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BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 10, 2016

Kansas City, Missouri

West Virginia-86, TCU-66

THE MODERATOR: All right. We're ready to begin with the Mountaineers from West Virginia, head coach Bob Huggins, three student-athletes, Jevon Carter, Jaysean Paige, and Devin Williams. We'll go straight to questions for our student-athletes first, and then will come back for coach.

Q. Chauncey Collins hurt you guys in the past the first two games. Does his 18 points seem effective tonight against you?
JAYSEAN PAIGE: You know, Chauncey is a good guard and he hits tough shots. We tried to get the ball out of his hands and make other people make plays, but he had some tough shots.

Q. For Devon, as a guy who has been here, what does it mean for this team to get their first win in the Big 12 tournament?
DEVIN WILLIAMS: I mean, I guess it's our first time being in the Big 12, to get a win in the tournament, so I guess that's somewhat of an accomplishment. But we are here to win a championship, so, you know, all we can do is just use this to move forward and clean up what we did today and just, you know, move forward.

Q. For Devon, the game-clinching run there, you had a bunch of rebounds, a couple of points. What was it like closing the game out like that? You knew you had to do something big to keep them from crawling back in it.
DEVIN WILLIAMS: I don't know, I think my guards here did a good job of finding me, the bigs stepped up and things like that. For the most part, you know, my job this whole year, season was just to rebound the ball. So I'm happy that I rebounded the ball. And as far as me scoring points and stuff like that, I just give that credit to my guards.

Q. This is for Jevon Carter. Jevon, heading in you were in a slump from beyond the arc, but you seemed to ignore that, hitting your first three-pointers. What was your mentality heading into this one that were you going to shoot away?
JEVON CARTER: Well, you know, shooters, they keep shooting. I've got to give a lot of credit to my guy here to my left, you know, putting a lot of time in in the gym, making sure my shot is correct. And just staying confident, shooting is about staying confident. The more confident you are, the more shots you're going to make.

THE MODERATOR: Congratulations on the victory and we look forward to tomorrow. Questions for coach.

Q. Coach, you have been in so many post-season tournaments. Is there any kind of message to the team after you -- what is the message going into postseason normally for your team? It seems like this year it's a little different because you have some guys who have been here before.
COACH HUGGINS: Well, I told them before the season started to get together, sit down and write what their goals were, and one of their goals was to win the league championship, which we fell short. And then they wanted to win the tournament championship and go to the NCAA and continue to advance there. So I just try to help them do what they want to do, you know. It doesn't do me a whole lot of good to say here's our goals when they're not bought in. So I'm just trying to help them.

Q. Coach, the second half was give-and-take. It took until 5:00 to go in the half for any team to score more than 4 points in a row. Can you talk about the run that put the game away?
COACH HUGGINS: Well, they shot the ball, I thought, very well and shot it from deep. Did a really good job with the zone, did a really good job of matching up with us. That's kind of what we do. You know, we continue to pressure. And it is an accumulative affect, hopefully it is, that we get to their legs a little bit and they start to miss some shots.

Q. Bob, as rugged as the Big 12 has been this year, do you think it better prepares all these teams for the NCAA tournament? Or do you think it maybe takes something out of them?
COACH HUGGINS: I don't know. I've been fortunate enough to take two teams to the Final Four, and we won the conference tournament both years. And the Big East was -- I am trying to think, we beat Cincinnati at the buzzer, who had -- Nick had a really good team. The second was Notre Dame, and Mike had a really good team. And Georgetown in the championship, and they were all on last-second shots.

I was a little bit concerned that, you know, we were pretty spent after three straight days and three games that hard. But we came out and played pretty well in the NCAA tournament and went to the Final Four.

The same thing happened at Cincinnati in '92, so I don't know. I hear people say you're better off if you get rested and all that. The truth of the matter is probably when you were 18, 19 years old and somebody gave you a day off, you probably didn't rest. They probably don't either.

THE MODERATOR: Coach, Congratulations.

COACH HUGGINS: Thank you much.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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