Bryan Mullins MVC Coaches Teleconference Transcript
07/01/2021 | 2:20:00 | Men's Basketball
SIU men's basketball head coach Bryan Mullins met with the media today in a Missouri Valley Conference head coaches teleconference. Below is a partial transcript. Click this link to listen to Q&A's with all 10 MVC head coaches, and new MVC Commissioner Jeff Jackson.
What are a couple pleasant surprises or discoveries that you've seen in summer workouts, and what are a couple of things that you're still waiting to see play out over the next three, four, or five months?
Our three freshmen are extremely hard workers. I'm not surprised, there, but they want to get better every single day. They come up to the office and ask questions about their workouts. They try to do the right things in the weight room, trying to get stronger every single day. You never know in that summer period how freshmen are going to adjust. It's their first time away from home with 10 or 11 new guys that they haven't been teammates with before. In terms of them fitting in with our team and the way we like to do things, it's been great. Ben Coupet has come in and established himself right away. He has fit in and will bring a lot of versatility to us. Getting Marcus back and him feeling good, having him on the court every day with the guys in the team workouts and individual workouts, the weight room, it's so much nicer this summer. We've had recruits on campus. I talk about it to our guys almost every single day: Take advantage of it. We were all living last year where we didn't know if we were going to be able to have a workout the next day if we had four guys test positive. Just being together every single day this summer, being able to have a film session in the locker room, the little things like that, are so much more beneficial than the last 12-14 months that we've experienced.
Your incoming players are all 6-7, 6-8. Obviously you wanted to get bigger by the guys you landed. Talk about maybe how that's going to move along. And is (Marcus) Domask 100% healthy?
Marcus is healthy 100%. He's been going every day with the summer workouts. He's been looking good. With the new guys we brought in, we wanted to add some versatility. We like to play four guards. We want to be positionless in terms of the 1 through 4 spots. Ben (Coupet Jr.), Foster (Wonders), and Troy (D'Amico) — all three of those guys can play numerous positions and guard numerous positions. That will benefit us on both sides of the ball. Bringing in Scottie (Ebube), we needed to add another 5-man with some strength and physicality with his back to the basket.
How is J.D. Muila recovering from his knee injury?
He's coming along. He's working extremely hard. He's able to run and do sprints. He's able to do some lateral defensive slides. He's not able to do contact workouts or anything like that. Our goal is to have him playing basketball with contact by September. We can continue to work towards that. He's doing everything on his end. He's had an extremely strong spring and summer.
What kind of advice did you give to (Loyola head coach) Drew Valentine about being a first-year head coach? Secondly, you had that first year when everything was brand new; your second year was a COVID year; does this year finally feel semi-normal?
For the guys in our program, except for four, it's the first time they've had a summer in Carbondale without quarantines and isolations. That's been beneficial for the program. I'm still trying to grow, still trying to learn, still trying to figure out what the best summer format is. It all depends on where your program is and how young or how old everyone is, depending on what types of workouts you do, and the culture part as well. For Drew, he's been with Coach (Porter) Moser for four years. He's going to do an unbelievable job. I told him to be himself: 'You don't have to be Coach Moser. The reason you're the head coach there is because of who you are, what you've done in your life and who you are as a person, so trust your instincts.'
Has the one-time transfer rule and the graduate transfer rule changed your view on redshirting? Are you still willing to redshirt a kid?
It hasn't changed my mind. If one of our guys comes in and has an injury and isn't able to get back healthy, or if it's an incoming freshman or sophomore that isn't in your top 10- or 11-man rotation, and you present that (redshirt) opportunity to them, it's all about what they want to do at the end of the day. You can't force anyone to redshirt. Sometimes, kids will come to you and ask to redshirt. I think it's the same situation as it's always been.
Have your players been anxious about pursuing things related to the Name, Image and Likeness policies?
I don't think they've shown a ton of interest. I'm sure they talk to each other more about things they're thinking about. Our responsibility has been to educate them on this process. Everything has happened pretty fast in the last couple weeks, even though most people in college athletics saw this coming at some point.
How confident are you that the guys will self report this stuff and you'll be able to monitor it so that it doesn't become a compliance problem?
Pretty confident. If the guys are supposed to self-report it, they will self-report. Student-athletes now are able to profit off their likeness, and they will follow the rules over any payments that they receive.
If NIL happened on July 1, 2007, what sense of your value do you think you had? How do you think your current players are grasping all this?
It's new for the players, obviously. I'm not sure, in terms of going back to 2007 for myself. I had tunnel vision in terms of trying to do well on the court and in the classroom. I wanted to make sure I was representing the program and my family in the right way. If opportunities had come up, I'm not sure how I would have handled them. I probably wouldn't have tried to market myself. I'm not a big social media guy anyway. We have a lot of mature guys, even though they're still freshmen, sophomores, and juniors on our roster. I think they'll handle it the right way. They'll do what they need to do and talk with their families. We have a great set of parents in our program. They're all responsible young men.
What would your preference be as a coach for how NIL evolves and what structure should it take?
Good question. Across college athletics, if there could be some sort of uniformity, whether that's a totally free market, or a certain set of regulations and guidelines that everyone has to follow. I think that will happen as things continue to work themselves out at much higher levels than myself.
You've coached in Chicago. Now, you coach in Carbondale. With NIL, on its face, Chicago is the third-largest media market in the country, so it looks like it's rife with a lot of marketing opportunities, but I'm guessing that you get a chance to be a bigger celebrity in Carbondale when you're not competing with the Chicago Bulls or anything like that. From that perspective, how will this impact recruiting? Do you think someone might think, 'I get to be a big fish in a small pond.' marketing-wise, instead of going to a big city?
Time will tell from a recruiting perspective with the NIL stuff, whether that's the next couple months or the next couple years. Being down in southern Illinois, it's a smaller town but a region that really supports our basketball program, compared to a large city like Chicago. It's obviously different scopes. I think the biggest thing is that when you're successful, whether that's at SIU or at Loyola, that's when you generate the most excitement. I know when I was playing down here, it was unbelievable in terms of the support around the entire southern Illinois region. Everyone was so proud of the SIU basketball program. In Chicago, when Loyola made the Sweet Sixteen last year, or the Final Four when I was there, there was a similar-type excitement around the city for that program, as well.
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