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MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 7, 2010J.T. DurleyClevin HannahGregg MarshallGarrett StutzST. LOUIS, MISSOURI Northern Iowa – 67 THE MODERATOR: The tournament runners-up are with us. Head Coach Gregg Marshall ask him to start off with a statement on this game, and go to questions for the three student athletes of Wichita State. Gregg, please? COACH MARSHALL: Well, it's obvious that we hit a real dry spell there at some point in the second half. I'm trying to get some clarification on exactly how long, then we'll have to figure out why. But they were definitely down the stretch, the better team. We had a good run but weren't able to finish, so congratulations to them. Q. You guys were the first team in the tournament to score over 40 points on UNI. Then obviously in the second half there is a 12 minute and 14 second stretch where they went on without a bucket and they were a 23-3 run. For the players, what was going on in that stretch? There were a couple of buckets that the shot went halfway down and came out. What was going on? CLEVIN HANNAH: I think we did get a couple of good looks that we missed against a good team, good defensive team like they are. You've got to take advantage of the good looks that you did against them and knock them down, and we didn't do it. GARRETT STUTZ: We had good shots, just they didn't fall. I missed a couple of shots during that stretch, a lot of us did. And we fell for jump shots at that point. We didn't continue to be as aggressive as we were earlier in the game. Q. Northern Iowa was able to rest guys in their first two games. They had a little easier time in their games. Was fatigue any kind of a factor? J.T. DURLEY: No, fatigue really wasn't a factor. I mean just we got outplayed in the second half the last 12 or 14 minutes of the half. GARRETT STUTZ: I don't think fatigue was a factor either. We played hard all throughout the game and all throughout the tournament, and we just came up a little bit short. Q. Going into the halftime with the lead, what do you feel went wrong in the second half besides the scoring drought? GARRETT STUTZ: I'm not really sure. I've got a lot of things going through my mind right now. Effort was there, effort, passion and intensity was all there. We just couldn't finish, couldn't put the ball in the basket, and that will hurt you when you're playing a good team. Q. Can you just talk about now waiting to find out what's next, the three players, please? THE MODERATOR: Clevin, then Garrett and J.T., thank you. CLEVIN HANNAH: I guess we just wait it out and see where we stand. I know we'll be playing somewhere in some tournament hopefully. But just wait it out and get back to see what we can do to get better. GARRETT STUTZ: Yeah, just recover, get our minds right, physically get right. Then just try to continue to improve every day and everything we do to just get better. J.T. DURLEY: I mean, you know, this was kind of a let down to play anything less than the NCAA Tournament. But we'll play somewhere, anywhere we can play, we'll play. Q. Ahelegbe scored 20 points today, can you talk about the trouble you had in defending him? J.T. DURLEY: He's a good player, they get him open on screening and they drive to the hole and make free throws and knocks down open shots. He's just a good player. Q. Just the experience of getting here to the championship game? How beneficial is that going forward? CLEVIN HANNAH: It's real beneficial. We're sort of a young team. We've got almost everybody coming back, so I mean, experience is going to be a big factor, but it's just a tough loss to lose the way we lost. GARRETT STUTZ: Just remember the feeling and how bad it sucks. And just remember that through the off-season and do anything you can not to be feeling this again. Q. Can you what would your message be to the rest of the league about this program and where it's coming? As you leave it right now and the legacy you leave behind, what do you expect out of this program in the next couple of years? CLEVIN HANNAH: I expect for this program to be one of the top on coming soon. They've got a great coach that's going to lead them to where they need to be. And they've got great players. I just want to let them know that they can do it whatever they put their minds to and play hard with each other. They can play anywhere with anybody. Q. Clevin, Kwadzo was talking to you there at the end and had his arm around you. Was he consoling you or what was he telling you at that point? CLEVIN HANNAH: He was telling me congratulations on my career. We had respect for each other, and he's a good player and just keep doing his thing. Q. If you could meet with the selection committee right now, how would you state your case for you guys to get in? COACH MARSHALL: I don't know. 25 wins, a couple of top 25 victories, undefeated at home. Very talented team, very -- and I think our team is built for this type of tournament, built for postseason play. We've got size. We've got 7-footers, we've got long, rangy athletes. We're going to defend. Tonight, I don't know what happened. I'll have to go back and watch the film. I like Clevin or Garrett, whoever said it. I have a lot of thoughts in my mind about what happened and why. I know we turned the ball over. I thought we settled for too many jump shots, but Northern Iowa's a great team. They're well coached, they're seasoned, they're experienced. They'll win games in the NCAA Tournament. They'll win at least one if not two games in the NCAA Tournament. You know, I've got experience as an NCAA Tournament coach, and hopefully I can get them prepared to compete with whoever we play. You know, in this league, it's a pretty good basketball league. We had to play a team with 20 wins in the quarterfinals that was getting top 25 votes for December as a 2 seed. So that goes to show you the depth of the conference. Illinois State's a quality team. We played Pit early without Clevin Hannah, and it was a great game for 30-something minutes, we were right there with them. Anyway, you asked the question, I'd love to get an opportunity to coach Clevin Hannah in the NCAA Tournament, but I'll coach in the NCAA Tournament again. I just wish that he got an opportunity, because he's a special little player. Q. Coach at the 16-minute mark, UNI went on a 23-3 run for about 12:00 minutes, could you talk about what happened in that time? COACH MARSHALL: I think I have. I think I just addressed that. Q. Going into halftime with the league, what did you feel your team had to do in the second half to keep the consistency up in the second half? COACH MARSHALL: Playing for an NCAA Tournament berth outright, I don't think it was a matter of intensity, we couldn't get the ball to fall in the last 20 minutes or whatever it was. They made some great shots. Couple times we had the ball in our hands and couldn't come up with it. The breaks didn't go our way in the last 12 minutes. But we've had a good run. We were intense. And of course except for the last minute or two, I thought they got a little down. It's my job now to get them back up because we'll be playing somewhere against somebody that's going to be a good basketball team, and I'm looking forward to it. I've said all year that I've loved coaching this group. It's an unbelievable group of young people and they're also talented and long and athletic basketball players. Q. I know you've addressed the 12-minute drought, it looked to me like this team peaked here. You probably played your best basketball in St. Louis up until that time. Is fatigue a possibility in your mind? COACH MARSHALL: Might be. We haven't played three games in three days. Demetric getting the fourth foul hurt us because David Kyles is already out for the year. Who knows, he may be able to come back for some post-season play, but he's not available right now. He's our fourth guard. Demetric was actually the fifth guard, and he was in foul trouble. So we weren't able to distribute the minutes like I would have preferred, but that's happened before. It's a much better problem than when Hannah and Murry are on the bench with fouls and can't play because of that reason, so at least they were out there. But 37 minutes is a little too many for Clevin. And everyone else played 34 less. So you're talking three days in a row. I don't know. They have the same situation. They won more convincingly the first two games, so they were able to get more of a rest. But hopeful Leo owe it may have been, it looked like we may have hit a little wall, I don't know. They've been a resilient group all year. I'm sure they'll bounce back here. But we've got a few weeks or at least a few days before we have to play again. Q. You talked about maybe settling for jump shots. Northern Iowa seems good at making teams do that. Just discouraging people from getting to the basket. What is it about their defense that makes them effective? COACH MARSHALL: They're well schooled. Ben does a great job. They're tough. They're not super athletic, but they're always in the right position, and they're very, very, very physical and strong. So like I said, they're going to give somebody in the NCAA Tournament an L, and some fits on the floor. Q. Yesterday you talked about how much Clevin had grown as a person from last season until this season. Talk about how hard it is to see him go out of the MVC Tournament with a loss like this? COACH MARSHALL: Yeah, you know, he helped this program grow. I'll worry about not coaching Clevin Hannah after his last game. That's going to be hard enough. I don't want to have to worry about it until then. Right now what I want to see is what Clevin has done. He came in after we had zero minutes returning in the back court. And he was the captain of our ship. We went from 0-6 in the Valley and got really hot and had a great run last year tour of towards the end. Finished with 17 wins and overachieved for a team that was picked ninth. And this year we're picked 5th, and we overachieve again and finish second in a very good basketball conference. He's the guy. He's our Most Valuable Player, first team all conference player and all tournament. He's the catalyst to the first Shockers team to be in the finals in a long, long time. So I think he's left a great legacy whenever he does finish, and I hope it's not for a while. I hope it's several weeks that he gets to continue to display his unique talents because he's a great young man. And I just really like coaching him. Q. I guess Jake Koch had not taken a shot until tonight. When he starts firing away like that, does that throw the scouting report into an uproar? COACH MARSHALL: We knew he could shoot. I was not crazy about Blair's defense on those two shots that started the game. But he's looking like he's going to be a very good player as a freshman, Blair had his hands in his pockets and doesn't know how to contest yet. So I have to work with him on big league contests. He's got one more year to figure it out. Hopefully he'll do it one more year a little bit better, because a kid like that, you don't give him a contest, he's going to make it. Q. You guys really controlled the boards coming out of halftime. The first nine minutes of the second half, you were never able to pull away. How frustrating was that getting second chances and not being able to capitalize on them. COACH MARSHALL: That was the big key for us because we lost the game up at their place by three. They killed us on the offensive glass. We addressed that. We had plenty of opportunity to score. We had 52 shots, they had 46, but we didn't make them. We had some guys that had poor shooting nights and also had some guys that made some bad decisions. But a lot of the credit, again, goes to their defense. I mean, somebody said that's the first team that scored 40 against them or more than 40, we scored 52, but that's not enough against them. They had 67. A lot of those were gifts at the end with the fouling, but it's hard to score 60 points against them. They're very good defensively for the reasons I mentioned earlier. We lost our composure to a degree as a young team and the first time in this situation. I would have loved to have knocked all those shots down, executed better, and won the game and went to the NCAA Tournament without a doubt. But it didn't happen. What I've got to do is get this group back up so they can live to fight another day and they've got to understand the strides that they've made. So you become a little bit of a psychologist at this time in my situation. Ben gets to relax and enjoy the next week or two. Q. Just getting to this point, how much of a benefit is that going forward? COACH MARSHALL: Well, I think it's better than losing in the first round. Let's see, first year -- let's go back over that -- first year I'm kicked out for spinning around on a knee without saying a word. That is pretty much the low point. Second year, we have the clock debacle. Everyone runs off the court, including the referees and they're asked to come back. We put more time on the clock, and we lose in the quarterfinals on a great shot from Booker Woodfox after two dribbles and a ham sandwich. Then this year we were able to win two games and get to the finals, so I think we're making strides. I'll take it. It's a big improvement. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Best of luck in the postseason. End of FastScripts |
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