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STATE FARM MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 9, 2019

St. Louis, Missouri - Arch Madness

Bradley - 53, Loyola - 51

THE MODERATOR: The winning Braves are here. They're in their first final since 2006. They'll play the winner of Drake and Northern Iowa. Coach Brian Wardle is with us, flanked by Nate Kennell and Elijah Childs.

BRIAN WARDLE: It was a great basketball game. I got a lot of respect for Porter, his staff, that program. Those two senior guards they have are winners and very good players, but this isn't a shock to us. I think it's only a shock to everybody here, besides us up here. We expected to win this game. We were fully confident in our game plan, if we executed it, that we'd be in position to win, and we just made some big plays.

It was a hard fought game. Both teams were running on fumes. Legs weren't there. Shots weren't going in, shots at the rim, but it just kind of came down to heart and finding ways to get loose balls, 50-50 balls, and I just thought we battled to the very end, and we made enough plays to win.

But it was a great college basketball game. Very proud of these guys, another step for our program, but we've got one more game to play, and that's what we came to St. Louis for this year was to put ourselves in this position and have an opportunity to win a championship.

Q. Wondering if you could elaborate on what you started with, saying it's not a shock to you. What have you seen from the team, maybe especially lately, that made you feel so confident coming into this game?
BRIAN WARDLE: We won eight out of the last ten. Even in our losses, I thought we ran into some teams on the road that were playing very well, and I thought we could always play smarter against Loyola. Last game at Loyola, I thought they played really well. They shot the ball tremendous. Those seniors were kind of on a mission to win at home.

We made a lot of mistakes in that game, mental mistakes, that I felt today we did not. We knew it was going to be a defensive battle, came down to rebounding and defense. When you're a competitive group and you can defend and rebound, even when the shots aren't going in, the threes -- even though we missed a lot of bunnies at the rim too, you have something to fall back on.

I was proud of how our guys kept battling, kept their heads, and guys made big shots. Nate hit that big three. Darrell had a big three. Eli got a pullup and a couple of offensive rebounds. D-Lo was doing D-Lo things out there and getting the loose balls.

That's what it takes to win this time of year, and we were able to make those plays.

Q. Coach, wanted to ask you about your defense on Townes, what your team did strategically to have him miss 14 field goal attempts.
BRIAN WARDLE: Well, I thought we did a great job of going under the ball screens. We wanted him to shoot contested midrange, if we could. At the end of the game, I thought we did a great job of switching ball screens on him and trying to take Krutwig's dives away but have hands on him at all time. Every time he drove right, we wanted to load and flood to the ball and contest weak shots as best we could. I don't know how many blocks we had. We had nine. I thought we were really great on the weak side help defense.

Townes is a great player. I thought we did a good job on him, but some guys just missed some shots. But we never let him get in rhythm, and that was a big key.

Q. Brian, one question for you, and a question for both Eli and Nate: Almost half your roster is from outside of the United States. So my question to you, Brian, is how do you find these guys? And then for Eli and Nate, how do you guys build the chemistry when you have so many foreign born players?
THE MODERATOR: Let's go to student-athletes first. Nate and then Elijah.

NATE KENNELL: I think it's just camaraderie. We've gotten to know each other so well. We've got senior guys that have been here for so long. We were even able to go visit some of the places where a lot of the guys are from. We're all one and the same, and we've just become a really close team.

Q. Where did you go?
ELIJAH CHILDS: We went to Europe, to London and Amsterdam.

NATE KENNELL: I think we just gelled off the court. Big thing was gelling off the court. We hang off the court, and I think everybody is like everybody. We don't care about individual athletes. Everybody wants to win. We all have a common goal. When everybody have a common goal and stay focused on that and come out with wins like this.

THE MODERATOR: Brian, where did you find them?

BRIAN WARDLE: All over. When I took over in the job, it was a little late in recruiting, and we had to fill eight or nine scholarships. At that point, there weren't a lot of options in the state. We went internationally. We built relationships over there and built a network, and it's kind of fed off each other.

Bradley University is a very diverse university, tremendous education, great campus for our international students. They feel very comfortable there. They feel family oriented there. And I think the success and their feelings have now spread out over in Europe and all over that this is a great university for young men and young women to come to outside of America. So we just kind of built a little network, and they're all unselfish guys. The gratitude is through the roof with my international guys. They love these settings. They don't get these settings back home a whole lot and these opportunities.

I thought Luuk van Bree, D-Lo, our seniors laid it on the line today. It wasn't perfect basketball. I told them we don't have to play perfect today, but we need to talk. We need to be physically and mentally tough for four games, and I thought we did that.

Q. For Nate, I wanted to ask you about your three-point shooting, and I guess two questions. One is, growing up in the area, did you practice shooting in the backyard or somewhere like postseason shots for Bradley? And then second of all, just your mindset heading into this game.
NATE KENNELL: I don't believe I would have been at Bradley when I was a little kid. I think the mindset coming in, I didn't have a really good game last game. Guys stayed positive with me and said, you're going to make the next shot. Credit to my teammates who kept finding me open and throwing it right in my pocket. From there, that's what really did it for me.

Q. Coach Wardle, yesterday you spoke about how Elijah was a very unique defensive player who could guard one to five and wasn't necessarily recognized. With his defensive impact, I'm curious what you think and what Elijah thinks about his ceiling going forward.
BRIAN WARDLE: I think with Elijah, he's a sophomore here, and he's got to do a lot of things for us offensively and defensively. He can switch. He can guard a point guard to a five man. We take advantage of that at times. He's a very talented offensive player, especially when he's been working hard on his premier jump shots and his premier game. It's paying off now a little bit, and he's a great one-on-one post player.

But what I'm more proud about Elijah is just he's matured throughout the year of handling the ups and downs of a game, and it's a lot of pressure, and I think we're trying to help him not put too much on his shoulders, just be you. I tell him do what you do, Elijah, and it's going to be good. It was good tonight. Five assists, double-double, two blocks, a steal. And there's even better basketball ahead for him, and I know it, and he knows it. As long as we keep maturing and working hard and his work ethic is increased, I think that's the biggest thing to know.

Nate is a gym rat, and Elijah has become a gym rat. I think that's what's fun about our program now. We've got a lot of gym rats. We do. We don't talk it. We actually do it. I think that's helped his career and for him to improve so much from freshman to sophomore year.

Q. Elijah, congratulations on your double-double.
ELIJAH CHILDS: Thank you.

Q. You guys really limited Krutwig. What did you do inside to try to limit him? He's had a great year?
ELIJAH CHILDS: We just played team defense. We didn't want him to back down, give him three, four dribbles because we knew he could hurt us if he had time and enough space. We played team defense. We had great help defense. I think guys came over and rotated. I think we had nine blocked shots. So we just rotated and paid collective team defense. That's the biggest thing.

Q. This is for Coach: You mentioned going up against Townes and Custer. Now that their career is potentially over, just hope you can speak to the impact they had on the league and what it's like going up against those guys.
BRIAN WARDLE: They're great competitors. Intangibles matter. Toughness is a talent. Not everyone is tough. Those two guys are tough, and it's a talent. And intangibles, the leadership, the hard work ethic, the willingness to be unselfish and sacrifice -- all those things matter, and you can tell their success at Loyola has been a lot because of those two. They've obviously got some other good players, but when you've got guys willing to sacrifice -- and I have them too. I've got guys. Darrell is in the huddle saying, let's get Eli to post up, we're going to you. When you have that unselfishness, it's fun to coach, and you can do some good things.

Q. Nate, Brian mentioned you're a gym rat, and I know your career throughout high school, you had that reputation throughout the year. When did you start establishing that relationship with the Bradley coaching staff? And what was it that eventually sold you on this being the place that you needed to go and could be a part of rebuilding the program.
NATE KENNELL: I think right when Coach Wardle got the job, they started recruiting me, and Coach and I just started to build that relationship. Coach Brian recruited me, and they were at all my AAU tournaments, and I could just tell they were invested in me, and I knew they felt I could make an impact on the team. So really just the coaches and the relationship and just being close that really sold me.

Q. This is for both Nate and Eli: You guys have beaten Loyola now three times in the last 13 months essentially and played them very tough. What is it that has convinced you guys, particularly as you've been building the program, that you can compete at that level and then overcome and beat them?
THE MODERATOR: Eli first.

ELIJAH CHILDS: Coach draws up a great game plan, and we know if we follow the game plan every game, especially this game, if we can follow the game plan, we can come out with a win. But my coaches and teammates, we just instill confidence in everybody. We don't get down. We don't get too up. Coach always says stay level headed. I think that's what we do and come out with wins.

NATE KENNELL: Can you repeat the question?

Q. How do you beat Loyola three times in 13 months when no one else can?
NATE KENNELL: Credit to the guys. We're just tough individuals. There's guys who are just willing to lay it on the line. We knew our streak could potentially be ended. We just didn't want to have that same feeling. We just really stuck together down there in the end.

Q. Coach, as you noted, you guys blocked nine shots, and you altered quite a few also. The officials kind of let everybody play, it seemed like, today.
BRIAN WARDLE: It was great.

Q. Did that play a role in you guys being more willing to take chances in challenging shots as the game went on?
BRIAN WARDLE: Yeah, we were jumping vertical shots. It was an athletic game. Let the athletes be athletes out there. I loved how it was being played. Both teams. I felt no one really got to the foul line. We were good like that. I think the players really liked that too.

Now, it can be a little bit of a grind offensively. Especially when you've got two defensive teams. These are both team defenses out there, guys protecting each other and having each other's back, so it could be a low-scoring game. I loved in the first half, I loved our pace. Even when we were turning the ball over and got a little aggressively wild, I thought we got Loyola playing that way with us. That was what we wanted. Second half we tried to maintain it. It was a little tougher with our legs, but protect the paint. Protect the paint. As good of shooters we have, they create so much with paint touches, and we wanted to protect that paint.

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