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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: BROOKLYN

March 17, 2016

Nick McDevitt

Brooklyn, New York

THE MODERATOR: Joining us now in the main interview room is Nick McDevitt, the head coach of the UNC Asheville Bulldogs.

COACH MCDEVITT: First of all, we're certainly excited to be here in New York City, participating in the NCAA Tournament against a terrific program in Villanova. It's a tall order, a tall task. Certainly going to be challenging tomorrow afternoon, but our young men are looking forward to that. So we're looking forward to tomorrow.

Q. Coach, your last game was in Bowie's Creek, North Carolina, and now you're in Brooklyn.
COACH MCDEVITT: It's no different.

Q. I asked the guys what's the experience been like going from that to this? What's it been like for you?
COACH MCDEVITT: Great. Really, it's -- hopefully not a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but at the same time, each one of those things individually -- that is, playing somebody like Villanova, playing in the NCAA Tournament, playing in the Barclays Center -- those are things that not everybody gets a chance to do. We're doing them all in one day.

So the experience of all that -- and that's something we've talked to our young men about, which is at some point, you have to be able to enjoy the experience, be excited about what we're getting a chance to do, but also understand we've got a game to play against a really, really good team.

We want to compete tomorrow. We also want to advance. That's going to be very, very difficult. So if we're distracted in any way whatsoever, our chances are very, very limited.

Q. Played a lot of close games in your conference season. How does that prepare your guys, particularly a young team, for this stage?
COACH MCDEVITT: We've actually talked about that at length as a team, as a staff, that tournament games going into our conference tournament anyway, we were talking about the fact that we had played in so many close games, not always coming out on the right side, but played in a lot of close games nonetheless. And how we felt like we would be more comfortable than our opponent just because of how many of those games were so close for us.

So hopefully tomorrow, it's still close at that last media and see what happens over the last three, four minutes. Hopefully, our young men, because of the games that we've played in the past -- some of our upper classmen have played against Duke and Kentucky, and this year playing Georgetown and Texas A&M, having the opportunity to play in arenas that are 20,000 seats in front of a lot of folks on national television, hopefully, those kinds of things as well cause us to have a little bit more of a level of comfort tomorrow afternoon.

Q. You were the associate head coach four years ago when you lost the 16 game to Syracuse by seven. What are some things you can impart from that experience to the team in this game?
COACH MCDEVITT: We talked about this week that one of the reasons we felt like we were in that game was because of the preparation leading up to the game. Our team wasn't -- that year, in 2012, just happy to be here. They wanted to win and felt like they could win. So we talked to our young men here about having the same kind of attitude and effort leading up to the game.

Our practices were going to have to be tough. The attitude toward the game was going to have to be we want to win. Otherwise, you have no chance before the ball goes in the air.

Q. I have a bit of a strategic question for you. When you're playing in a bigger arena like this tomorrow, sold-out crowd, as a coach, do you prefer to have your players on your end of the court near the bench in the first half or the second half, in terms of communicating with them and being able to relay what you want in that kind of an environment?
COACH MCDEVITT: That's a good question. I think, for us, we talk about communication a lot. Particularly in the first half, you're defending on your end of the floor. So the guys that are not in the game, the players on the bench are able to help the players on the floor, talking to them about, you know, whether somebody's trying to overload the zone or somebody's cutting on the baseline and watch the back screen, those kinds of things. You're usually a little bit better in the first half than you are in the second because, as you mentioned, in the second, you're on the other end of the floor, and it's just the five of you.

So as far as a preference, I don't know that I have one. I just think that, again, we talk to our players about the importance of being just a little bit better at defensive communication in the second half because you're not going to have help with the coaches and the players and sometimes even the fans behind you. There probably will be a lot of Nova fans here tomorrow afternoon. So I don't think they'll be helping us too much on that other end.

Q. Coach, if you could take a look at two games for us, what you did so well in the Georgetown game that allowed you to get that victory, and then maybe on the opposite side, the Texas A&M game and what allowed that game to get away from you.
COACH MCDEVITT: I thought early against Texas A&M, they just had so much size at every position, that that gave us a little bit of trouble earlier in the season. And I also thought that our young players were still playing young at that point in the season.

When you're playing Dwayne Sutton, Dylan Smith, some of our freshmen, 30-some minutes a game for an entire year, at this point in the season anyway, the hope is they're starting to play like sophomores. I just thought at that point in the year we were still playing inexperienced.

I think some of our younger players don't necessarily play as inexperienced as their classification says they are. The other part is we've been pretty good lately in the second half of the season in our 1-3-1 gap defense. We, at that point in the season, we're still working on it in practice and not very good at it in games. So being able to use that and keep teams off balance has been something that's helped us later in the year.

I believe we ended up number 1 in the country at defending the three-point line as far as three-point field goal percentage defense, and I think fourth in steals. A lot of what we do in our success is predicated on what we do on our defensive end of the floor.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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