MBI Quotes – Liberty 83, Wichita State 66

Liberty Coach Ritchie McKay – “I’ve known [Wichita State Head] Coach [Paul] Mills for a long time. I think he’s a fabulous coach and he’s got a really good team already. Most of the time, it takes a while to build a program and they are such a tough out. Really proud of our group because I think Wichita State will win a ton of games. Really hard fought battle. It was a nice atmosphere. It was really highly competitive.” (On playing for a championship Sunday) “It’s the Myrtle Beach Invitational. You got to get invited. I think it’s a privilege to be invited to one of the ESPN Events, especially when you have the quality of opponents that reside in this bracket, and none better than Vermont. I just like watching them play. [Vermont Head Coach] John Becker, he’s got to be one of the underrated coaches in America, in my mind. Top 10. I know it doesn’t say, ACC or SEC or whatever on their jersey, but he’s as good as anybody. I love the way their team plays and I love the way our team plays. To get a crack at Furman, Wichita State and Vermont, that’s only gonna help us down the road and we’ll see how we go.”

Liberty Forward Kyle Rode – (On the run to end the game after Wichita State cut it to two) “Just being in spots where we’ve done that before. We have a veteran group. Coach puts us in situations in practice where it resembles that as well. Just play basketball the right way, and we believe when you stick to that process, the results will come.” (On playing for a championship Sunday) “My freshman year I was fortunate enough to play with that veteran group. Coach reminded us the other day about that group and I think we played for four championships in that season. The runs you got to withstand, the grind of it, the quick prep day-to-day. I feel like we’ve done a great job of that so far and tomorrow we’re going to look at film, clean up what we need to clean up and prepare for a great Vermont program on Sunday. Anytime you get to play for a championship, it’s gonna be pretty good.”

Wichita State Coach Paul Mills – “Great game by Liberty. I’ve seen [Liberty Forward] Kyle Rode quite a bit during the last few years. For him to go 7-of-12 from three is kind of a tribute to the time that he puts in. They obviously shot it well, 40 threes, only 27 twos, but they were able to make it and then really push out on our guys. We had 24 made baskets but only three of them were assisted. They did a really good job of just pushing out on our guys, forcing us to make one-on-one plays. Anytime we turned our backs, they were swarming. Give them a lot of credit. This will be a valuable lesson for us. We’ll get a ton out of this film and have a quick turnaround and prepare to play a really good Saint Louis team.” (On the lessons learned from this game) “I think film is where the lessons will be learned. Having a day off tomorrow. The reality about basketball is, unlike football, you don’t have to wait a week in order to let this frustration out. You can learn from this pretty quickly and then be able to play the next one. It’s going to happen in conference as we move forward to January and February and it’s got to happen now. We’re going to end up playing a really good Saint Louis team on Sunday night and we’ll be prepared. This will be a valuable lesson learned through this whole process.”