Lindenwood University Basketball Talk with Coach Kyle Gerdeman

Gary D Stocker (00:01.912)
Welcome back to Basketball Talk with Linwood University head men's basketball coach Kyle Gurderman. And we've got Coach Gurderman on the bus today. And coach, I'm jealous you get to go on all those fun bus trips.

Kyle Gerdeman (00:12.941)
Yeah, we're on a fun ride here to Huntsville, Alabama. So should be an enjoyable day.

Gary D Stocker (00:20.42)
Well, good. I want to talk about your trip here in a second. Let's look back to last weekend, and it was a week with a solid wind to start off the season and then a night on Monday night down at SLU where hardly anything went right. Can talk about those two games?

Kyle Gerdeman (00:34.095)
Yeah, you know, I thought the home opener was a nice win for us. I thought we handled things the right way there against College of Pharmacy. mean, you we had a couple guys back that hadn't been healthy, so I thought we were excited to get out there and, you know, of play with, get our group back together, so to speak. And so it was enjoyable, and I thought our guys did a good job offensively and defensively early in the season and, you know, did some good things. And then, like you said, I thought we got down to it.

We got down to St. Louis on Monday night and we almost didn't do anything right. You know, couldn't make shots and couldn't couldn't dribble, couldn't pass. We couldn't do a lot of things that night and I give St. Louis you a lot of credit for that. think their you know their defense was really the best we'd seen at this point in the year. Better than Texas Tech was I thought more physical, more physical, more aggressive, and I just think we just weren't. We just weren't prepared for it. We didn't handle it well and and we gotta learn from it.

Gary D Stocker (01:10.606)
Ha ha ha ha.

Gary D Stocker (01:22.391)
Interesting.

Gary D Stocker (01:32.452)
Yeah, and I guess that's my follow-up question. So you've been on big stages at Texas Tech, you've been on a big stage at SLU, and sometime soon you're going be going to the University of Indiana. How do those kind of games and those big stages help you prepare, you and your team prepare for that conference season?

Kyle Gerdeman (01:37.838)
We'll get through and we'll continue.

Yeah.

Kyle Gerdeman (01:47.009)
Well, I think the biggest thing is kind of the internal challenge of knowing that it's going to be a real difficult game. Knowing that you're going to really get tested physically, you're going to get tested mentally, you're going to get tested in every aspect by teams that are that good. know, Texas Tech was 10th in the country. St. Louis is the top 25 team. Indiana is probably going to be in the top 10 by the time we get up there. You know, so a lot of it is the internal challenge of being able to control what you can control.

And I thought, I thought we did that at Texas Tech. I thought we'd been able to do that over the years a little bit. I thought it really got away from us at St. Louis and didn't control the things that we could. We didn't control our mentality the way we needed to. So that'd be the challenge for us going when we go back to Indiana is can we play this one? Can we play this one better than we did the first two? That doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to win it, but you can present a lot better and you can do a lot and you can do things a lot better. And that'll be our, that'll be our goal.

Gary D Stocker (02:47.748)
And so you're on that fun bus ride. You're headed for a couple of games over the weekend. I think maybe next Monday, Charleston Southern and Alabama A &M. What are you expecting down south?

Kyle Gerdeman (02:54.221)
Thank

Well, I think it's going to be interesting because you know, think we've got, know, what we would consider comparable opponents. Both of them are good. Charles in the Southern plays a really fast tempo, shoots a lot of threes. Alabama A &M has a big physical team. Obviously they'll be playing at home. So I think it's going to be interesting far as here, you know, early in the year to see how we compete against, you know, like I said, teams that I think are our level. And I think that's what we're looking to as coaches and I think our guys are looking forward to it.

Gary D Stocker (03:22.648)
Yeah, yeah.

Kyle Gerdeman (03:27.149)
You know, so should be two competitive games.

Gary D Stocker (03:30.628)
Good. And let's call that a wrap. And we've done this week's episode of Basketball Talk with Lindenwood University head men's basketball coach, Gertruman. We'll be back next week with another podcast episode.

Kyle Gerdeman (03:41.805)
Sounds good, thank you.