HELENA — With Carroll College riding a four-game win streak into the start of the Frontier Conference basketball tournament Sunday, MTN Sports' Jonny Walker sat down with Fighting Saints head men's basketball coach Dan Pearson.
A full transcript from the video interview is available below:
MTN Sports: I think the most impressive thing to me about your squad, just talking to the guys throughout the season, was that the belief was always high.
There were times when you guys weren't necessarily winning a lot of games — that changed later in the season — but what does that tell you about the guys on this team that they didn't give up and they continued to believe?
Dan Pearson: We talked about that last week in the locker room after the game. That for us has been the biggest skill that we've actually had on the collective is we walked into a group of guys that temperamentally were really patient.
They had probably really quality values, that in those more difficult moments they were able to kind of still keep their nose in the right direction, stay together. They like each other. I think when you have especially early challenges in a long season, that you can't take for granted how challenging that is to get to the place where you show up every single day and enjoy working with the same people you work with.
MTN Sports: Talking about some of those young guys, Isaiah Crane is a four-time conference player of the week, back-to-back the last two weeks of the season. What makes him so good, and is he really learning the Frontier Conference?
Dan Pearson: Yeah, I mean, the nice thing with him is you talk of the learning side of things. I mean, for all of his strengths, he's a very smart basketball player. Just on a coaching front, you walk out and you show something the first time, and his capacity to see the second and third layer on that -- I think it's super unique for a guy like him as a scorer.
MTN Sports: When you look ahead to the Frontier Conference tournament now, these are all teams you're very familiar with. Would you say that's a good thing, an advantage, or are there ways where that could bite you?
Dan Pearson: Yeah, I mean, I think that you get to a place where there's some complacency and then also things that you have some early success on people. They're naturally going to adjust. And so beating a team three times — it's tough.
Beating a team four times is even tougher because, generally, the losing squad goes back and makes the adjustments, and the winning squad doubles down. Again, talking style, we have a little bit more of a player-led style. So, hopefully the style of basketball we play, you know, minimizes that a little bit.
