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NATIONAL INVITATION TOURNAMENT

March 30, 2016

Bryce Drew

New York, New York

COACH DREW: This whole experience has been a great blessing for our program, getting to host three home games, we broke our attendance record in our final home game and being here in New York City has been an experience that our players are never going to forget.

Yesterday was a very intense game, a very emotional game, especially down the stretch for our guys. We just feel thrilled that we have another day to practice and another game on Thursday.

Q. Last night Alec after the game said something along the lines of this experience will past not getting in and all that. You talk about how much of a blessing this has been. What does this do for the program going forward, just this whole run that you're on right now?
COACH DREW: You know, it's a huge step for our program. To be able to play this deep into March, only a few teams left in the country, getting the exposure on ESPN. And getting to play in Madison Square Garden, I think our fan base and our university, it's just been a great response from our alumni and everyone is just really excited about what's happened the last few weeks.

Q. What have you seen on George Washington and what stands out?
COACH DREW: Very good team and very well could have been an at-large team in the NCAA Tournament. They beat Virginia earlier in the year, which everyone knows what a fantastic win that is. They have a lot of different pieces. They play very well together. They rebound the ball well. They have skill players that make shots and they have experience.

So you don't get this far and beat the teams that they beat if they are not a good team, so we know how good they are going to be.

Q. Last night, 28 minutes into the game, you had 20 turnovers, season-high, very uncharacteristic. What happened with that, and then to be able to turn around and not have any turnovers in the last 11 minutes of game, how key was that?
COACH DREW: I think both teams were a little fired up to be in Madison Square Garden, and I think both teams turned the ball over a little more earlier than either are used to.

I thought the last 12 minutes, we really had great patience on offense. We got used to -- more to their length. I thought Collinsworth was extremely active and got his hand on a lot of balls and disrupted us a lot. I think our guys improved on getting used to him as the game went on.

Q. In the fallout of the game, obviously you want to being excited about it, but you really have a quick turnaround. How much was spent last night in prepping and how much do you know about George Washington?
COACH DREW: We had prepared film on all the teams here. We knew it would be a short turnaround, so we had film to watch, now just crunching in the film and trying to catch up on yesterday's game and trying to put a game plan together.

At this point of the season, again, it's hard to change who you are as a team, so I'm sure both teams will do things that they have done before or are comfortable with.

Q. You were in tourist mode for a while when you got here as anybody would be. Today, do you allow yourself any of the, we're in New York, let's check out some other stuff, or is it all basketball today?
COACH DREW: You know, pretty much now, it will be basketball. We'll have practice this afternoon and then we'll give them some free time to go around here close to the hotel right around Times Square, then do our dinner tonight and bed checks, so it will be a similar routine today.

Q. You know tomorrow, win or lose, it's the final game of the season. Have you ever been in a situation like that, a state title game with your high school -- is it a different mind-set of knowing, hey, when these guys put their jersey on, win or lose, it's going to be the final time together?
COACH DREW: You know, this has been a special group. They have won 58 games in two years and in Canada had a great team experience getting to know each other and doing so many fun things. A lot of times you get worn down, tired of being around each other throughout a long season, but we are having as much fun as we have in this team's two years of being together. None of us want it to end, and again we're just so happy that we have another day and another game.

Q. Can you elaborate on Cavanaugh, your impressions of him and his game?
COACH DREW: Very skilled for his size. Does a lot of really good things out there. Can shoot the ball, can score down low, dunking in real hard. So he's averaging 17 points a game so you know he can score in a variety of ways. That will be a challenge for us to see what matchup hopefully we can slow him down with.

Q. I also was going to ask about Cavanaugh in the sense that at first glance, he would seem to be a fairly similar player to your big forward, Alec Peters; both big guys that rebound well but can also score inside and step out and make threes. Just wanted to ask you a little about that matchup. Obviously they are both having huge tournaments here, and just wanted to ask you about the two of them matching up there and what you think.
COACH DREW: You know what, I think when both of them play well, obviously our teams play a lot better and guys feed off of them. But it will be an interesting matchup because they do similar things. They can pick off threes or dunk in the post and score. They both really go at the offensive boards and defensive boards very hard. It will be a good matchup with two very good players.

Q. I wanted to ask you, you were asked before a little bit about doing some tourism things or sightseeing things in New York. I know today is a more serious -- not the more serious, but like you said, a full basketball day for you. Any specifics or can you tell us some of the things you guys did sightseeing wise or tourism-wise here in New York when you first got into town?
COACH DREW: We gave them a little free time at Times Square to enjoy, to walk around and see some of the things. The guys enjoyed some dance-off (ph) with the people on the streets, they enjoyed that. The other day, we went to the Statue of Liberty, we didn't do the boat tour, but just went down and saw it and took some pictures. Went down to the Memorial down there and let guys be part of that.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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