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NCAA MEN'S REGIONAL SEMIFINALS AND FINALS: SAN JOSE

March 23, 2017

San Jose, California

Gonzaga - 61, West Virginia - 58

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins and student-athletes Nathan Adrian and Jevon Carter. We'll go right to questions.

Q. Jevon, can you talk about that last sequence there? Was the thought the whole way to get, to go for 3 since you were down 3? Or you guys have been dribble penetrating pretty well all game and getting to the line. Did you just think about trying to get 2 there?
JEVON CARTER: Yeah, that was a mistake on my behalf. I knew they had a lot of guys at the top. I should have drove it to the basket, but knowing it was a 3-point game, I tried to go for the 3, since I'd been hitting. But if I'm in that position again I'll take it to the basket.

Q. Coach, just wondering how frustrating was it for you to see this game so close and yet your team had a hard time making some shots?
COACH HUGGINS: Hard. Where are you? Hard. But you tell me another team in the country who can shoot 26 percent from the field against a No. 1 seed, 21 percent from 3 and still could have, should have won the game. I think that says a lot about what kind of guys we have.

Q. Bob, similar to what you just said, the other thing was your full-court press didn't really kill them like a lot of people thought it would, yet you were right in the game. What did you guys do so well that made this game go down to the wire?
COACH HUGGINS: Let me try to put this as succinctly as I can. My dad -- you know my dad was a hell of a coach. My dad is in every hall of fame there is in Ohio. And my dad used to tell me there's a game within a game. And I'm, like, I don't understand what that means.

He said, well, there's a lot of things you have to adjust to. You have to adjust to their personnel. You have to adjust to their scheme of things, what they're trying to do. And then you have to officiate how the game's going to be called. And you know and we've done that all year.

You know, we've tried to -- there's times, we backed off because you don't want a continual parade to the foul line. So you have to back it off some. And you know sometimes you can go at it a little harder. It's not as black and white as people would like to think that it is.

Q. Nathan, how hard was it as players to get into a flow with all the stoppages, with fouls and whistles? Does it make it difficult offensively to get in any kind of flow?
NATHAN ADRIAN: Somewhat. You don't really get into a rhythm. But, again, we've been dealing with it all year. We foul a lot; just the way we play. So still can't shoot 16-for-60.

Q. Just wondered what Gonzaga did, if anything, to keep you guys from shooting so well?
COACH HUGGINS: I didn't hear you.

Q. I'm wondering if Gonzaga did anything particularly well to keep you guys at a low percentage?
COACH HUGGINS: We had a shoot-around walk-through today and made every shot. We had shots. We just didn't make them. Their size bothers everybody around the rim. When you're driving at the goal and you run into a 7'1", 300-and-whatever-he-is, it's hard to score. And then we just didn't -- we didn't make shots that we normally make.

Q. The potential to be a big sequence in the game, when Nathan picked up his fourth foul and you had to take him out, how were you guys able to weather that storm? And what role did Jevon play in that?
COACH HUGGINS: Well, these are the two guys that I can kind of count on to do what they're supposed to do and I can make adjustments with. And obviously when you lose Nate, who is a four-year guy and has probably improved as much as anybody I've ever had. He's playing hurt, and he would never tell you that, but he's playing hurt. He can't shoot the ball because he's got a bad shoulder.

But he continues to make plays for us. He continues to make plays that win games. I mean, you know, he gets a couple of offensive rebounds for us at the end that could have helped us win a game. When you take him out of the lineup, it hurts us.

But we've played guys all year. We've built depth by playing guys. Guys that don't play anybody, so they don't have depth because they don't play them. You gotta play them.

Q. Both of you guys, what are your emotions at this point? It's got to be really tough when you get this far. How long will it take for something like this to get over?
JEVON CARTER: I mean, if you've ever played basketball then you always dream of going to the Final Four and winning the national championship playing at this stage. And to know you were so close and you gave everything you had and to come up short, it hurts.

But for me I can't let this game hurt me too much. I got another year. But I know for Nate, he's done. So I know it has to hurt a lot, probably more than it hurt me. But I got another crack at it. So I'm going to get in the gym and work.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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