	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

STATE FARM MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 5, 2020

St. Louis, Missouri - Arch Madness

Drake - 75, Illinois State - 65

THE MODERATOR: Illinois State Redbirds are with us. Head coach Dan Muller is flanked by Keith Fisher, III and Zach Copeland. We're going to ask Dan to open up with a statement on this game and we'll go to questions for all three representatives of Illinois State.

DAN MULLER: Credit to Drake. They competed. The start of the second half obviously killed us with our turnovers, but I thought Drake really played a great game, and Coach DeVries did a heck of a job. Always tough to lose your last game and not be able to coach your seniors again. Proud of how we fought back, but obviously, it was too little, too late.

Q. Zach, could you talk about the start of the second half? It seemed like you guys had all the momentum from the first two minutes of the first half. Why weren't you able to bring that back out to start the second half?
ZACH COPELAND: Just defense, defensive breakdowns, turnovers. That's what it really came down to. We fought. I thought those guys did a great job while I was out fighting back. I love those guys, man. They left it all out there for me when I wasn't in. That's what I'm most proud about. They gave it their all, and that's all you can ask.

Q. Dan, can you talk more about Torres leading that charge in the second half, sparking the team?
DAN MULLER: Ricky came in and did a great job. Makes a three, makes three free throws, gets the pullup, really was a big part of the comeback. Ricky is a great kid. He hasn't had the season he wanted to, a lot of guys haven't, but in particular, Ricky. Part of the reason that D.J. Horne had the year he had was because of Ricky Torres. He was selfless from the beginning, which is pretty unique, especially a guy who comes in for one year, but he was terrific during that stretch. Like I said, it certainly wasn't enough, but we did keep fighting.

Q. Coach, what was the mentality at halftime when your team was down? Do you try to tell them that you're still in it and you guys have a chance?
DAN MULLER: Yeah, we talked about having momentum. Going into the locker room, it was our ball, and we came back and made a couple of big plays down the stretch there and felt like we could make some adjustments that we talked about because we had nine turnovers in the first half. So we talked about how not to turn the ball over, a couple of adjustments, and thought we had a great mindset coming out of the locker room. Obviously, the start of the second half did not show that, but, again, it was the turnovers. I think we had six turnovers in the first five minutes of the second half, and when you do that, you're going to be in trouble, especially with a team like Drake who pushes so hard to take advantage of it.

Q. Coach, was the matchup between Abdou and Robbins not really working throughout the first half?
DAN MULLER: Robbins is hard for us to guard. We talked about that going into the game. He's so much bigger than us. Abdou did a solid job at times. Ray did a solid job at times. But the bottom line, he's just bigger and more physical than our guys. They just throw the ball up to him. I wouldn't say anything in particular about Abdou's matchup, but Dou struggles to score, so when you get down, it's hard to play him. We needed some scorers out there. But he is a tough matchup for us.

Q. Keith, can you just talk about -- you guys have been playing pretty well the last three weeks or so. To go out this way with some of the problems that kind of reared their head all season, how tough is that to kind of fathom?
KEITH FISHER: Just really tough, it hurts. Really wanted this win for my seniors and for the rest of my brothers and my coaches and things like that. I love playing with these guys, especially the three guys I won't be able to play with for the rest of my college career. It's extremely tough. It hurts like hell.

Q. Zach, final game as a Redbird. What kind of emotions are running through you right now?
ZACH COPELAND: Definitely sad that I won't be able to play anymore. Play for Coach Muller, play with these guys. We built such a good chemistry. Actually, both years I've been here, both teams I've played with, I've built such good relationships with these guys. I'm going to really miss them. For Coach Muller, he's taught me so much, helped me so much through this process. I'm really just grateful and blessed to be able to say I played for Illinois State.

Q. Dan, could you just talk about defensively, obviously, the zone did not work as well as it did when you played Drake the last time, but to their credit, they shot the ball much better than they did from three.
DAN MULLER: We knew it could be an issue. It wasn't just their shooting. They were getting the ball inside a little bit better. We talked about how we did struggle to guard them in man. It was just a tough matchup for us with the big fella. Transition, again, our turnovers, we let their only great shooter make five threes. We had emphasis on that. Just some of our issues over the course of the season showed itself. Some of the inconsistency defensively, turnovers, lulls in scoring the ball. But they are a tough matchup for us because of Robbins.

Q. With D.J.'s struggled play, do you think the moment might have been a little too big for him first time around?
DAN MULLER: No, not at all. They did a great job defensively on D.J. He struggled to make shots. They're big around the rim. I thought he did a lot of really good things. A couple of his turnovers weren't really his fault, a couple of passes missed. But D.J. is a competitor. He was in there during the part we came back, so not at all about the moment. He didn't have a great game, but, no, he was ready for tonight.

Q. For both the players, when you look back on this season, where are you going to look at where maybe there were some shortcomings this season? Obviously, you guys started pretty well and just kind of went down for a while until the end here.
KEITH FISHER: I would say it's tough to just think right now because of the emotions and things like that. Throughout the season, we had one player after another have like sort of a drought, or if you want to call it that, a bad play. That hurt us a lot. I don't think we ever had a game this season where all of our players were hitting on the same cylinders and things like that other than -- I don't think any game this season we had that.

So it's a lot of things to look back on, think about this season that I have to take, and I have another year. So it's a blessing that I get to have this experience and be able to take all this and get back at it and try to come back next year and be better.

I really wish we could have did something special. We had a really, really special group. We obviously underachieved so much, but we are a very, very special group.

ZACH COPELAND: For me, just the way we started off the season, I'll look back and really reminisce on how good we were playing. We kind of fell off in the middle of the season just with inconsistency from players, and obviously, that hurt us, but it happens. I don't blame those guys or discourage those guys. I've seen them go to work every day, work hard every day. So I'm going to take the good moments and just keep them close to me.

Q. Coach, looking at the totality of the whole season, is there one thing that you kind of take away that you can kind of take toward next season, something that you maybe learned that you would maybe do differently or just something you would take into next year?
DAN MULLER: There's a lot of things. You've got to look back and reflect and self-evaluate. Absolutely, there are things I would have done differently. It's tough to know exactly what those are right now as we're in the middle of it. It's my responsibility to put a team out there that represents this university the right way, and to no fault of the players, we didn't do that. So that falls on me.

This program means a lot to me, a lot, and it's just really disappointing to have those fans out there because we've got great fans. It's hard for me. I love these kids. We've got a great group of guys, high character. We didn't play the way we wanted to, but a lot to learn from for next year without a doubt.

But I'm proud of this group because of the guys that they are. It doesn't make it better. It doesn't excuse the season we had. But I love this group of guys. I'm going to miss coaching them, like really. I'm really going to miss coaching them, even though we didn't have a great year, because they're good dudes. They're just going to be successful in life, and I'm happy about that. But it is tough, obviously.

THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297