MOUNTAIN WEST MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 15, 2024

Danny Sprinkle

Great Osobor

Ian Martinez

Thomas & Mack Center

Utah State Aggies

Postgame Press Conference

San Diego State 86, Utah State 70

THE MODERATOR: For Utah State we have student-athletes, Great Osobor, Ian Martinez.

Coach Danny Sprinkle, thoughts on today's game?

DANNY SPRINKLE: I thought it was a competitive game. I want to give San Diego State credit. They were the tougher team, the more physical team. They kind of brought the fight, and we didn't respond at times.

That's what San Diego State does to people. You have to punch back, and I thought we did early. We had some careless fouls. Great picking up his second. He's too good of a player to pick up a foul like that, and that changed the game. I think they outscored us by 14 the last six and a half minutes of that first half, but it was toughness plays.

We didn't box out at the free-throw line. When we did get it, they just took it from us. There was a lot. I thought we had probably six, seven rebounds tonight where we got it, and they just took it from us. And that's a toughness issue that we're going to correct before the NCAA Tournament.

A lot of credit. I was concerned before the game with Micah Parrish and Reese Waters -- Dixon-Waters. Because they're really, really good scorers. They were due to break out at some point. Like, they're too talented of scorers to play how they kind of have been playing. I thought both of those guys were terrific today.

LeDee got in foul trouble too, but I thought he came out the second half, and he came out with a different mindset. They went to him right away, and it seemed like he scored five or six right in a row and kind of got them rolling.

We couldn't get shots. We had a couple good looks from three in that second half, and we just didn't make them. We were 5 of 20. It seemed like Ian was the only one that kind of made them all game.

We had some pretty good looks. Against a good defensive team like San Diego State, you have to make those to have a chance.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes.

Q. Coach, talk about moving forward. Obviously you wanted to win tonight, and you want to win this tournament. You're going to play somebody you haven't seen all year, they haven't seen you. Talk about what are the one or two things your team really needs to do well moving forward to advance in this tournament. You have some good inside and outside play. Give us a couple of things that, boy, if we tighten up a couple of these areas, we have a chance to make a dent in the tournament next week?

DANNY SPRINKLE: We need to get tougher and a lot more physical. That showed tonight, and we're going to find a way to get that done. I promise you that.

Q. How do you do that?

DANNY SPRINKLE: We'll find out in practice. We'll be a lot better in that first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Then we have to clean up -- sometimes we play a little bit too much iso ball. The ball gets sticky, and we don't have enough ball and body movement at times, and that's when our offense gets a little stagnant, so we have to correct that.

Q. Great, how do you feel like that second foul and then kind of sitting for a while impacted your performance because you started out pretty well and then petered out going into the second half?

GREAT OSOBOR: Yeah, as a veteran leader on this team I need to be better to know that I can't pick that second foul up. Then I think I sat for like the last eight minutes of the first half. Then it was just getting back into rhythm. I think it took me a little too long to get back into rhythm after that.

You know, I just need to be better knowing when to reach and stuff like that.

Q. For both of you players. 45 total fouls in this game. How did how the officials were calling this game change how your offensive approach develop throughout the game?

IAN MARTINEZ: We knew it was going to be a physical game, so personally we weren't expecting for anything. We knew it was going to be tough the way San Diego State plays. So, yeah, our mentality was just kind of control what we can control, don't worry about the rest, and we just have to do what the game plan, you know -- what Coach said. Yeah, we didn't do it at the best of our abilities, but we just got to be better next time.

GREAT OSOBOR: Yeah, the whole tournament I feel like they've been happy with the whistle, and we thought, Okay, we're going to be physical, but obviously, you have to be physical without fouling at this level because San Diego State is a really good, physical team.

They exposed some stuff like us coming down on drives and stuff. We need to be better and get better for that for the NCAA Tournament. Big credit to them. They won today.

Q. This is for both of you guys. The student section was up in the upper bowl, and throughout the game you could rarely hear what they were saying or chanting. How do you think that affected momentum shifts for you guys?

IAN MARTINEZ: When we're at home, we always have a great crowd. So at times I feel like that energy could have helped us a little bit more, especially being away from home.

Yeah, definitely we could have benefited from that in the runs that we had during the game. Also, you know, coming back from when the other teams got on the run.

GREAT OSOBOR: Yeah, obviously the HURD is a big part of who we are at Utah State. Big appreciation for them even showing up in Vegas. It speaks of their love for the university and their love for us.

I wish they could have been right there like they normally are in The Speck, but you have to deal with this part of the game, you know.

Q. Coach, with your experiences in the NCAA Tournament, how do you get across the urgency of the next five or six days that are coming knowing it's a one-game season? How do you react to that and all that good stuff? Talk about just the next four, five days for you guys, the urgency of, hey, there's no more tomorrow. We have about five or six minutes like you did here into the first half, start of the second half. Our hard work of six months is over.

DANNY SPRINKLE: What was the beginning part of that question?

Q. With your experience with the successes of the NCAA Tournament, talking about how you get across the urgency of what they're facing ahead coming up in the next six, seven days and to understand that every four-minute time-out, every careless turnover, every careless foul adds up and could lead to a disaster?

DANNY SPRINKLE: Yeah, we only have a handful of guys that have played in the NCAA Tournament or have witnessed it. You have to play desperate. You have to play desperate, and you have to be tough and physical. I expect our team to respond.

Sometimes losing games helps you win the next game. I think that's going to be the case with this because it showed what we need to work on this time of year. When it's March, you have to put your big boy pants on, man. It's "go time." We had a couple of guys that did not do that today. We'll make sure that they're ready whether it's Thursday or Friday, whenever we play.

The urgency and desperation you have to play with every possession, every free-throw box-out, you have to set great screens and take care of the basketball because one bad turnover, one missed box-out can end your season.

THE MODERATOR: I'm going to dismiss the student-athletes at this time. Thank you, men. Questions for Coach.

Q. Two questions, tactical. One when Great got his second foul, you decided not to play him. Dutch, who almost never plays guys with two fouls, played Jaedon LeDee. Was that just a function of the score, or what was the thinking there?

DANNY SPRINKLE: Yeah, we try not to play guys with two fouls too. There's been a couple of times, like actually yesterday we had to do it with one of our guards. But we knew if Great was in there, they'd just keep throwing it into LeDee. Both of those two are two of the best players in the country at drawing fouls.

With the lead that we had at the time, we didn't want to risk getting Great his third foul. I would rather try to go in up 10 or 11, but then it just got out of hand there. Obviously Trammell hit a huge shot at the end of the half that we didn't contest.

That's what they do. That's why they're a great program. They fight you for 40 minutes, and they make you earn it. I knew they were going to get back into the game. I was hoping we would make a couple of shots or make some more toughness plays, but when you are playing a great team, that's what happened.

Q. Late in the game you only had three team fouls, and you start fouling to get to seven. I think it was still almost three minutes left.

DANNY SPRINKLE: Yeah.

Q. What was the thinking there?

DANNY SPRINKLE: I didn't want to get it to where it was a 10, 12 point game and there's only two minutes left. Then you're just in a rush to foul. I wanted to get those fouls out of the way, so that way we could kind of hopefully get some of the guys that we wanted for them to shoot free-throws to get up there and we could just kind of elongate the game.

Q. Mason Falslev had a couple of crafty finishes at the rim that really just showed how talented of a player he is, but he only he ended up playing 19 minutes. Was that more of a coaching decision, or was that because of the shoulder injury?

DANNY SPRINKLE: Mostly the injury. He kind of banged it up a little bit in the second half -- early in the second half, when he went up to contest. I think Parrish hit a three, and he went up to contest and kind of jerked, and I saw him kind of holding it.

Q. I also have two questions. This isn't the way you drew up the tournament to end. What did you say in the locker room to ease the loss?

DANNY SPRINKLE: I told them we have a lot of work to do. Thank God that we still have one more game. A lot of teams don't have another game. We have a chance to bounce back from some of the things that I've kind of mentioned that we need to work on. We're very fortunate that we have another game to hopefully correct that.

Q. I hope this is a little bit of a different question, but how are you going to use this loss to build for the NCAA Tournament?

DANNY SPRINKLE: Any time you lose, it shows what you need to work on. We still have to clean some things up, even though it's March, like every team. Going into this tournament, we are going to have to play -- we're going to have to be running on a high level if we want to have a chance. Because every team we play from here on out is going to be a great team.

It will be similar to a Mountain West type schedule. Every night, there's no days off. We'll have to clean up a lot of things offensively with kind of our flow and our pace, and we've got to be tougher on the boards.

Q. In a Big 12 tournament before I've heard Bill Self saying one of the thrills of going to the NCAA is that all the teams in the conference are just so sick of each other. This league from afar, it looked so rugged this year. Do you have that feeling going into the tournament?

DANNY SPRINKLE: Even looking at all these signs, I'm tired of seeing some of these logos. It is, but that's the great thing about the Mountain West is it builds you for the tournament because every game we play is like a tournament game.

The atmospheres that we play in, the venues in the Mountain West Conference are tremendous. The intensity, the physicality, all that is going to help our whole entire league once we get to the tournament.