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MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 2, 2012Greg LansingJake OdumCarl RichardST. LOUIS, MISSOURI Wichita State – 72 THE MODERATOR: Please welcome Indiana State. COACH LANSING: Obviously a disappointing start for us, but all that credit has to go to Wichita State. They are outstanding, and they are ready to go from the tip. I told the guys a little bit it reminded me of how we started against Syracuse last year. I really felt like we were ready to go. They put us on our heels from the start and didn't let up. Once we got down 20‑3, we started competing harder and playing like we needed to play. But that's easy to do when you're down that far. Really proud of our effort in the second half. These two guys up here in particularly are fighting and staying with it in a difficult situation. You're out there, getting beaten pretty good. To keep fighting and keep playing, I'm proud of their effort. These guys have accomplished an awful lot. We just got beaten by an outstanding, very well‑coached team. Hopefully we've still got another tournament to play in. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Carl or Jake. Q. Carl and Jake, can you give kind of an illustration of just how stifling Wichita State's defense was from your perspective? CARL RICHARD: Yeah, they had us scouted very well. I felt like they were on top of everything we wanted to do. They took away our strength, and we just didn't come with any type of resistance and any type of counter to their attack. JAKE ODUM: They played great team defense. They were on the ball. They really frustrated me when they were denying. I didn't back the natural pressure. But they're good. They're probably the best team we've played all year. We just came out too flat and got behind early. It's tough to battle back against a top team like that. Q. Jake, can you talk about next year and what needs to change? This year you were probably a little disappointed with how it ended? JAKE ODUM: Well, we're losing four great guys and four great teammates. We're going to have to replace them somehow. We've got some good young guys coming in. We have some red shirts this year that have been working hard. So we kind of have to regroup this off‑season and see what we can do. Put a lot of work in and go from there. Q. Jake, you knocked them off last year. How much better, and you just said they're probably the best team you faced all year. How much better is Wichita this year than they were last year? JAKE ODUM: I mean, they were tough last year too. But they stepped it up a little bit. That is a group of guys that hasn't been to the NCAA Tournament. They won the NIT last year, and they're just out to get everybody. They've got one goal in mind and that is to win this tournament. I believe they're going to make some noise in the NCAA Tournament also. Q. Carl, you guys took Wichita State down last year. You kind of had to figure they were going to have that on their minds coming into this game. I'm sure you guys realized that as well. But was the fact that you guys weren't able to get a response, is that maybe the most disappointing that you weren't able to counter punch the punch they gave you first? CARL RICHARD: The only disappointing part about this game was the first ten minutes of the game. That was the only disappointing part. I felt like we competed in the second half. We competed after we were down 20. We shared the ball afterwards. I don't know why we came out the way we did. There is no explanation for that, and it shouldn't have been that way. I mean, they just made shots early and we just didn't. Q. You were pretty effusive about Wichita State yesterday. I think you knew what you were getting into potentially. How good is this basketball team coming from someone that played into the NCAA Tournament a year ago? COACH LANSING: They're as good as anybody we've played. As far as I'm concerned they're as good as anybody I've seen on TV. This is a team that is outstanding. They galvanized after last year winning that NIT. They played with a chip on their shoulder all year because they couldn't get into the NCAA Tournament. They're tough. They're deep. They're athletic. They come at you in waves. I've been around the league, even my seven years at Iowa and playing Drake and UNI, this is the best team I've seen in the league. They're really, really good. They're as good as anybody that's going to play in the NCAA Tournament as well whether they win this thing or not, because other teams are awfully good and Creighton is tough. So just very good. As good as I've seen. Q. Obviously defensively they were outstanding. Can you talk about not only the defense they played on Jake to kind of cut the head off the snake a little bit, but their off the ball defense created confusion as well as forced some turnovers. COACH LANSING: Yeah, forced some turnovers. What we had at halftime, we didn't turn it over hardly at all in the second half. Guys relaxed and played a little tight. We played tight. Couldn't make a shot. That affects us. We're 16% in the first half. We had some decent looks. Probably settled for way too many threes in the first half. When a team's pressuring you it's easy to stand outside the three‑point arc and fire those. After that we got to the three‑point line and were attacking, getting to the paint. Things we wanted to do. Just first half. They came out, and it's a credit to them. They were ready to go from the start and put us on our heels. It took us a while to recover. Q. You have anticipated that this probably isn't the end of the season that you'll be playing on. What do you know about that at this point? COACH LANSING: We've been contacted. Everybody gets contacted by these other tournaments to try to seed you after the NCAA field and the NIT field. Obviously, we're not going to be in either one of those. But with four leaders and a defending champion team, and won 18 games, I think we'll be a good team to be invited into the tournament. With our administration allowing us to do that, we're looking forward to getting back in practice. Give the guys a few days off and recover from this and kind of find out what tournament we could be in. Q. Coach, you speak of possibly going to the postseason tournament.  I know it's not the big dance, but how important is it for a program the third year in a row to go to a postseason tournament and get experience like that? COACH LANSING: Any tournament you play in is great. Any postseason tournament is great to get a chance to continue your season, continue to send the seniors out the right way and show these young guys you know that we're all about the postseason. Hopefully that just continues. Get back here in St. Louis in a year with a bunch of new faces and make a little longer run in the tournament. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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