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MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 6, 2010Ali FarokhmaneshBen JacobsonMarc SonnenST. LOUIS, MISSOURI Northern Iowa - 57 THE MODERATOR: Regular season champions are with us. We'll have Coach Ben Jacobson give us a brief synopsis of the game, then questions for the two student-athletes. COACH JACOBSON: We were sharper today to start the basketball game. I thought our offense was quite a bit sharper. Our cutting was better, our movement was better, our screening was better. And that, obviously, was going to be important today with the way that Bradley defends. Their man-to-man has been good. They have the ability to switch their defenses. That really helped us. Our offense was much sharper today than it was early yesterday. I thought the guys defended pretty well. I thought they did a good job of defending. Didn't rebound well enough in the first half, but I think they rebounded better in the second half. Q. What does it mean to you to go to the championship game tomorrow? ALI FAROKHMANESH: It means a lot. I mean we've been working towards that goal the entire year. Just finally to realize that we're going to be playing in the game tomorrow means a whole lot to me and our whole team. We set our goal from the beginning of the year, and I think we're starting to reach a couple of them. Q. There was a stretch there early in the second half where you guys weren't shooting particularly well and could have let Bradley back into the game. What were you saying during timeouts and in the huddle that kept your spirits high and got you back on track? MARC SONNEN: Good thing we did,you know we had to pick up and play defense hard and guard the ball. Try to get into the post and outside shots when we were working as well. So we tried to do that more and guard the ball and not give them any easy looks. Q. There was a point at 8 minutes in the game where you had a 7 or 8 point lead in the game. How big of a stretch was that and talk about the overall bench effort from those five guys? ALI FAROKHMANESH: It was amazing. It's nice to know when you come out of the game that most of the time they're going to keep the lead or increase it by five or six or seven points. It's a huge difference in a basketball game where on three days you're playing a ton of basketball and to have a bench like that that can score eight, nine points with four different people, that's huge. Q. You're one of the guys that's been through this and went through it last year. Going through the regular season and getting to this point in the title game, was it harder this year because of everybody last year a little out of nowhere with a 6 and 6 start, was it harder to get to this point than maybe a year ago? ALI FAROKHMANESH: It's hard every year to get to this point. I don't think it was any different than last year. Everybody gives their best. In this league you have to come in night in and night out. I don't think it was harder this year than last year. It's been that hard every single year, so. Q. Other than the North Dakota game where I think you had 20 points, is this one of the first times all year whereas a freshman you were just out there playing, and you weren't thinking and you were totally comfortable out there? MARC SONNEN: It could be, but I feel a lot comfortable with my teammates. And having the coaches in the game we have a lot of leaders on our team, so they always make you feel comfortable. In this game I hit a few more shots so it made me feel comfortable. But having teammates like that, they're always encouraging you to shoot the next one and get the ball on post. They're always encouraging, so I'm always comfortable out there. Q. Yesterday you had a sluggish start in the game. Today it was just the opposite. What made the difference? ALI FAROKHMANESH: I think it really helped us when we jumped off to that good start right away when we scored a couple baskets in the beginning. That was probably one of the biggest things. When we start off good with a couple of baskets in the beginning of the game, that definitely jump starts our offense. When one guy makes a shot, the next guy makes a shot, and that's kind of contagious I guess. MARC SONNEN: It's contagious when you have players that are hitting shots. And after the two games we played against them before we wanted to come out strong against them and play as hard as we can. We wanted to do the best we can to have teammates out there hitting shots, playing defense hard. I think they boost how we play, our toughness and things like that. Q. Both your games with Bradley this year were tight games. If you could point to a couple things today that were different, what would they be? ALI FAROKHMANESH: Probably just our overall defense and rebounding. They're extremely athletic. They get a lot of offensive rebounds and leave easy baskets for them. We didn't give up that many easy baskets tonight. Also, I think Sam is a great player and he's so tough to guard and does so many great things for them, he was one of our main focuses tonight to kind of slow him down a little bit. Q. What does it mean to this team to be the top seed in this tournament? MARC SONNEN: It means a lot. We have a lot of seniors that have been working so hard. Our whole team's doing so good and working so hard together. Having leaders like that it helps our No. 1 seed to give us encouragement to do good. We want to do it for all of us. Like the coaching staff and the fans. To be able to come out and help them do the best we can. Q. How much fun is it to play with Lucas? ALI FAROKHMANESH: It's really fun to play with Lucas. You know if you're setting up a ball screen, you're probably going to get open. So it's always fun to play with a guy like that. Also you know he's going to give his A-effort every single night. Night in, night out. Doesn't matter what's going on, he's always going to be there. He's a guy you can definitely trust on the basketball court. Q. You talked about the quick turn around. How much of a factor does fatigue play with a quick turn around for the Championship game tomorrow? MARC SONNEN: Well, that was the first time for me. It's hard playing after another game after having won last night. But I think playing the earlier game helped us out get a little bit relaxed. Just us relaxing and spending time with each other and that and just stretching after the game especially, and getting the ice that we need. We can relax and get fluids. That helps us out with the fatigue. Q. Before the season, Coach had always talked about your conditioning and how you've kind of upped that this year. Now you're down the road in tournament play, how much does that focus on conditioning help you guys out down the road? ALI FAROKHMANESH: It's definitely helped us. Can you tell with almost all our players that we were more conditioned than we were in previous years. But also having that bench behind us. I mean, we only have to play 20 minutes a game, you have other guys stepping up playing 15, 16 minutes making big plays for us. It makes it a whole lot easier and we don't need as much rest now. Q. Talk about playing in the Championship game as well as you played defense today. Do you have a preference for who you play tomorrow? Does it matter who you play if you guys play this well? ALI FAROKHMANESH: We're just excited to be in the championship game. Either team's going to be a battle. It's always tough with Illinois State. They haven't had a single game in the double digits, and then Wichita's always tough. They play a lot like us. It's going to be hard in those games either way. It's just exciting to know that we're in the championship game already. MARC SONNEN: Same thing. I'm just glad to be there and so is our team for how hard we played. The defense has to play the same for either team we play against. Both have really good players. So either one we play, they're both really good teams. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. We'll dismiss you and stay with Coach Jacobson a while longer. Q. Did Marc Sonnen and Anthony change so today that your guard court's going to be in good shape here for the future? COACH JACOBSON: I tell you what I like most, they're into the seniors, they're into the older guys. They do a great job of listening and great job of learning. When their number is called, they've responded this year. And when you're in that situation and you're not playing the same minutes every night or he they really fluctuate, it's hard to be ready hard to perform your number. When Johnny missed a couple of games with the ankle injury, both of those guys played very well. Tonight I felt that Anthony James could give us defensive presence against man Maniscalco. He was ready to do that and he did a good job. I think both guys are just really into their teammates right now. Q. Maniscalco had a huge game yesterday for 31 points. Did you guys do anything differently today? COACH JACOBSON: We felt we had to get the balls out of his hands as soon as we could. We kept the ball screen a little longer than we normally do because we wanted the ball out of his hands. He was terrific yesterday and he really does a great job with his presence. We made it possible for him without leaving a bunch of open shots for the rest of the guys. Q. Can you talk about Marc's development offensively? And specifically defensively a couple of strips he had early. And your trust in him in big games like this down the stretch? COACH JACOBSON: He came in as a good defender, and I think he's made some improvements there. And he's playing against juniors and seniors as a freshman, and they turn the corner on you. Now he's able to guard them without fouling. That's certainly helped him. He's a little farther along offensively, mostly in terms of making three-point shots. You know, he's always been very good with the ball in his hands. He's always been able to drive it. He's done those things very well throughout his career. But he's shot the three-point shot well at times when we've needed it. At Missouri State when we needed it, today when we needed it. He was really good in that first half. He was terrific. I just think -- he mentioned it. His teammates have a lot of confidence in him. When the older guys, the seniors and juniors have confidence in those freshmen, whether those freshmen will admit it or not, that's the biggest key. It doesn't matter what I think. If those juniors and seniors have confidence in them, that's the difference. Q. Talk about how this year's tournament and the approach your team's taking is different than last year? And would you say your team's playing the best basketball of the year right now? COACH JACOBSON: I don't know that our approach has been any different coming into this tournament. They approach things the same way. Came down here with the same mindset. Wanted to do everything we could to be playing tomorrow afternoon on CBS. So really not doing things differently. I guess just the overall experience that we've got on this basketball team is probably the difference in what we had last year at this time. Q. You pride yourself on your defense with this team. But you came out and shot almost 50% in the first half with just two turnovers. When your on fence is playing that well, it's got to make the Panthers a tough outing in any tournament? COACH JACOBSON: Yeah, I felt we had some good looks in the second half. Now I do recall thinking halfway through the first half that Bradley had missed some open shots as well. Usually when your defense is going really good, the other team is missing a couple of looks for you, and Bradley had some stuff around the basket. We were fortunate they missed some of those shots. Again, our movement was better offense, our spacing was better offense. Because of that we were able to get some easy stuff around the rim. Open jump shots and when you can do that and you make a couple, both guys touched on that. You make a couple shots early, you set a good screen and get a guy freed up for a lay-up, when those things happen, that helps your confidence. That happened in the first half and that was the case. Q. Could you just say a little something to preview both Wichita State and Illinois State? What do you see in them having played them twice already this year? COACH JACOBSON: Illinois State has played their best basketball over the course of the last month. And I think that for two reasons their seniors have played great, and Tim has brought their team along. They've got good guys, junior college guys and freshmen that are playing great basketball right now. They're playing their best basketball over the course of the last month and present a number of challenges. We all know where they start with Eldridge, and Odiakosa. Wichita State has a very balanced team. They have depth that is productive. They have a great point guard. They've got size up front and they can bang you. Their two wings, Murry and Hatch, are two guys, Hatch for sure very underrated. Murry not as underrated, but I still don't think people give Murry enough credit for how good he is at both ends of the floor. Q. A key stretch seemed to be the first five minutes of the second half. Bradley had a chance. You started off kind of slow offensively. They had a chance to mount a comeback, but your defense wouldn't allow them to do that. Can you speak to how your kids -- even though they weren't getting their shots -- were able to buckle down defensively? COACH JACOBSON: That was key. I thought we had a couple of good looks. They were jump shots, but I felt they were good looks from Ali and Johnny. When you make a couple of those and it balloons to 20, you have a chance to keep it from getting really interesting. Now we miss those shots -- and we were fortunate on a couple of layoff opportunities. A couple of transition opportunities to roll out and stay 13 and of 16. If it gets under 10, there was still 14 or 15 minutes left. Bradley feels that they can win the basketball game. After we got through that five or six minutes, I think our defense settled in again. We were able to make a couple of baskets. So between getting a couple of rebounds, we were able to do that in the second half. Q. Your second team has had a lot of success. How much is that attributed to Lucas and the way he plays and his unselfish attitude? COACH JACOBSON: I think it gives the rest of the bench a lot of confidence. Because he played so hard and without any fear. All the way down to A.J. and Marc, this he play that same way. Because of the way Lucas approaches everything, that has certainly helped the three freshmen coming off the bench. You know, Kerwin's terrific. He's had two great years. Because of our personnel and the way things shake out with our team, he has had two perfect seasons he's played together here. But Luke's biggest impact has been on the three freshmen that came off the bench. Just giving those guys that energy and toughness that helps them as freshmen. Q. Two games you felt your opponent to 40 points. Does a little more go into that other than a couple of shooting performances? COACH JACOBSON: I felt like today that we did defend. Bradley missed a couple early and they missed a couple early in the second half. Other than those three or four minute stretches, I felt we defended well. We did a good job with Maniscalco today. Obviously a hard guy to contain. I thought our guys did a good job of changing things. Every four or five minutes we changed things in the way we defended our ball screen. Our players were able to do it. Go out and execute it. So I felt like we defended well both days. Q. What is your substitution philosophy? You had four or five subs in early in every game I've seen you play this year. What is your line of thinking? COACH JACOBSON: I'd like to get the four guys in before that first media timeout. I wanted them to get started before that 16 and under timeout if we can. I want them on the floor. Then tonight with A.J., again, I felt like he was the guy that could help us defensively. Those four guys have gone in around that 16 minute mark, sometimes it's the 17 and a half minute mark, depending on how the start of the game goes. But I want them in early so they can get moving around. If that starting group is playing great and we've got it rolling, I'll wait until after the timeout. But most of the time I want them in before that first media timeout so they can get things going. Q. Going back to Lucas, did you get any sense from him that there is extra motivation for him playing an hour away from his hometown in Nashville and friends and family? COACH JACOBSON: I don't know. I don't know if I know everything that motivates that guy. He's got it going all the time. He really does. He's extremely close with his family and his friends. He's that kind of kid. I'm sure that's added to his motivation. But he's tuned in all the time and cranked up all the time. I do know he enjoys being around his family and friends though. Q. Scoring 25 points off the bench today, is that going to change the starting lineup tomorrow or how you use your bench at all? COACH JACOBSON: I think we'll stay with the same starting lineup. The guys on the bench, they have been really good all year, they have. And I just like the confidence that they play with. I think again they gain a lot of that confidence from the older guys on our team. There isn't anything with those five guys that are starting the basketball game, they know what their job is. They take a lot of pride in that. The guys on the bench are going to play well and be productive. If they aren't playing well, that's why we use our bench. They take a lot of pride in those five guys coming in and playing good basketball. It's really been a team deal. So we'll continue with that rotation again tomorrow. End of FastScripts |
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