2018 Summit League Basketball Media Day (MBB and WBB)

[kiyoat]

Media Day was today in Sioux Falls with all the Men's and Women's coaches.  All of the coaches interviews are on the Summit League Facebook site.  Here is a page on the Summit League's main website that links to all the interviews:

www.thesummitleague.org/landing/index

I'm sure there is a better way to link directly to the videos, but I don't know how.  If someone knows how, feel free.  I think eventually some of these vids will appear on YouTube.

Midco broadcasted the show already live, and will replay it at 6 PM tonight.

[kiyoat]

I haven't had a chance to listen to many of the pressers, but I thought I would listen to Omaha's women's coach, Brittany Lange. I was interested in hearing how they will be dealing with all of the roster losses. Sounds like they have brought in some international transfers and are looking for freshmen to contribute. Probably a similar strategy to what ORU and WIU have done in the off-season.

I thought is was interesting that she got two or three questions relating to SDSU and USD. She handled them well, but It probably gets annoying for those coaches to have to relate everything they do to the Dakota teams. That's the way it goes.

It's nice to be the "hunted" team, as long as you don't get complacent, and I don't think that will be a problem with Dawn and the Yotes. They will keep the chip on their shoulders about the SLT until they get that monkey off. Then they will find a new chip.

[usdcoyote]

Since videos never pull up for me on my work computer I will just patiently wait for Kiyoat to watch the whole thing and then pull out the best quotes from it and post them on here. Thank you, Kiyoat, by the way for taking the time to do that.

[kiyoat]

Ask and you shall receive.  Here's Coach Lee's presser.  Most of the beginning was similar to the USD presser earlier this week, but here are some interesting nuggets I found:

"We have THE BEST facilities in the Summit.  We've got High-Major facilities.  Walking around our TWO practice gyms, our player's lounge, our film room, our weight room, ... Our arena is state-of-the-art beautiful.  It is a great, great place to recruit to..."

"Obviously, Mike Daum is the best player in the league.  He is one of the better players in the country.  But Tyler Hegedorn creates the same issues for other teams.  He can stretch the floor, you can run offense through him.  He's very smart.  Very skilled."

"Cody will play the point, along with Tristan, but Tristan will slide off the ball.  And we feel like we can get him in better situations, where he has more scoring options.  Because obviously we lost Matt Mooney to transfer.  Tristan's going to have to pull up some of that slack, shooting the ball, scoring the ball.  We'll run a lot of things for him offensively.  Cody will start at the point, Tristan will start at the two, and Tristan will slide over to the point at times."

Question: Is there a plan for recreating that GCU atmosphere up in Vermillion?  Everyone that has come out of there talks about what a tough environment it is to play in.

"It is, and we've talked to our administration about that.  GCU's got a unique thing going.... What they do at every basketball game (and they do it for other sports, too.  They had 6,600 kids at a soccer game.  That set an NCAA record), they just throw a party for the students.  It just happens that there's a basketball game going on.

And they will say that.  We just want you to come there.  And we are throwing this huge party for you.  We're gonna have food, we're gonna have music, we're gonna have dancers, we're gonna have great halftime entertainment.  And oh, by the way, there's going to be a game going on.  If you could pay attention and cheer for the home team.

Literally, they just want the students to have fun.  That is their whole approach.  They don't sell: 'come support the basket ball team'.  (They sell) 'We're gonna throw YOU a party.  And by the way there's a game going on.'  And they make the cheerleaders and the band and the dance team as much, or MORE important than the basketball players.... It's a unique concept.

And the kids, they show up.  Because it's fun.  And they just have this big party.  They've done a really good job of cornering that market.  And they really make it about the student body.  Not the basketball team.  We had 'Midnight Madness' and our President said 'I dont' want any basketball at Midnight Madness.  No basketball.  We're gonna have a rave for 30 minutes, and you (basketball players) can introduce yourselves, but you aren't playing any basketball.  I don't wanna watch that.  We're gonna have fun with the students.' -- That's what Midnight Madness is.

(At USD) Obviously we're in the business of having a great time.  We want our student body to have a great time.  Whether it's football, whether it's basketball, whether it's soccer, whether it's a dance, a concert, ... You want your kids to have fun on campus.  I think every university has that mission.

[kiyoat]

Ballsy statement about our facilities at the conference presser. Nice. Also comparing Hags to Daum.

Interesting that he sees Simpson filling the scoring role of Mooney.

I like all the detail about the strategy for GCU and getting students to games, but at the end of the day, he didn't really answer the question. We don't know if any of that strategy will happen here. I hope so, but USD is not GCU.

If I remember my undergrad days correctly, there are some campus-wide events that were successful, and many that were not. Concerts and comedians generally were a big draw, but 'parties' generally were not, because students saw them as lame 'University sponsored' fun, or because they didn't involve alcohol. Honestly, in order to be successful party-type events at USD, the University would have to loosen up a bit with regard to pre-event drinking, and mid-event breaks for drinking. Similar to the Stroller's show, or tailgating. That involves some liability, the looser the rules are.

I think the student culture at GCU is different, being a newly-large school without an established party culture to distract from University sponsored events (like the greek system, house parties and downtown bars at USD). That's how I see it, anyway. I hope the Administration can learn something from the GCU success, but there are limitations here.

[coyotecrazie5]

[coyotecrazie5]

Oct 23, 2018 11:41:19 GMT -6 kiyoat said:

Ballsy statement about our facilities at the conference presser. Nice.

The SCSC is the best in the Summit League. I think its more of an accurate statement than a ballsy one.

[kiyoat]

www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgmuq4JZQLqOn8HqM08JuhF0xWs1msNjX

And here is the rest of the "sit down" interviews.