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MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 4, 2011Aaron CarterGreg LansingJake OdumST. LOUIS, MISSOURI Indiana State – 52 Q. (No Audio?) COACH LANSING: I like that game. Set basketball back in time a little bit. They're just -- they are such a difficult team to play. They make it hard for you at each end. I think we paralyzed our guys with our set up, going over for two or three case. We've had a little longer time here. So we probably over prepared a little bit. And it froze us, and that's my fault. To play Evansville, they beat us so bad twice, and we wanted to come in here and play a little better against them. I don't think we played well, but that has everything to do with Evansville and how they were. We just gutted it out. We made enough plays, we guarded well enough. We got the ball to go in a little better in the second half. When we got number 13 here to my left, at the end of the game you feel comfortable with him being able to make a play. I'm just real happy for our guys, and now we've got to get rest and play an extremely talented team in Wichita tomorrow. Q. Jake, talk me through the last play. How did it pan out? JAKE ODUM: Coach drew up a play in the huddle. He gave me the ball. He's got confidence in me, which gave me confidence, and we ran a cross underneath, and it's kind of like isolation for me off the top, and I broke them down with the dribble, and we came open for the jumper. Q. Did you want to take him a certain direction or anything like that or was that a decision made? JAKE ODUM: Not really. I favor my right a lot. I played instinctively, so I just read what he was doing, and he gave me the lane to the right elbow, so I picked my spot there and read over and shoot it. Q. I saw you yelled boom when you hit it. It's always great to hit a game-winning shot ma tournament mode even better. But when you have such a hard fought game as you did tonight, what did it feel like to finally feel like you got over the you hump after it seemed like there were several times in the game where you seemed like you were getting over the hump but they ever could? JAKE ODUM: It was great. I was thinking the whole time I had the ball I can't let the seniors go out this way. We can't lose three times to Evansville. We had to learn our lesson. We did tonight. We became the tougher team, and outworked them for 40 minutes. Q. Aaron, unlike the other two teams, Evansville are came out and played with that toughness you recognized. Do you think it helped a little bit that you had to match their tough necessarily in the game than you did in the other two games and how much did that help you in the second half to grind it with them in the second? AARON CARTER: Kind of woke us up a little bit. They came out and punched us early, and it's usually the other way around. They got us focused. We had a horrible first half and we came in there at halftime and had to be more tough and more focused in the second half to get the win. We did a pretty good job. We did what we had to do in the second half to win. Q. For you again, Aaron, what was your focus or what was the team's focus in the second half to get on track? AARON CARTER: Just have a better pace on offense. Take better shots, be a little more patient and just keep D'ing up, and making sure they don't get any easy shots. Q. For either Jake or Aaron, locker at the free-throw line was pretty big. Just talk about he had that three-point play late. And he made all his free throws I believe. Talk about how important that was in the scope of this game? JAKE ODUM: That was huge. He's been working on his free throws. He struggled this year, but he's been in the gym working on his free throws every day. It showed tonight, and he did as well. Q. Greg, same question I had for Aaron. Evansville gave you that toughness that you talk a lot about right off the bat. Unlike the other two games where you had to respond to it late. This time you had to respond right from the beginning. Do you think that maybe helped as far as being able to pull this game out? COACH LANSING: I think it could have. You've heard me talk enough about our guys and being tougher and competing harder. Probably beat a dead horse a little bit with that. I say it so much again. I think I paralyzed them a little bit with it. So we talked about it at halftime about how it's not all just about -- it's not a fight. It's a basketball game. We're a good basketball team. If we share the ball on the offensive end a little better and don't settle for stuff and keep fighting on the defensive end, we'd be just fine. Again, we've talked so much about them going into this week, and that they beat it twice, and made it a little bit like, they were tougher than us. We jumped out on them in both of those games. They deserved it. They grinded on us. We've just got to be in the huddle in the last eight minutes. It was really our focus. It was like we're going to be tough down the stretch and we're going to make enough plays to win. Q. Seemed like the name of the game around the Valley was to survive. What's that say about the Valley up and down? COACH LANSING: I say it all the time. It is so underrated. It's not by people around here. But it's so underrated as a coaching league. I mean, these guys are not just the head coach, they're the staffs. They do such an unbelievable job of preparing for each other. Everybody knows everything the other team's going to do. We could go into another team's practice and run their practice, you know. It's just a physical thing, you know. You come in here and want to get that first one under your belt. I know I was a little antsy tonight and probably overreacting and made our guys a little hesitant on stuff. I'm learning too. But in this league, it's just so well coached, that nothing is going to be easy. It never is against Evansville, and it certainly won't be tomorrow. Q. What went through your mind when Clint Hopf pulled down that rebound? That's not what you wanted at that stage. Did you have a defensive plan if they did pull in the offensive rebound at that point? COACH LANSING: Which one are you talking about? Q. The one that Hopf pulled down. COACH LANSING: There was still enough time that we were going to get a possession. They might have had two -- the ball out of bounds. They might have had three different times they could score there. We guarded them well enough, made them take tough shots. Didn't want to put them on the line late in the clock like that, because we think we've got it with 7 seconds to go or something like that. Myles did a good job of blocking out. It's just Clint is a hard worker and a tough guy. He's just so physical. He got a little body on Myles. Myles was off balance a little bit and he made the play. But we got it together and still got the stop. Then obviously come down and Jake made his play. Q. How much did foul trouble affect the way you wanted to attack this game? You had some guys on the floor, playing more minutes than they normally would? COACH LANSING: Yeah, I don't know. Just early in the first half we had to take Myles out right away. We had to take different guys out. When they get two fouls, we had to pull them out of there. I wanted to play a lot of guys anyway tonight, but the flow of the game was never really a good flow to it. It seemed like there were a lot of stops to play. They're a physical team, but they play it clean. They play pretty hands free, they use their body. What we do is put our hands on people too much. That's why we were getting some fouls on that stuff. Our guys get a little frustrated. It's so hard when you play Evansville, that you react to all that stuff; and again, that's probably me reacting to stuff and our guys following suit a little bit. It's just a physical, tough game whenever you play them. Q. Neither team shot above 40% tonight. Is that a credit to both team's defense or both teams struggling from the field? COACH LANSING: I know it is with them. I think we made it pretty tough on them too, making tough, contested shots. But the way they defend you and how physical they are, you rarely get an open look. When you do, you're so tired from having them bodying you and having to work so hard to get a shot. Sometimes that takes your legs from you a little bit. It's a credit to their defense. We played well enough defensively to win the game. I think they were a little better defensively for the most part, but we played well enough in those last eight minutes to win. Q. How does a physical game like this affect tomorrow's game? COACH LANSING: This is the way it is. This is postseason basketball. I was part of four wins in four days when I was at Iowa. And all you talk about now is getting fluids and getting rest, and taking care of them to survive and advance. But everybody's got the same problem. Playing a late game is not ideal certainly and playing an opponent like Evansville makes it tough. We're a deep team, our guys showed tonight they're resilient and determined and tough. So we'll get them rest tonight and be ready to go tomorrow. Q. What was that locker room like afterwards -- last second shot, everybody pretty excited? COACH LANSING: Yeah, it was. They rally around Jake. They know he's a competitor and tough kid. He comes over in the huddle and says he wants the ball. He pretty much knows I was going to give it to him there. But we walked in the door there after taking care of the media and they were excited. It was quite a relief. These guys socked it to us pretty good twice, and we wanted to beat them. It was a big relief. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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