Good things are happening lately for Wichita State on both ends of the court. During his weekly press conference, head coach Isaac Brown broke down the keys to the Shockers' recent success, including Ricky Council IV's scoring surge and a couple lockdown defensive efforts last week from Dexter Dennis against two of the conference's best scorers. He also previewed Tuesday night's road rematch at UCF. Read on for the transcript:
 

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HEAD COACH ISAAC BROWN ON…
 
… Opening statement:
"Central Florida will be a big challenge for us, going on the road. They just had a tough game at Memphis and a lot of times when you have a tough game, you come out ready to play. We've got to be able to handle their full-court pressure. We didn't handle SMU's pressure well late. We've got to do a better job of rebounding. (UCF) had 20 offensive rebounds the last game. We've got to check-out this game. We've got to be able to execute. They're going to be ready to go. Like I said, they just had a tough game in Memphis, so I know what it's like after a tough loss like that. Those guys are going to be ready to get back to the court."
 
… What a road win would do for the team right now:
"It would give us so much confidence to be able to go on the road and get a win. We came close at Tulane. We didn't finish the game. That would give our team a lot of confidence. I think those guys are really starting to grow, they're staying together, they're trying to figure out how to win games by not turning the basketball over and continuing to take good shots, play the right way and they've done a good job of that. It would be huge for us to go on the road and get a win."
 
… Finding their team identity and the importance of playing well in February:
"The month of February is always the month you need to get hot in because it's going into the conference tournament, it's the latter part of your season, you should be cleaning up all your mistakes and the guys are excited right now. They're playing with a lot of confidence, and we've got to be able to take that on the road in order to be successful, but they're really excited about February. I'm excited and we've just got to go down and play well."
 
… Dexter Dennis's impact on limiting SMU's Kendric Davis:
"Just being in the right spots. He understands scouting reports. We started the game out with Dexter guarding him, and we told Dexter that we didn't want him to pick him up full court; we wanted to guard him right at the three-point line, and Dexter's length and athleticism bothered Kendric Davis. I think he fouled him on one three-pointer in the second half, but outside of that, he did a great job. Once he gave the basketball up, we wanted to deny him the basketball, and we did a good job of that. Anytime he drove to the basket, we wanted to make sure we contested his shot. Just to hold a guy like that Kendric Davis to eight points is a tremendous job. I think Dexter is definitely the AAC Defensive Player of the Year."
 
… The scoring lift provided by WSU's bench:
"When you've got multiple guys scoring, it's hard to scout you. Going into the game, I'm sure the scouting report is to take Tyson out of the game, but when we've got guys like Ricky, Kenny and all those different guys coming off the bench contributing, that really helps our basketball team. It makes us harder to be guarded on offense, and on any given night someone can step up and help you win a basketball game, so that'll be huge. We need multiple guys being able to score, and hopefully we can have that this weekend down at Central Florida."
 
… What's behind the reduction in turnovers over the last three or four games:
"Just valuing the basketball, taking care of it. We talked about that after the Tulane game, not taking care of the basketball causes us not to get a win, so that's been one of the things we've been focusing on in practice, and I think the other team has a lot to do with that too. SMU pressured us late, and UCF will get after us at the start of the game. We've just got to be able to handle that full-court pressure, value the basketball, not get loose with it. If you want to win basketball games, you've got to take care of it, and we did a great job only having 12 turnovers last game."
 
… What Council has been doing to make himself more of a scoring threat:
"Being on the court, when he defends and he doesn't turn it over, he's going to score the basketball, we know that, but he's got to take care of the basketball. As long as he's taking care of the basketball, he's one of the better scorers in the league. We get him into the game quickly, within the first three or four minutes of the game, and we try to put him in position where he can score, but he's doing a better job of defending, and he did a great job of valuing the basketball, not turning it over last game."
 
… Dennis' ability to evade screens on the defensive end:
"He does a great job of not velcroing to a screen, going there and get stuck. He does a good job of 'skinnying-up', getting around the ball screen and getting over the top, and it takes an athlete, a guy that's willing to do that in order to make those types of plays, and he does a great job of making sure he gets around."