Lindenwood University Basketball Talk with Coach Kyle Gerdeman

Welcome back to Basketball Talk with Linda Wood University Headman's basketball coach Kyle Gerdeman where we talk basketball for sure. We talk the OVC, the NCAA and much, much more. Coach, happy holidays. See you and your family.

Kyle (00:32.27)
Appreciate that same to you and looking forward to enjoying a few days of Christmas celebration and family here when we get done with this last game.

Gary D Stocker (00:42.125)
Okay, so an excellent D1 basketball game last Thursday night against Western Illinois University. And as we talked before starting the recording, Mr. Massey, number 45, was quite the presence for Western Illinois. What do think about him and your team's performance?

Kyle (00:56.226)
Yeah, I think starting with Western, think that we were kind of keyed in on a couple things that they like to do. They've got a couple of guards that were leading them in scoring. And we knew that Massey was a good player inside, but he had a heck of a game. I think sometimes as a coach, you've got to pick your poison a little bit. And I think as the game went on and we continued to do a good job on their guards, who, like I said, were leading their team in scoring.

We just kind of decided to keep guarding him one on one and if he had a big night, hopefully we could keep scoring points as well. And I thought they were having a hard time guarding us. So it kind of worked out in our favor that he put up big number on us, but we were able to handle it. And I just kind of liked how our offense was playing and kind of what we were doing defensively with the rest of Western's team. So sometimes you kind of see some games like that and that was one of them.

Gary D Stocker (01:49.985)
And we've talked a few times on this podcast, Coach, about shooting. And you have mentioned before it's a function of confidence and timing. And you guys seem to be doing a pretty good job with both of those, especially in the last few games.

Kyle (02:02.67)
Yeah, well, think that, you know, I think what we're, I think they're really buying into what we're, what we're trying to talk about on the offensive end. You know, sharing the ball, you know, taking great shots. You know, I think that if you look at, I think if you look at our threes that we're shooting right now, I think a lot of them are wide open. They're really good shots. You know, and Neas takes a couple of contested ones here and there, but he should be able to do that. But everybody else, I think is really, you know, playing simple.

And taking really good shots and I think that's helped us a lot. And I think the time that I think the other thing the time that guys are spending on their own, I'm seeing a lot of guys before practice after practice, getting up extra shots. Guys that know that that's a big part of what their role is. I think they're really embracing that and doing a good job with and we've seen some positive results the last couple games.

Gary D Stocker (02:50.699)
And then you had Harris Stowe make the trip from St. Louis City out to St. Charles on Saturday. You had 11 guys in the scoring column, six in double digits.

Kyle (02:59.49)
Yeah, well was good to get to play a lot of guys. know, Don Tres Williams, didn't play, was sick, which kind of popped up on us that morning. So you get that to deal with. But I thought guys stepped in and really did a good job. And it was good to get guys a lot of playing time and get a lot of guys in the score column. I just think that we've been through a long stretch of games here and you always get to this part right before the Christmas break where you're.

You're kind of getting to the finish line, so to speak. And Saturday was kind of one of those games where we just needed to be focused. And like I said, I thought everybody showed up in the right frame of mind with good energy, and I thought we did a really good job.

Gary D Stocker (03:37.193)
and then you jump on the bus later today to go down to Springfield, Missouri and play Missouri State Coach. I don't know much about them.

Kyle (03:44.003)
Yeah, you know, really good team, I think. And I think a team that, you we've kind of talked about this with teams in the OVC. When you look at schedules, you know, I think what we see when we look at Missouri State is a team that's got a lot of talent, but also a team that's really getting better and better, you know, every time you seem to watch them on tape, you know, I just think they're progressively improved. You know, that's just a credit to their head coach and what they're building down there. You know, they're kind of in an adjustment also, you know, changing from the Missouri Valley to the AAC and

So they're going through some changes also, but really handling it well, I think. And so I think they've got a good inside game, two guys that they can really score on the post. One of those guys can really step outside and shoot it and play off the bounce. So really a challenge there with their inside guys. And then their guards, I think, are really good. I think they'll be as good a group as we've seen, big, strong, physical guys. A couple guys from the area that we know pretty well from high school. we kind of.

Kind of know what we're getting into against some of them, but should be a good test, like I said, against the team that's at a higher level than us. And I think this is our last game where somebody's paid us to come and play them. And so we talked about a little bit yesterday, how did we handle the Texas Tech game? How did we handle the St. Louis game? How did we handle the game at Indiana? I think we've improved through those games.

Gary D Stocker (04:53.947)
Hahaha

Kyle (05:05.494)
And so now can we take all that experience that we got from those three games and kind of put it to use here in the last game of this nature. So I'm looking forward to see our team responds here at the end of the semester before we go on a break for a couple of days.

Gary D Stocker (05:18.891)
So before we talk about the break, you guys did a good job of preparing Texas Tech in their game against Duke over the weekend.

Kyle (05:24.322)
Yeah, I thought, yeah, we'll take a lot of credit for that. Yeah, I've watched some of that and I kept, it was funny because we were watching it at the house and it was, what a game by the way, but you know, I was watching with my son and I was like, man, where is Anderson, the point guard, because he was phenomenal against us when we played him and all of sudden he jumps up and he hits like three threes and five possessions. was like, yeah, they're, doing the same thing to Duke that he did to us. So pretty interesting to see that.

Gary D Stocker (05:27.373)
That was all.

Gary D Stocker (05:41.303)
Yeah.

Gary D Stocker (05:49.165)
And then you mentioned players going on the break after tomorrow night's game and then you bring them back when and then what does a post-holiday practice look like for men's D1 basketball?

Kyle (06:03.944)
I think the first one's always a grind out. Guys get home for a couple of days and coaches do too. I I think we all want to unplug for a couple of days. But we'll bring the guys back on the evening of the 26th. And we'll probably get in the gym that night. We might come in and do some shooting or just get a weight lift in or a workout in, kind of just to get everybody back in. And then we'll get going pretty good on the 27th.

Cause you know, then we turn around, we play on the first. So it gives you plenty of time, I think to kind of get your conditioning level back, get your wind back. And I think one thing that we try to do is play a lot, you know, we'll try to scrimmage a lot, you know, not, not a big fan of like running sprints for conditioning and things like that. try to play our way back into shape a little bit, you know, cause I just think that kind of gets all the, gets all the kinks out, you know, it gets your timing back, get your, you know, ball handling back, get your skill level sharpened back up, shooting the whole thing. So.

Gary D Stocker (06:43.884)
Yeah.

Kyle (06:57.934)
So for us, that's kind of what it is. we may, there may be a couple of days where we go twice or we may come in in the morning and shoot and practice in the afternoon. Cuz you do get a lot of time and that's the thing that I think coaches enjoy the most is during this time where you don't have classes, you don't really have a limit on your hours. And we won't go crazy by any means, but we'll use some time up and make sure we're doing the right things.

Gary D Stocker (07:13.015)
Yeah.

Gary D Stocker (07:21.611)
And Coach was looking at the stats year to date and you have four players averaging in double figures and Clayton Jackson just below that. Is that kind of the pattern you expect to see as the OVC season starts up?

Kyle (07:33.134)
Yeah, I I think that's what we've been building for. I think that's what we've been trying to talk to the team about from the beginning, from summers. We've always talked about, you get five guys in double figures? And that's always a challenge. mean, we've had years with three or four, but I don't think we've got five. And I know this team is really doing a good job of, I think you look at our assist numbers and they're just way higher than they've ever been.

And I think that's where it starts when you look at getting guys and five guys and double figures are close to it. Cuz I think we're gonna get there to be able to get five and it just shows you that you've got an unselfish team. I think their understanding of what and how we wanna play in the half court has really improved. Maybe at a little bit faster pace than our faster rate than some of our previous teams. And so when you see the games end and it-

We've had them in a lot of games with 20, 25, think our high is like 31 assists. I think when you see that and you're getting assist numbers in the 20s, our goal for every game is 12. So we're way over that, might need to adjust that I guess. So when you see that high assist number anyway, I think that just kind of tells the tale of a team that's unselfish, understands that they've got more than one or two guys that can score.

And really doing a good job of just kind of bracing what we want on the offensive end.

Gary D Stocker (08:57.581)
So coach safe travels to Springfield, Missouri and back this weekend. We'll look forward to just continuing our conversations on the podcast after the start of the new year. Coach Kyle Gerdeman with Basketball Talk, Linwood University. Coach, talk soon.

Kyle (09:09.369)
Sounds good, thank you.