HELENA — As the Carroll College men's basketball team looks to build off back-to-back road wins last weekend against ranked Frontier Conference rivals Montana Western and Montana Tech, MTN Sports' Jonny Walker sat down with Fighting Saints coach Dan Pearson.
A full transcript from the video interview with Pearson is available below:
MTN Sports: Through seven games so far this season your record is 6-1. You're coming off back-to-back road wins against ranked teams. Just how would you evaluate how this team has looked through the early part of the season?
Dan Pearson: For us — because we're super young, we have six pieces of the puzzle that are playing really, really heavy minutes that are in their first or second year for us — so any win early, I think, is something that we were maybe not always expecting, especially knowing that we had a pretty good strength of schedule.
I knew we were going to be good. I thought we had some talent. But watching the way that everything kind of ran out last year — we started to catch a little bit more of a stride once kind of systematically when we got together in middle January. So I wasn't 100% certain how quickly they were going to come together in that space. But the advantage that we had this year was we were able to recruit guys that were kind of ready made for what we wanted to do.
MTN Sports: This past week, you not only picked up a couple big wins, but you also had both conference players of the week: Isaiah Crane on the offensive side of the ball, Kellen Harrison on the defensive side of the ball.
Dan Pearson: Maybe one of the things that I think that it points towards, as well — and again, those are guys that we didn't necessarily recruit, but we got really lucky that they fit well into what we're trying to do. Kellen Harrison is a perfect fit for the disruption that we want to do on the defensive side, and we consistently throw him at the best offensive player on the other team.
And then I think the same thing goes for Isaiah Crane. The pace that we want to play with, the type of movement that we put on the court for guys like him to get downhill, it’s a perfect fit both ways. And so we just have guys that, at young ages, have some special dynamics to who they are.
MTN Sports: You're on the road last weekend. This weekend you're going to get back-to-back home games. What are you looking to see out of your guys in these two home contests?
Dan Pearson: I think our biggest thing that we've preached is we just need to get the processes right. Our guys have been fantastic about this. And so, I mean, we even discussed it last week: The outcomes of the games, whether they were big wins or losses last week, should not dictate the way that we practice on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.
