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MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 4, 2011Graham HatchDavid KylesGregg MarshallJoe RaglandST. LOUIS, MISSOURI Wichita State – 70 THE MODERATOR: Shockers are with us. They'll play the winner of Indiana State-Evansville. Going to ask coach Gregg Marshall to start off with a statement on this game. Gregg, please? COACH MARSHALL: First of all, I want to congratulate Bradley for the end of their season. With the injuries that they've sustained to win 6 of 9 coming in, excuse me, 5 of 8 coming in. And with the win last night. I thought when Prosser went down, the courage they showed was incredible, so they had a very nice run at the end. Tonight, the spurt at the end of the first half I thought was the difference in the game. You know, it just came down to our depth again and we were able to be fresh at that point and push the lead out to 13 going into halftime. Q. Joe or Graham, a lot of times you carried that over into the second half and started out really strong, which doesn't always seem to happen. What kept you going through halftime and into second half to get that lead even more. JOE RAGLAND: Just determination. We came here and we're trying to win. We know we can't relax and get relaxed because anybody can beat anybody in any game. So we try to come out in the second half and capitalize and keep up with what we did in the last couple minutes of that first half. And we started the second half off pretty strong, and it carried throughout the game. They made a run late, and we still stuck with it and executed at the end to get the win. Q. Graham, you were on Warren a lot tonight. Can you describe how you defended him and what you tried to take away from him. GRAHAM HATCH: I joke around with them every game to take it easy on me, because he's an unbelievable player. He's more of a shooter than a driver, so I do my best to contest. That's pretty much all you can do with him. He's physical. He's good in every aspect, so just trying to contest his shot is the best I can do. Q. Along that same lines, I think you only shot two free throws. How important was that to keep them off the line? Secondly, it looked like you guys after the game it looked like you were laughing and joking. What was said between you two seniors, I guess? GRAHAM HATCH: I told him I was glad I didn't have to guard him anymore. Because I just have a lot of respect for Andrew Warren. You know, with the free throws still, he loves to pump, shot fake, and get into his opponent's body. He's really, really good at that. So we knew that coming into the game. I just stayed down, and when he went up, I went up and did my best to contest. Q. Statistics are being handed out and another question poll. David and Joe, how important was it to play well and get Saturday's frustration flushed out? Looked like offense was clicking and played well on defense too? JOE RAGLAND: We obviously started off pretty bad the last game. We tried to execute a little better than in the first half. We started off okay. You know, David really carried us in the beginning. We had a good stretch where he was aggressive to the hoop and hit a shot and got some stills. I believe he got us going. We just fed off of him. Our bigs played a great game today, all four of them. So we just wanted to come out and not play the same way that we did against Missouri State because that can get you beat by anybody. We just tried to execute and do what coach tells us to do. Q. David, I think the bench outscored Bradley up until early in the second half. Can you just talk about the energy and importance of the bench playing well tonight? DAVID KYLES: Everyone on the team knows that anyone can beat anybody in this tournament because everyone's giving their best. We're going to always be aggressive and hopefully make shots and outscore the bench every day. That's what we have. Coach tries to keep fresh legs out there and do everything he can to give us the best chance he can to win and score. Q. How good is it to be back in a rhythm and went through a little bit of a rough stretch with your shot. But you seem to be in much more rhythm and much more in the flow at this point. Can you talk about that a little bit and how you've been able to regain it over the last couple of weeks? DAVID KYLES: Tonight, I wish I was able to find a hoop tonight from three. I don't know how many shots I missed. But it feels good, especially the last game. I really felt good about the shots I took. I felt good that all of them were going to fall as they did earlier in the year. I think once I find the goal here before the end of the tournament, it will probably be the same? Q. Looked like Wichita State wanted to play inside out and that worked pretty well. Was that important tonight? Did you guys feel like you did a good job of doing that? JOE RAGLAND: Of course, get the ball to J.T. He's our first team All-Valley player. We have to get him the ball as well as Stutz. He was aggressive and finished around the basket. So we get the ball to them guys and they're going to kick it out to us. When we give it to them, we're open all the time to do something, to drive to the lane. We've got a wide open three, so we really stress getting the ball inside because we all know that that's our strength on this team. So we get the ball inside the majority of the time. Q. You kind of made had a coming out of nowhere and getting the steal and the dunk and done that several times. Is that something you're seeing on film or scouting? How did that play happen several times? DAVID KYLES: I think I did the same thing the last time we played them at Bradley. I noticed that they always just turned and throw the ball assuming that the man's open. So I tried to bait them into throwing it and then just use my speed to pick up the slack to get the steal and the dunk. Q. With the depth that you have, how far of a benefit is that to you particularly in a tournament like this? COACH MARSHALL: Well, I hope it's a benefit that we'll be discussing about 3:05 on Sunday. That's when we'll decide what kind of benefit it is. But tonight I thought the depth at the beginning of the -- excuse me, the end of the second half was critical. To be able to go to Garrett Stutz who has 16 points in 21 minutes is a big plus. Durley was in foul trouble. Durley didn't get a chance in the first half. He had a silly foul. I don't know about the first one, but the second one was terrible. It was dumb, so he didn't get to play much. There is your first team all conference guy and he played three minutes in the first half. You're up 13, so that's pretty good. Q. The job that you guys did on Simms-Edwards, particularly after what we saw him do last night and he's done through the last month, what was your goal there? Was it to be that physical with him? How did you keep him from getting to the rim? COACH MARSHALL: He's a very physical kid. He's strong, and he really drives it hard and aggressively. I thought we gave him too early looks in the first half that were too good. D.K. one time forgot about him. He helped and didn't get down recovery as I'd like. So he missed a couple jumpers. And we were there with our length and tried to give him a couple of road blocks at least on the way to the rim because he certainly did a heck of a job last night getting all the way to the rim and finishing and getting fouled. Q. Is Graham your best guy at running through screens and fighting through screens? Is that why he's good to put on Warren? COACH MARSHALL: I tell you what, his defense on Warren was incredible. I know this. I played way back when, and I wouldn't want to have to screen Graham Hatch once, much less for 40 minutes. I mean, he's a very physical kid, and he just says, okay, you're going to screen me, but I'm going to clip it as closely as I can, and try to be there on the catch and standing on the kid's toes. He's just a really, really tough competitor. That's why he's not the quickest guy. He doesn't have the best vertical, but his job on Warren tonight was monumentally important, and that's why he gets the assignment. And Ben didn't do badly either. Ben did pretty well. But Graham was obviously the first guy that got the shot at him. To hold him to 17 and make it 15 shots, you know in 39 minutes, that's pretty good. Q. In a general sense, how good was it to be able to impose your will on a team and generally play well, do the things that you wanted to do pretty much from mostly start to finish? But just to get your team into a rhythm? COACH MARSHALL: You know, again, Jim's got three really talented players sitting over there that could make that a different ballgame. Maniscalco is one of the best guards in the league, Taylor Brown, and then Prosser. So we're supposed to win when you're the 2 versus the 10 seed. But we didn't go into the game like that because of how well they were playing down the stretch. I thought we executed fairly well. I thought we shared the ball better. We didn't shoot it great, but, again, we did enough. I probably subbed a little early late in the game just to try to get everyone a little taste of it and not have anyone get hurt, especially this time of year in a situation like that. It's the first step. It's certainly not -- we hope the season's not culminating with this win, but it's a quality win against a team that's a little undermanned right now. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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