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MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 5, 2010Dwayne LathanHarry MarshallKevin McKennaST. LOUIS, MISSOURI Illinois St. - 69 COACH McKENNA: Well, I think Illinois State showed that they are a good team, and you know, real athletic team. They really capitalized on our turnovers. Again, I think we had 12 turnovers, which is a decent number for us, but they scored 20 points off those turnovers. I think that number kind of -- that's what kind of turned it right before the half is they got their heads up, and we had done a great job of I think of controlling tempo, changing our defenses and just keeping them off balance till that point. Obviously Harry hurt his foot real early in the game and wasn't close to being the explosive athlete that he is, and you know, that hindered him and hurt us. But he tried and he battled and he tried to give us what he could and he gave us what he could. You know, he's a heck of a competitor. We got some really good seniors, Harry and Rashad and Josh, I'm proud of them for hanging in there and we gave Illinois State a run for their money. Q. Can you describe when the injury occurred and what effect it had on him? HARRY MARSHALL: It happened early in the first half I think before the second media timeout. It's the same thing that happened four weeks ago. Just stepped on somebody's foot. I think re-stress fractured or however you want to say it. Just affected my quickness, like Coach said, my explosiveness. I just wanted to give it all, give my teammates a burst to see me out there and let them know that I was out there fighting with them. Q. Dwyane, can you describe the last five minutes or so of the first half? You played good defense on Illinois State, they were under 20 percent from the field, as Kevin mentioned, a couple turnovers got them rolling; can you express your disappointment in the fact they were able to get back in it and get their momentum back? DWAYNE LATHAN: I felt like we was sticking to the scouting report the whole time. Everybody was doing what we was supposed to be doing. Everybody was playing like we was supposed to be playing. But we just let a couple mistakes just compound into more of them. And a good team like that, you have too many mistakes and too many turnover, give them a chance to get a run in, they are going to do that. They are going to make a good run just like we would if it was the other way around. Q. Dwayne, did you feel like Illinois State played a little bit off the momentum they had in the first half and translated to their defense in the second half and maybe forced you guys into some shots that were maybe a little rushed or in a hurry? DWAYNE LATHAN: I give them a lot of credit. They played a good game, but I feel like -- I feel like we hurt ourselves just as much as they did with the turnovers and some of the missed assignments and missed block outs. They are still a good team, but I felt like we just slipped up a couple of times that we shouldn't have. Q. What was the key to the fast start you guys had tonight? COACH McKENNA: Well, I think, you know, our plan was to guard their ball screens a little different. You know, we had guarded a certain way the previous two times, and we had been working on some other things. And then we zoned some and just tried to really keep them off balance and I thought we did a good job of that. Coach Cunningham and all of our coaches just kind of put together something that we thought would be effective, and it was. You know, not having Harry at full strength really hinders our team, our ball handling isn't near as good. But you look at what Harry did guarding, in my opinion, one of the best players in our league and holding them for 10-for-39 for three games, that's pretty darned good. And if he's not an all defensive player, or if not the best defensive player in our league, leading scorer in our league -- you know, to me, he's a top player in this league, no question. He proved it all year long. It's just too bad that he got hurt tonight. Not to take anything away from Illinois State; I would have liked to have seen what Harry could do at full strength for this whole game. But that's just part of kind of what we've dealt with all year, tough injuries that we try to overcome and like I said our guys battle and I'm proud of their effort. Q. Seemed like the momentum Illinois State took into the half time was translated into their defensive side in the second half; did you see that from your perspective? COACH McKENNA: You know, we still didn't create enough offense from our defense like they did. I mean, again, 12 turnovers that we had led to 20 points. You know, their 11 offensive rebounds was 15 points. Last time those two stats was 44 points. We did a better job and cut it down, but that's still a big number. We talked about cutting the number in half. We weren't able to do that. The turnovers led to direct points. When we had a lot of momentum -- we had a lot of stuff going. We had a lot of things going, when it was 28-16, we had them back on their heels at both ends. You know, defensively, I thought -- heck, we held them to 35 percent. We fouled a little bit too much there -- we did foul at the end probably four or five times because we had to to try to stay in the game but we still fouled a little bit too much and just made a few mistakes here and there that cost us. Q. You walk away from this one knowing that the season probably will continue in some fashion. What's your take on that, and do you know to what extent Harry might be able to play if you guys do go on? COACH McKENNA: I would like to say we are going to play again and we are going to pursue any kind of tournament we can. We want to play. Our guys want to play. I've talked to Ron about wanting to play. He's in agreement with that. I think we are a tournament-worthy team. I think we showed that tonight. Obviously, you know, Harry will get checked out when we get back. I was worried about hurting Harry worse. I didn't want him to hurt himself. I didn't want him to feel like he had to give us something when he really couldn't. You know, it's a fine line between knowing what's inside of that young man and having it hurt him even more or hurt our team. You know, we'll have the docs check him out when we get back and hopefully for Harry's sake he has some more games left in him. End of FastScripts |
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