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MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 7, 2014Ben JacobsonJeremy MorganSeth TuttleWes WashpunST. LOUIS, MISSOURI Southern Illinois – 63 THE MODERATOR: Northern Iowa Panthers are here. Seth Tuttle, Wes Washpun, Jeremy Morgan. We're going to go right into questions with them and wait for Coach Jake to finish his radio and come up here. If there are questions for the three student‑athletes, start now. Q. Jeremy, what are you‑‑ not just you, team‑wise, were you guys a little bit tight there to start the game? JEREMY MORGAN: I think, yeah, we obviously came out a little bit slow in the first half, and then we got behind so far, it wasn't enough in the second half. Q. Seth, talk a little, once you guys had tied it up, did you‑‑ I know you know a game's never over, but did you feel like maybe you'd gotten over the hump and were poised kind of to win the thing? SETH TUTTLE: Yeah, after the first half, they had all the momentum. Halftime, we made a little adjustment‑‑ a little after halftime, I guess. We got on a little roll there where we dug ourselves out of the hole that we got ourselves in, obviously. We got the ball game tied. We got a stop even when it was tied. I think it was an offensive rebound by Bola, putback and one. We had the play, we got the stop. We didn't get the rebound to get us over that hump. But I felt like we had all the momentum there going. We were on a roll. I feel like we might have got them back on their heels a little bit, like they had us in the first half. They made the big plays to win the ball game. Q. Wes, just talk about when you guys were kind of backed into the corner there in the second half, just the attack mode that you went into to get back in the game. WES WASHPUN: Yeah, we just kind of got‑‑ picked up the intensity and tried to be the first to the floor every time and the first to get loose balls and pick up our rebound and our defensive intensity to try to get ourselves back into the game, and I feel like we did that. Q. Seth, what does this do for motivation in the off‑season to get you prepared, motivated, returning the majority of the team? SETH TUTTLE: Yeah, I mean, obviously, we could use this year or the two previous to motivate us. Hopefully, we can use it to motivate us. I know I sure will. I mean, I have one more crack at it. So we're going to be going hard again this summer‑‑ this upcoming summer, like we did this summer. Hopefully, we find a way. Q. Seth, what do you think the biggest struggle for you guys was in the first half? SETH TUTTLE: I think that they just played really, really good defense. They pressured the ball handler. I feel like what really hurt us might have been them denying the wings. It hurt us getting into our sets, getting into what we wanted to run. They slowed things down. For me, personally, they did a great job of fronting the post. It seemed like even in transition there, they run into my high side. They executed what their coach's game plan was perfectly, and then obviously it showed in the first half. Q. With what you just said, how much did that cause the frustration level? How much did that feed into that? SETH TUTTLE: I mean, we might have been a little frustrated. We obviously‑‑ we've been down numbers like that before. We were down 20 at Drake, and we fought our way back. I think we tied the game then too. So I don't think‑‑ there was obviously no quitting in any player or any coach. There never would be. So I don't know if it's‑‑ I don't know if it was necessarily frustration. We needed that time‑out, or that halftime, to regroup, and we did that, and we came out in the second half with a lot different attitude. Q. Jeremy, can you just talk a little bit about the defensive adjustment on Desmar in that second half. JERERMY MORGAN: Yeah, that first half, he really got going. He was knocking down his threes, and we weren't pressuring him enough. That second half, we tried to get on him a little bit harder and make those shots tougher than they were in the first half. THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time. We're going to stay here with Coach Ben Jacobson. Q. Jake, what are you going to look to most, the last three minutes of the first half when they extended it or the last three minutes of the second half where you had it tied and they kind of had a little more? COACH JACOBSON: I think, as big as those two times, I think bigger was the first probably eight to ten minutes of the game. Barry did a better job of getting his guys ready than I did, and that obviously cost us an opportunity to be close at halftime. They came out‑‑ at their place, they did a little bit of that, where they came out and pressured and tried to deny some passes. So we'd seen it from them before.  But they played a lot of zone, gone back and forth with their man in their zone, and at our place when we beat them, they denied some passes as well, but they were more aggressive in this game defensively. Something that I talked about with my assistants, that I thought about, they have a couple of options as to how they can play. I did not do a good enough job of having those guys ready for them fronting the post and denying passes. Obviously, the change we made with our offense in the second half gave us a lot of opportunities against what they were doing, one that should have been made in the first half. Q. Ben, your team shot the three pretty well the last couple of weeks. How hard was it to generate some momentum and take the lead without making one all game? COACH JACOBSON: As well as they played offensively and as poorly as we handled it, we still had some pretty good opportunities. We still had a couple around the rim, and we still had‑‑ Bo had a couple of good looks from the three‑point line, and there was a couple other open threes. Wes has been a pretty high percentage shooter, and he was open, and Jeremy had one. So we didn't lack for other opportunities to score in the first half. If some of those go, and it stays at five or six or seven, then it's maybe a little different game. We've been‑‑ we shot the three‑point shot very well. The entire league season, we shot the ball well from there. Our team has grown into a team that Seth is going to touch the ball, and then we're going to play out of that. Tonight in the first half we weren't able to get him some of those same touches, and that slowed us down a bit. Again, there were some good looks from the three‑point line. Q. Jake, can you talk about, when you guys were struggling to get anything going early, what Seth gave you, he nearly had a double double at half, even though you were down, he kind of single‑handedly kept you in it for stretches. COACH JACOBSON: The play, I don't know if it was the 10‑minute mark or the 11‑minute mark, when he and Marvin went back and forth with the offensive rebounds, that sequence, I believe, cut it to two at 15 to 13, or somewhere in that area, I thought that was the sequence in the play that was going to get us playing right, going to get us defending a little bit better and doing a little bit better job on Jackson and get us going a little bit more offensively in transition and just moving a little bit better. I felt like that play was going to be the one, and obviously, he was a huge part of that play. But to get 17 rebounds in this game just shows he's continued‑‑ he continued what he's done for quite a while now, and he came out here tonight and played extremely well. I just wish I would have helped him a little bit more. Q. Coach, despite that first half, team battles back just like in that Drake game. What do you think it says about the team, their willingness to battle back, and how similar were the two halftimes between this game and the Drake game? COACH JACOBSON: They were different. Yeah, they were different. And I don't‑‑ I think Seth maybe commented on it. I would have been extremely surprised had we not fought back. The kind of guys that we're dealing with and the guys that we've got in our program and the leadership we have from the players in our program, that's not something that‑‑ again, I'd have been extremely surprised had we not stood in there and fought. Obviously, proud of the guys for doing that but not surprised. Q. I heard all week that the rebounding battle was going to be key. You guys won it by ten. It wasn't that much of a difference? COACH JACOBSON: It goes to what I talked about, in terms of them coming out and pressuring the ball a little more and then denying passes a little more than what they had and getting in front of Seth and making it tough for him to get touches left us standing around a little bit. Had we had‑‑ had I had a little better plan for some of that, I think we could have had a better offensive half, and then the rebounding comes into play. I think the rebounding then gets us over the hump. But that just‑‑ that had us standing still for too long in that first half. Again, there were some‑‑ there were some opportunities and some open shots and some ones that we missed, but that kind of set the tempo for the game in that first half, and I thought that that was‑‑ that ended up being a bigger key than the rebounding. I didn't think that anything would be bigger than rebounding in tonight's game. Q. Coach, heading into the tournament, you had said you felt like your team was playing the best basketball of the year. High hopes for the championship this weekend. I guess, how disappointing or deflating is it to be heading home? COACH JACOBSON: Very disappointing. To come in here with a young group that had gotten better and a lot better in the last three weeks and had some important things, namely, our defense and our rebounding. So the way that we had played, we certainly felt like we had an opportunity to not only win tonight but give Indiana‑‑ now beating Indiana State, play well in that game, and give ourselves a chance on Sunday. There was no doubt our guys felt they could play on Sunday and they could win on Sunday. So to get knocked out tonight is disappointing. Q. How much thought have you given to specifically next year, 2014/'15, just finding some consistency as far as this program is concerned? COACH JACOBSON: As far as? Q. Maybe getting back to the tournament and how big it would be to keep this momentum going that you have. COACH JACOBSON: Yeah, I haven't given any thought to that. I know we've got some conversations to have now about whether we're going to continue to play this year. So I guess I haven't given thought to next year's team yet. So I don't have an answer for you in terms of that. The only thing I would say is that playing for a championship in our league and playing in the NCAA Tournament will continue to be at the top of our list. That's not going to change. Playing a really tough, hard nonconference schedule and doing everything we can to put our players and our program in a position to play in the NCAA Tournament, that won't change. Now it's a matter, when we get to that point and we get past this season, of sitting down and figuring out what exactly it is we have to do to give ourselves a better chance next year. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Best of luck. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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