Prohm Q&A: Texas A&M preview
No. 14 Iowa State plays at No. 5 Texas A&M in the Big 12/SEC Challenge Saturday. ISU head coach Steve Prohm talked to reporters Thursday in advance of the game.
On the current status of center Jameel McKay:
“He won’t practice (Thursday), but he’ll play Saturday.”
On what McKay is dealing with, as far as his injury:
“I don’t know all of the specifics and really haven’t sat down with Vic (Miller). I was in Milwaukee yesterday recruiting. From what I was told through emails is that it’s just a little swelling and irritation. He just has to continue getting treatment and getting stronger.”
On where McKay is mentally after his tweets following Monday’s game:
“I really haven’t talked to him. I just saw him for the first time since the game, since I left the arena on Monday night. Hopefully he’s in a good place and we’re ready to play Saturday.”
On if this is an injury that could get worse over time:
“I don’t know. I really don’t know enough right now. I don’t think so. I think it’s just something we have to go day to day and treat.”
On how much he and former boss and Texas A&M head coach Billy Kennedy have spoken this week:
“We were texting earlier on the drive back. I watched his game (Wednesday night) from a little sports bar waiting to go to this high school game. It was unfortunate they lost. Arkansas is a tough place to play. I talked with him a little by text (Thursday).”
On what he thinks of facing off against Kennedy for the first time:
“It’s great. We’ve got two top-15 programs playing on national television in one of the marquee games of this Big 12/SEC Challenge. I’m really proud of the job he’s done there. He’s a guy I look up to and been a great influence on my life. It’s a little surreal. But once the game starts, it’s just a game. He knows what I think of him and how appreciative I am of what he’s done for me.”
On he and Kennedy’s rises in the coaching profession:
“We left Centenary after our second year. It was really my first year and his second year, because they went independent. Southeastern, you were kind of turning the corner in year four and in year five and six we won championships and went to the NCAA Tournament.
“At Murray, they’ve always won but a unique situation when we got there, they only had three players on the roster. There was a lot of turnover for a lot of different reasons. Year four we won 31 games, year five we won a championship again, and year six is when I took over and he went to A&M.
“Last year was year four down there and they probably should have been a tournament team, but House got hurt the last couple weeks and that kind of threw them off the bubble. Now you see how good they are this year.”
On what it means to him that Kennedy has had success at a high-major program with their formula:
“It gives you great confidence. It’s about players, first. You’ve got to be able to get players. If you don’t have players, you can do whatever you want and you’re not going to win. But you can do it the way you want to do it, the lifestyle you want to have, the family and core values you want to have… you can win that way. You’ve got to get good players with character, toughness and ability, but you can do it the way I want to do it. It’s been proven by him, as well as Mark Turgeon at Maryland.”
On if he had the opportunity to go with Kennedy to the Aggies when the head coach left Murray State:
“I hoped so. I think so. I was going to try to get the job at Murray and then if I didn’t get it I was going to go to A&M.”
On if this matchup reminds him of just how far he’s come in the profession:
“It just keeps you humble and lets you know where you came from. Everybody just sees this end of the result, where you’re making a ton of money. I used to work at Blockbuster Video and worked for free and worked part-time jobs. You don’t see that part of it. It keeps you humble and understanding that you got into this business because you loved the sport of basketball. I was just so excited to go win the TAC, which was formerly the Atlantic Sun. That’s all I was really thinking about at that time.”
On what he saw out of A&M’s big turnover game at Arkansas:
“I just saw that game from afar and didn’t pay too much attention to it. Arkansas plays different than we do. They’re going to press and it looked like they were playing some type of matchup zone. I don’t know where all A&M’s turnovers came from. It’s surprising with a Coach Kennedy-type team that they did turn it over that many times. But we turned it over 23 times at TCU. I’m glad we both got those games out of our system.”
On this run of games the Cyclones are playing against highly-ranked teams:
“You take them one at a time. So far, so good. Our next two games are against five (Texas A&M) and six (West Virginia). It’s great. It gives us an opportunity to continue to get our team better and win big games. I guess we’ve the chance to be the only team to win five top-25 games and four top-five games if we can get this done on Saturday.”
On the team’s approach going into this latest stretch:
“You come out here today and put two good practices together and go down there to compete the right way. Then we get home and get ready for West Virginia on Sunday and Monday and play them Tuesday. Nothing changes. It’s the next game. A great team. Quality opponent. A great RPI opponent for us."
On if he’s tempted to sit McKay for this non-conference game to get him healthy:
“Not really, unless that’s something he brought to the table with me. We’re trying to win every game. Every game is an opportunity for our team to get better. We’re playing to win.”
On if the depth of the team worries him during this stretch of games:
“We’re almost into February now and are playing pretty well. We still can get better and do some things better. We have a solid seven-man rotation right now and an eighth guy kind of chomping at the bit that he may get an opportunity as well. I feel good. Deonte (Burton) played really well the other night, so that was really encouraging. I’ve got to try to get him some more minutes.”