to his family. He was a tremendous gentleman and a true fan of the Shockers. In my first 6 or 7 years as the head coach, he would be at games, just about every game. As his health started to fail, he was there less and less. And we knew about his illness. We sent a card to him early in the week. We'll be playing this tournament with a heavy heart because he was a true gentleman and a wonderful representative of Wichita and Wichita State University. Q. Gregg, you suggested about weeding out the Power Five, and I'm wondering what is the incentive to -- COACH MARSHALL: The non-Power Five. Q. Big distinction. The non-Power Five. How much of that do you think is wanting marquee teams, more money making possibilities for TV and the TV contracts? COACH MARSHALL: That could be the case, Jerry. I really don't know the answer to that question because I don't study the Nielsen ratings and all that. But, to me, this tournament -- obviously, there are a lot of people that only know the top 10 or 15, 20 teams in the country. They only know the Kentuckys and the Dukes and the UCLAs. That's all they know. They don't know the Wichita States, the Middle Tennessees, the Daytons. They kind of dismiss us, if you will. But when the tournament comes around, that's what makes the tournament so special. Now, I'm not going to take anything away from the wonderful game that Villanova and North Carolina played last year. I know I was on the edge of my seat. I really enjoyed watching it as a spectator. I just don't think that weeding out the non-Power Fives is going to help the interest in those brackets and people that fill out the brackets and people that have interest in the underdog or the team that's supposed to not win that wins and makes it to the second weekend or the third weekend, like Butler and VCU and we've done recently. Q. You mentioned about your team peaking or starting to peak late February and into March. What did you see that told you -- I mean, what's your approach to basketball as a team and what was working so well? COACH MARSHALL: Jerry, we've been able to score the basketball very well this year. We can strike you from all five spots on the floor. That has not been our problem. We've scored over 80 points 20 something times this year. We continue to get better defensively. Our numbers, our analytic numbers, and whatnot continue to improve defensively as the season went on. They weren't quite as good as last year, but last year was hard to improve upon. We were the single best defensive team in the country. So as we started to get better defensively, Shaq Morris got healthy from a mid-season thigh injure, and I was finally smart enough to hand the ball to a freshman point guard, Landry Shamet. That took Conner Frankamp off the ball, and he could concentrate on scoring. Those three things I think along with a couple of guys like Zach Brown and Rashard Kelly accepting their roles on our team and becoming great defenders and energy givers, and it's been a nice experience for me as a coach to watch our team. It's almost been like time lapse photography, watching a flower bloom. That's what it's been like to watch our team develop into a cohesive juggernaut, if you will. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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