WICHITA, Kan. - Gregg Marshall reflected on the Illinois State game this week at his weekly press conference, while senior Evan Wessel offered up his thoughts on the game, and how the team can turn around to prepare for upcoming games. Read below for the transcript.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

GREGG MARSHALL ON...
 
…Getting outrebounded the last two games
"We emphasize [rebounding] in every single drill. You've got to be willing and able to be physical, and being diligent to put a body on someone and grabbing the ball with two hands."
 
…Issues against Illinois State
"We didn't execute against the zone, and we weren't very good defensively either.
 
You've got to have a mixture: you've got to make inside shots around the rim, and we didn't get enough of those. And then you've got to be able to make the kick-out shots as well.
 
We had a lot of guys in foul trouble, like our two three-men. Zach Brown had two fouls a minute-and-a-half in. Markis McDuffie got two fouls shortly thereafter. So we really had to jumble our lineups a bit."
 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
 
EVAN WESSEL ON...
 
…Getting outrebounded by Illinois State
"[Getting outrebounded] it's not somewhere we want to end up, and it's happened to us the last two games now…it's obviously something we need to work at, and is one of the reasons why we lost.
 
It's a combination of things, between boxing out and the whole team needing to be tougher."
 
…What happened during the second half that allowed Illinois State to win
"They started with a nice run, we lost some guys in transition. They got some easy baskets. They switched to the zone, and we didn't execute offensively. They're a good team too; they've got some athletes. They made plays and we didn't…we hold ourselves to a higher standard [on defense]. On tape we see things, like maybe losing a guy in transition, they had a couple wide-open threes. Our defense is part of our rebounding. They got some second-chance shots that led to their run. We feel like if we any time can play defense at a high-level, then no matter what our offense is doing, we're going to win.
 
We just weren't making shots at some point. When they go zone, you've got to make shots so that you can attack it. We could've executed [better] against the zone: get the ball more to the baseline, and penetrate the zone. Maybe we wouldn't have had to take so many threes, but it's one of things that weren't falling. We needed to find another way [to score], and we ended up not doing that."
 
…How the team prepares when they know every Valley team is going to give WSU their best shot
"We see everyone – maybe not sell out – but bringing a lot more fans [than usual] to their games. We knew that coming in [to the Illinois State game]. We've still just got to get back on track, learn from the film, and see where we can get better. We have to keep the mindset that the next game is the most important game on our schedule. They're must-wins.
 
…Differences in preparing for playing teams a second time
"Obviously we know a little more now, since we can go watch the game film. We can see how they played against us and how we played against them. We can tweak some things we did right or wrong to benefit us. It's pretty much the same game plan, just fine-tuning things to get us in the best position to win.