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STATE FARM MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 2, 2018

St. Louis, Missouri - Arch Madness

Loyola-Chicago - 54, Northern Iowa 50

THE MODERATOR: Northern Iowa Panthers are with us. Head Coach Ben Jacobson is in the middle. Hunter Rhodes and Bennett Koch flank him. We'll ask coach to make a statement on the game.

BEN JACOBSON: That was good basketball game. I expected that it was going to be hard fought, and it was. I thought the guys did a good job of defending on a lot of possessions. They're just a hard team to stay in front of. They've got such a high skill level that you just feel like you're constantly turning circles and constantly chasing them. They had us in that mode, some in transition, some in half-court. That makes it -- that's not different than what they've done all year, but that makes it difficult.

In saying that, they got 54 points. That's good enough for us to move on. We needed to make one or two more, and maybe they miss one more, and that's enough. It was that kind of game. So I enjoyed watching our guys in that game and competing and proud of the guys for the way we played last night and certainly the way we played today. Yeah, just a good, hard fought game.

Q. Bennett, what did you say that was working for you throughout the majority of the game, and did they make some adjustments down the stretch?
BENNETT KOCH: I just pretty much tried to keep it as simple as I could. Tried to get to my right hand hook. The guys were feeding me. They had confidence in me, which would made me more comfortable in shooting all the shots I did. I took 14 shots. That's a lot more than I usually take, but the guys were cheering me on. They were telling me to just go for it, and I guess the team helped me get there.

Q. I guess for both the players. The second half, there was an eight-minute stretch when you only had one field goal. Was it something they were doing defensively, or did you think you had some good looks that you just didn't hit?
THE MODERATOR: Hunter, you're first.

HUNTER RHODES: I thought we had some good looks we just didn't get, maybe a couple of turnovers in there. About the eight or nine minute mark, we had the stretch where we got some baskets and got some stops, and hit that little stretch where we couldn't get much going. But towards the end of the game, we got it going but just couldn't get over the hump.

BENNETT KOCH: They're a great team. We knew they weren't going to make it easy for us. I think it was a little of them being a good team locking it down and playing good defense, and then us just having a bad roll.

Q. Hunter, you were able to get a couple of pull-up jumpers, that 8-0 run in the second half, to stretch it down to four. What are your thoughts on the game and just how this team played as a whole going up against the 1 seed?
HUNTER RHODES: We're always confident. We didn't look back on the season. We didn't have that in mind at all. We wanted payback, obviously, but we had a lot of confidence toward the eight or nine-minute mark. We had a lot of good stops. I was able to come off some good screens that Bennett or Klint set for me and had some open looks at the basket, so that helped me out a lot. But I think our confidence at the point in the game was pretty high.

Q. Hunter, defensively, did you guys feel like this was your game? I mean, the way, like Coach said, you held them to 54 points. Did you feel like defensively you guys did everything you needed to do today?
HUNTER RHODES: I mean, obviously, not as much as we needed to do, since we lost by four, but I think we did a pretty good job overall. We still have some plays where we got easy drives and maybe a couple of baskets here and there, and they still only had 54. So I think we did a great job, but there's still a couple of plays here and there that could have helped us out more.

Q. Bennett, obviously, family tradition there with this program. You've had opportunities to play in some big games. What do you take away from your experience that you've had here at UNI?
BENNETT KOCH: I think it's been an absolutely fantastic experience, getting to know the coaches so well over these -- how long has it been, 12 years? A long time. It's been a blast throughout the entire time. Family's always been very supportive. I don't know how my parents do it. They drive to almost every game for 12 years. That's a lot of mileage.

But it's been fantastic. I wouldn't want to have gone anywhere else other than UNI.

Q. Ben, what did you want to do defensively today with them? Was it basically kind of get Custer out of his rhythm? Was that something you wanted to do today?
BEN JACOBSON: Yeah, that would -- that would certainly have been part of it. I think more -- they get you in a lot of ways. So you've got to figure out which of those ways you can try to limit, and the transition was one of them, and Custer would be a part of that. That outside ball screen where he takes it to the outside and he gets himself in behind the basket and gets everybody looking at him. You saw a lot of that in the first half. Trying not to commit too many guys to him in that spot or trying to stop him high enough on the floor.

And then working so that he wasn't able to get into some spots. Instead of always switching, trying to get out and deny him a little bit on some dribble-handoff stuff. So there were things that applied to him but also just generally, when playing against Loyola right now, you've got to do that. You've got to slow them down in transition. You've got to try to find a way to not get stretched out.

And those are things that all play into his hands. I thought -- again, I thought for a lot of the game, for a lot of possessions, we did a good job and made it hard on them, and the guys did a good job with Custer. I mean, he ends up 1 of 7, and there's a handful of those he felt he was going to make most of the time. He missed a couple of layups. But even in saying that, we did a good job with him.

Q. Coach, your teams always do a very good job of controlling tempo. Did you think you had the tempo where you wanted it to today most of the game?
BEN JACOBSON: Yeah. The other part of playing against Loyola is they don't -- they send most of their guys back in defensive transition. Most times when a shot is taken, they're sending four players back before that ball even gets to the rim. So they don't allow you many opportunities in transition.

We got some yesterday, and I thought that helped us in the Evansville game. They're just hard to come by against Loyola because of the way they're structured. So we would have liked to have found a couple more things in transition. I felt like we gave them a couple too many, and they may have been after a turnover, maybe not after a missed shot, but I felt like we gave them a couple too many transition baskets.

The one at the end of the first half, for example, we turned it over on a play that we don't need to make, and they come down and hit a three right at the end of the half. Those are the -- that part of the tempo, when you're playing against Loyola, that's where they end up getting you. You make a mistake, and they turn it into quick points. We didn't have a lot of those today, but this is the kind of team that, boy, you just can't make mistakes against them because they turn them in to points.

So I thought the tempo was fine for us and what I expected coming into this game. We just had three or four possessions where we weren't able to slow them in transition, and they were able to get baskets that were too easy.

Q. Coach, with your offense there second half, you had about a ten-minute stretch where you couldn't get anything to fall really. What did you kind of see as a struggle? Is it something they're doing or something your team is doing or a little bit of both there?
BEN JACOBSON: Yeah, on a deal like that, I think it's always some of both. Because they're so efficient offensively, I think their defense gets overlooked. But you even saw the start of the game. We turned it over -- after turning it over yesterday four times in the entire game, we turned it over three or four times in the first three minutes. They've got a good presence about them defensively. They're mobile enough that they can switch almost everything point guard to power forward, and that takes you out of some things.

Now, once we settled in, we were fine in the first half, and then we played a good first half. That stretch in the second half, that part of it offensively not being able to get it down to the block, we wanted to throw it inside to Klint and Ben as often as we could and force them to have to defend that part of the floor or go in double, like they've done a lot, which was going to open up something else for us, and weren't able to get as many of those touches as we wanted.

But I think it was -- you know, we had the good stretch in the second half -- and this may be off of your question. But they had the momentum and the upper hand, and then we got it back. Hunter making -- you asked about Hunter making some jump shots, I mean, he -- Benny got some stuff going inside, and Hunter got some jump shots going. With nine minutes left, we have the momentum, we have the upper hand, and we have the lead. So that stretch hurt us, but, man, the guys, they still battled their tails off, and we still had all the important stuff with nine minutes to go.

Q. Coach, just your thoughts on what you got out of your team here down the stretch. I know it was another rough start to conference play. It seemed like they really had things figured out going into the tournament. Defensively especially, playing the way your good teams have played throughout.
BEN JACOBSON: Yeah, we had a great November/December, and that was fun. To be able to go basically two months and have -- beat some good teams and get a lot of momentum built up, a lot of confidence built up. That part of the season, obviously, was great for our guys.

Yeah, once you put yourself behind the 8 ball that much, at 0-5, everything's got to go perfect to finish in the top four. In saying that, we weren't too far off it. Even though we didn't find everything here until probably the last three weeks. But we were playing our best basketball when it mattered most. You like to do that as long as you can. I think we all, obviously, are in the same thought process. We want our team to be playing good basketball for as long as possible, but we were playing our best basketball when it mattered the most.

And we had -- I think no matter which way you slice this game up here, we had the same chance to win today as Loyola did, and they've got a terrific team. I'm just proud of our guys for -- we were fighting uphill the entire conference season, and we still played our best in the last three weeks. That says a lot about the four seniors we've got. Those guys were pretty special that way. They were going to do everything that they could within their power and with the influence they had on their teammates so that, no matter what our record was, we were going to play our best when it mattered the most, and they got that accomplished, and that's important. Those four guys deserve a ton of credit for that.

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