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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: DENVERMarch 16, 2016Mark FewKyle WiltjerEric McClellanKyle DranginisDenver, Colorado THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Gonzaga student-athletes. We'll take questions for the student-athletes. Q. What do you do with a guy like Isaiah Whitehead who has been playing great basketball for this team? KYLE WILTJER: We have to do a good team effort. He's obviously a very talented player. We have to do a good job, just all helping each other out. We can't leave anyone alone just on an island. We have to play a good game in the gaps and be there for our teammates. Q. Did you feel more a sense of relief when you beat Saint Mary's? There was so much that went on this season. Or did you just feel happy or both? ERIC McCLELLAN: Yeah, man, definitely. I mean, I felt like the last month we've been playing our best basketball. Guys are really playing confident, playing free and playing loose. Obviously with, you know, everything going around from media and fans, you know, to not possibly making the tournament, of course. With that win, it felt like a huge weight off our shoulders. Although the pressure was on us, you could just never tell by the way we were playing. I think we need to come out with the same mentality, man, we've been having the past month or so. You know, let the chips fall where they may. Q. Earlier Seton Hall's players talked about it took a little bit of time to come down from the high of winning their conference tournament. Did you have the same experience or was it back to business right away? KYLE DRANGINIS: I think, you know, we definitely enjoyed the victory. Like Eric said, it was a big relief for us. So we felt good about it. But we're hoping to kind of use that momentum from the WCC tournament and use that in the first round, kind of just keep things going from there. Q. Do you feel at times like a bit of a throwback with so much emphasis on small men running in the backcourt? KYLE WILTJER: I just play my game every night. I don't care what people call it. I just try to do whatever it takes to win. I pride myself on being a skilled player. Obviously shooting the ball, then playing off of that. You can call it whatever you want. Q. In what ways have you seen Sabonis grow from last year to this year? What do you need him to do for you in this tournament? KYLE WILTJER: His game has grown a lot. He's obviously a beast on the boards. He's really stepped it up there. This year especially just being able to play with so many double-teams thrown at him, playing with confidence. His midrange jumpers have really been evolving. We're going to need to have him continue to push us, be that energy guy that gets us going. For this tournament, he just has to continue to play confidently, play aggressive, and I think he'll be a big part of our team. THE MODERATOR: We'll dismiss our student-athletes at this time. Thank you, gentlemen. We have head coach Mark Few from Gonzaga. Coach, if you could start by giving us some thoughts on being here in Denver and your matchup tomorrow. COACH FEW: Well, I know everybody says this, but, I mean, we mean this deep in our hearts. We're thrilled to be here and be a part of this thing for the 18th consecutive year. That's something that we take very seriously and means everything to our program. Certainly, you know, to be able to come to Denver, we have a player from Denver in Josh Perkins. Had a great player from here named Matt Bouldin. We've had some good success recruiting here, also won a first-round game here a while back. It was nice to get sent somewhere at least out in the west region for our friends, fans and families. As far as the matchup is concerned, the more I watch Seton Hall, the more I'm impressed with just how tough they are, kind of gritty. For just a group of sophomores, you know, kind of their main core, they've really, really came together. They're going to be a handful. They're going to be a handful in transition. They're going to be a handful on the glass. They have real ability to score in bunches and score in spurts. You know, hopefully we'll play great. We played great in the conference tournament. Hopefully we can keep that going. THE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. Coach, I watched the HBO special. That seemed like a big leap to do. Maybe it wasn't. COACH FEW: Very big leap for me to do something like that (smiling). Q. How did you make that decision? Did it turn out as a good thing or a distraction? COACH FEW: Oh, gosh. First of all, I want to commend the people that were there day-to-day for HBO. They were wonderful people and great guys. I'm a pretty private person. I like keeping my program stuff private. You know, when they approached us, you know, to be honest with you, there were a couple staff and marketing people in the university that thought it would be great for branding. A couple of my assistants thought it would be great for recruiting. I wasn't really too into it at all (smiling). But I kind of deferred to, you know, those guys were kind of battling, you know, those battles on a daily basis. I, you know, just kind of took a step back and listened to them. I was worried about it. We had a very young team. We had a very immature team at the start of this year. So I didn't think it was a great idea for that. But I've had a lot of comments about it, lot of people have said. I think it just remains to be seen what the end result is. But I've had truly a lot of people come up and say they found some positive things about it. Q. How much has size helped your team this year? You lost a key big man early in the year. COACH FEW: Yeah, we did. It seems like everybody forgets that. I think that's the untold story of this team. I don't know another team in the country that's lost, I mean, Przemek Karnowski, he's a national force. You can march him out in any game against any team out there, and they're going to have to deal with him on the defensive end and on the offensive end and really have to game plan around him. So for this team to lose somebody of that caliber and still get 26 wins, still get all the way back to the NCAA tournament, I think is an amazing accomplishment, especially when it happened way back, you know, on the 1st of December when so much of our year and so much of our preparation was made with Shem in mind. Really affected our depth, but at the same time I think I really gave maximum minutes to a guy like Domas, allowed him to develop and develop. He gets better every week. He's just been a joy to coach and be around, you know, at practice, outside of practice. He's just a humble, eager guy. He just welcomes coaching. The sky's the limit for him. Q. We saw Gonzaga struggle in the first couple months of the season maybe in ways that we hadn't watched this program struggle in past years. What is the difference between that earlier team and the one we watched win the conference tournament? COACH FEW: Again, like I just said. When you lose somebody, you guys follow this stuff closer than I do, but has anybody lost somebody like Karnowski out there? We went from having our most experienced guy to basically, you know, having lost four starters, having an entirely new backcourt. You want those guys to be good like right now. I mean, you know, I probably wasn't as patient as I needed to be, was pressing them hard. I think they could feel that. They could feel it from fans, media, people who just watch the program. But these guards, they've got better. They're making winning plays now. They understand what it takes to win and valuing that. All along I think Domas kept getting better and better. Wilch, Kyle has been a real, real steady hand for a guy that's had to log a lot of minutes. First time I've done this, we didn't use two scholarships. We held onto them. We have two really good players sitting out. We just didn't quite find maybe anybody that we thought could really help us, so we saved them for the next class. Lo and behold Shem goes down. We've been shorthanded at practice this entire year, more than any I've ever had to deal with. This group just deserves a ton of credit for that. Q. Especially with what you went through this year, is it unfair to judge a team just on how far they get into the tournament? COACH FEW: Yeah, I mean, I think we slug it out, battle, deal with all kinds of issues. I think the HBO guys have a real good feel for that after following us all year. It's everything from sickness to injuries to, you know, a lack of confidence. You know, that's a big thing with college athletes, too. Maybe frustrations, you know, over their role. Just sometimes you hit these little bumps where you're just not playing very good. These are long, hard journeys. I think you really need to look at what these guys accomplished over the course of a whole season. I wouldn't call it just a crapshoot, but it's one game. There's a lot of things that can go into games. Obviously these teams are here for a reason. They're either really, really good or they won their conference tournaments. To just judge after slugging it out for six months on one particular night seems rather shallow to me. It seems a lot of people do that. I guess it's their prerogative. It's not one I've ever chosen to take. THE MODERATOR: Thanks for your time, coach. COACH FEW: Thanks. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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