	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: ST. LOUIS

March 17, 2016

St. Louis, Missouri

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by the Wisconsin Badgers student-athletes Nigel Hayes and Bronson Koenig. Questions.

Q. Obviously a 1-4 start in the Big Ten is not the best thing the Badgers could have had this year. Was there anytime you felt the Badgers weren't going to make the tournament, and if so what was the moment the turnaround occurred, was it the changing of the coaching job, what was it?
NIGEL HAYES: No, there was never a point where we thought we weren't going to make the tournament. I had the ultimate confidence and faith in my guys. As I've said to the local media a million times, there were going to be growing pains and there definitely were those pains going back to the first game, start of the Big Ten season, again going 1-4 like you said. But the confidence in me never wavered after our Northwestern loss and the talk we had amongst ourselves, we righted the ship, turned things around and here we are.

BRONSON KOENIG: Yeah, just to add on that, after that Northwestern loss, we were all pretty embarrassed just because of the culture of the program and everything and the 1-4 start in the Big Ten wasn't really exactly what we planned on. So we all kind of just called the team meeting in the locker room and got our emotions and our feelings out. And that was good for us, because it eventually brought us together and we started winning some games. That's what we needed to continue to do this month.

Q. Nigel, are you really going to break with tradition in the NCAA Tournament and not use a word that's going to stump the transcriptionist?
NIGEL HAYES: That's actually not really tradition. Freshman year I didn't do that. Last year again that was an accident. And this year I think I'm going to take it upon myself to use you guys and profess my, I have like a select crush, Lea from Glee. So if she's watching this, if she hears this, hello. I'm available. You know. Call, text, call the Kohl Center, Coach Gard's number. If you could get this to her, tweet this out maybe, send her a poke on Facebook. I don't know how this works, you know kids in social media these days. I don't know how they do that. And also if Ms. Lea has a friend, I have a friend, and you know, like Biggie said, your friend can be my friends and we can be friends.

Q. A more serious question. Going in this year as a bit of an underdog, last year, the last couple of years, people have really expected a lot from you guys in the tournament. Is it a different mentality for either or both of you to come in, lower seeded, a little bit of a different situation where you don't have all that tournament experience, aside from you two?
NIGEL HAYES: No not at all. I was telling the guys the difference was last year we wanted to win the national championship. We believed we'd win and the only difference was you guys believed in us too. This year we want to win the national championship. We believe we can. And then you guys don't think we can, which is, you know, that's fine. Everyone has their opinions and rightfully so. You have the great teams, the 1 seeds that they have, the way they play, et cetera, et cetera, makes sense. But that doesn't take away from what we have in that locker room. Bronson and I sitting right here, we believe in ourselves, what we know we can do. We just have to go out and play every game like it's our last, take care of little things and hopefully the wins will come.

BRONSON KOENIG: I have nothing more to add on that.

Q. The first game I went to of your guys this year was actually the scrimmage, I think it was against UW Plattsburgh, maybe.
NIGEL HAYES: Scrimmage. We had a scrimmage?

Q. Maybe you weren't a part of that. One thing I realized from that was how big Ethan Happ contributed. And I saw through the year he came through and through every time you guys really needed him. How big would you say an effect has he had on this team this year, Ethan Happ?
BRONSON KOENIG: I think he's been huge for us this year. And ever since last year in practice, playing against Frank gave him great experience and Frank taught him a lot of things that he's carried on over to this year. Everyone can see the progression he's made over the past couple of months, really. He's been a vital part of our offense just trying to get the ball inside and once he gets that mid-range jumper to start falling, he's going to be really hard to stop.

Q. Nigel, can you talk about the importance of Michael Young and Jamel Artis for you guys defensively, and you guys plan on holding them down?
NIGEL HAYES: That's a big part of the team, those two guys, what we learned from film and scouting, either Young or Artis have been the leading scorers in probably all but maybe one game. We know those guys contribute and carry most of the load for them. It's going to be important, obviously, if we want to win, we have to not only score more points but don't allow them to score as many. We know they're both great players. They present tough matchups for us. But it's something that I think that's why it's a team game, team defense, and we'll do our best to try and make them take shots that are lower percentage or not as comfortable for them and we'll play to the percentages.

Q. I don't know if you guys would describe yourselves as fairly loose going into this game. Is it easier to be more relaxed with the experience you have not only in this tournament but also having gone through what you went through this season with the coaching change and everything?
NIGEL HAYES: I think it's just a matter of balancing it, which is something that, again, last year us being as good as we were throughout the whole year was something that the media made a big deal out of and the world saw that and they're, like, oh, those, guys have fun. And then they go and win. It's still the same thing, it's just a game of basketball at the end of the day. And we always want to have fun when we're playing it. So we always try to stay as loose as we can, but then we have to know like every team, there's a time and a place. When it's time to flip that switch, we have to focus, zero in our task at hand if it's practice or film, or when the actual game comes, it's just a matter of balancing both.

Q. Was there any underlying tension during the year not knowing if Coach Gard was going to get the job permanently or not, just in terms of was it always just sort of hanging over the team?
BRONSON KOENIG: No, I wouldn't say there's any tension really at all. Because he always told us it's all about the players, it's all about us, and that he's just there to kind of put us in the best possible position to succeed and it wasn't really an audition for him or anything like that. So we always just looked at him as the head coach ever since Coach Ryan left and everything. We weren't really thinking about, oh, we've got to win to get Coach Gard the job or anything like that. But I'm really glad that he did get the head coaching job eventually.

Q. Nigel, do you feel more effective playing inside or outside of the paint?
NIGEL HAYES: It depends on who's guarding me. I'll elaborate for you. Again, similar to him asking about Michael Young. Young is a player that plays the exact same way. He has the ability to put the ball on the ground and he can shoot the ball, and he can also go inside. And what he does is predicated on who is guarding him. So I mean the best way to put it is, you just take what the defense gives you. You never try to force anything. You don't want to force anything. That's when bad things happen. If there's a guy who wants to sag off, shoot the ball. If they come up, go around, if they are small, go inside, et cetera, et cetera.

Q. You guys haven't played since last Thursday. Do you think the off time has helped you guys a little bit or it may hurt because you haven't played in a while?
BRONSON KOENIG: I think it's helped us. I mean, I hope it's helped us and helped our legs a little bit, get us a little rest. I know a couple of our guys have been banged up, you know, knicks and bruises, like everybody in the country. I think it will help us and get that bad taste out of our mouths after the past two days and strategize on what we need to do to beat Pitt.

NIGEL HAYES: That's a question you answer after the game is played. This being the tournament, I don't want to think about the negative things. But if we win this game, you guys will say the rest helped us. If we lose this game, you'll say we had too much time off. That's something, again, we don't worry about those ancillary things. We focus on looking at the last game, the rest of the season, what did we do well, do it better. What we didn't do well, do that better. And then we'll try and go play as hard as we can and see what happens.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297