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

March 17, 2017

Greenville, South Carolina

North Carolina - 103, Texas Southern - 64

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Texas Southern coach Mike Davis and student-athletes Stephan Bennett and Marvin Jones. Coach, an opening comment?

COACH DAVIS: We knew we were playing probably one of the best teams in the country today for sure, but I'm proud of my team for what we did this season. Like I told our guys, we can't let this take away from winning more games than anybody's won in school history and winning the conference tournament and the regular season. North Carolina is just at a totally different level than where we are as a basketball team.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes.

Q. You guys have faced a lot of top-notch competition early in the season. Can you talk about what the difference was with North Carolina as opposed to the teams you faced earlier in the season?
MARVIN JONES: The difference is it was November then and it's March now. So they came out with a totally different amount of intensity. They just play hard. They are just a really good team. You can't take anything away from them.

I think Coach told us about a stat that they rebounded something like 45 percent of their missed shots and opportunities like that. When you go up against a beast like that you just have to take it each and every play.

STEPHAN BENNETT: Can you repeat that one more time, the question.

Q. The difference between facing those tough teams earlier in the season and facing this Carolina team. What was the difference between Carolina and some of those other teams?
STEPHAN BENNETT: I mean, during the regular season, I think that playing Baylor and Cincinnati, I only played half the nonconference schedule. But playing those teams, they're tough. And then going into the SWAC, it was a little bit easier, but -- I don't know.

Q. Can you talk about your experience just getting into the tournament, and just the experience from an HBC, you being in this big atmosphere?
MARVIN JONES: Honestly, you know it's just a big target. When you come from the SWAC, so you're not a top five conference like that. So when you come in, it's already -- you already got all odds against you, and everybody's cheering for you and hoping for you to win.

But like the challenge is so big, like when you go up against a team like North Carolina, because this team is like already, one of the teams that's projected to win the tournament. So when you are coming from a SWAC, like a team like us, they're bigger, stronger, faster, we can't have too many laxes as a team.

Once you have one mistake and two, and just keep building and building, you look up at the shot clock, you're down 10, all of a sudden you look up and you're down 15. It's hard to come back from that because a team like that, they're going to constantly keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over again.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for Coach.

Q. Player like Justin Jackson, I think a couple times he had some open shots, but he put up a lot with a hand in his face. What makes him such a special player?
COACH DAVIS: He's from Houston. And he's home schooled and I've been knowing Justin for five years when I got to Houston. He's put the work in. He's always been a really good basketball player. His mid-range is second to none.

But he improved his jump shot. And I watched him and John Lucas work out a lot, and he stuck with it. He could have easily -- not got distracted -- but he projected to come out of college one year, two years, whatever, but he's a worker and it pays off.

Like I told our guys, he's not going to miss an open shot. If he misses it, it's not because of anything other than he just missed a shot because he's put the work in. It's not luck. It's not getting hot. It's just doing what you're doing every day. And like I said I've been doing it for a long time, and he's probably one of the hardest workers in the country.

Q. Coach, you've taken a team as far as you can take a team in this tournament, had a game like this where you didn't make it past the first round. But is the feeling sort of the same? If a team's giving you everything they've got to give you, at the end of the year do you have the same emotions, regardless?
COACH DAVIS: Well, the reason we play those non-conference games, because we all set goals, and you need to know if your goals are real or not, if you can accomplish the goals. And we played Louisville and all those guys. And you know when we start out our conference games, if we focus, if we're playing at a 10 effort, 10 toughness and 10 in alertness. And this year we were able to win at our conference playing at a 5 and a 6.

And I told our guys, in this event no 5 or 6 effort or toughness is going to win these games. And so today if it would have been in our league, we would have won the game today. But unfortunately when you go 10-10 and then they score just before the first timeout, then they go on a run and then we come back, make some good plays, cut it to 11. The next thing you know it's 19. Then you come back, next thing you know it's 20.

Well, you have to -- if we don't win a game in our non-conference against a big power-5 school, it's going to be very tough for us to compete at this level against those teams. And unfortunately this year, we lost to Louisville and Baylor and all those guys by a large margin, and today was no different.

But this team, today, we, I think, after playing Louisville and Baylor, it's unfair to judge them because we played them in November. But that team we played today was unbelievable.

Q. It was 15 years ago that you took down another school from the ACC, your Indiana team?
COACH DAVIS: Was it that long?

Q. I'm afraid so. We were younger then. But when you think back over your career from Indiana in the Georgia Dome against Maryland for the title and now Texas Southern, 16 seed, against North Carolina, what do you think exactly? I was there and now I'm here and that's it?
COACH DAVIS: Well, what's so special about it to me is that I understand the feeling. I know what it takes. And trying to get your team to understand it when they don't see it on a regular basis is difficult. And for me, I just feel like from tomorrow when we get back, all the way through next year, I'm going to be preaching and coaching about the effort you have to give, about the work you have to put in.

I know the feeling. But they don't know the feeling. So it's really hard to kind of get them to see it. And then once we play our non-conference, they forget it, because we've been 16-2, 16-2, 16-2 the last three years. So we only lost six conference games in six years.

I feel this is the first team I have back next year, other than Marvin Jones and Stephan Bennett, and we have some big guys sitting out. I told all the guys: Don't forget. Don't forget how hard it is. And don't forget how hard it is in April, May, June, July, August, because we'll be here again next year. We'll be here again next year. But if we don't change the way we approach everything, the way we work, then the results will be the same.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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