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

March 15, 2018

Mick Cronin

Nashville, Tennessee

THE MODERATOR: Head coach of the Bearcats is Mick Cronin. We're going to ask him to open up with a statement about being in Nashville and then we will take questions. Mick, please.

MICK CRONIN: It's good to be in Nashville. Just got to be Brad, the former SID at Austin Peay. Talking about some old Racer-Austin Peay battles.

But our team's excited to be here. Obviously, our focus is on Georgia State and hopefully we've got our batteries recharged from an emotional last couple of weeks that our team's had. And got our mind on the NCAA tournament.

So probably good for us to get back out of town as fast as we could, with everybody so excited, telling our guys, Good job, good job. "Good job" is not always the best thing to hear when you're trying to keep your team sharp. So we've got to get back out here and start over. We're ready to get going.

Any questions?

Q. Mick, Ron Hunter talked a little bit about his relationship with you, and you mentioned it before with the R.J. tie-in. When was the last time you really had a chance to talk to him? What is your relationship like with Ron?
MICK CRONIN: We're getting older, both of us. I'm not sure how long it's been, when we met. But back being close, you know, Cincinnati and IUPUI running into each other. Obviously, I'm younger. I'm aware he played at Miami of Ohio, but I don't really remember watching him. Of course, games weren't on TV that much back then.

Probably more so when I was up there recruiting in Indianapolis, I saw him a lot. When you was at Pike High School games. It became a running joke to stay away from R.J.

But it was neat, because what's funny is I was the one guy that I saw in R.J., he had a chance to be a great player. You had to ignore that he wasn't the biggest kid in the gym. But like I told Ron, I'm partial to kids that our dads are coaches because I was one of them. I just wasn't near as good as R.J.

So anyway, you know, it's been on from there. Ron, we share the same agent, so we've talked quite a bit over the years about different things.

But we run into -- most of us all in this business, we see each other on the recruiting trail. One guy's running into a gym at Cheyenne High School in Las Vegas and another guy's running out to go to the Cashman Center to see a different tournament.

So he has done -- I'm happy for him because he's found a home at Georgia State. He's done such a tremendous job there.

Q. Earlier this week, Coach Hunter gave a little comment about Ruth's Chris and Wendy's and the Hyatt and the Comfort Inn. With regards to that, he said they eat at Wendy's, you eat at Ruth's Chris.
MICK CRONIN: I eat at the Montgomery Inn. You ever been to Cincinnati?

Q. I'm from Cincinnati.
MICK CRONIN: Do you go to Montgomery Inn or the Boathouse?

Q. Montgomery Inn.
MICK CRONIN: Of course. We need to take Ron there.

Q. Is it strange to see how the perception around your program has changed? It puts you in a different light how he said he was seeing you.
MICK CRONIN: Look, all that stuff's good. Ron's good with the mic. I don't know if it's getting him any endorsements in Atlanta, but I hope so. I don't really pay much attention to all that stuff.

As far as, you know, our program, Coach Huggins, what did he come back, in '89? By '91, we were in the Final Four. He let the record reflected our program back to national prominence. So around that time, it's kind of been that way ever since, despite the change in conferences that we've had.

It's my job to keep it there.

Q. Coach, how you doing?
MICK CRONIN: Good to see you as always, my friend.

Q. A lot of hype around Bearcats and Virginia's defense, deservedly so. This is a pretty good defensive team in Georgia State as well. What kind of problems do they pose? Not a lot of height.
MICK CRONIN: The turnovers, they create over 14 a game. That's been something that's caused us problems. I'm a big believer, as you know, in turnover margin is the biggest key statistic that's not talked about.

If you hear me talk at a basketball clinic, that's what -- people ask me about defense, I'll talk to them about turnover margin. Just sheer numbers. You're going to get more shots than your opponent.

The other problem with turnovers, which Georgia State does a good job creating, is then points off turnovers, transition baskets that you can't set your defense. It eliminates your scouting report defensively.

We're much harder, just like they are, much harder to score on teams 5-on-5. So they do a great job, as good as any college team I've ever seen, and Ron's obviously teaching it with the Karl Malone.

Remember, Karl Malone would play post defense and he'd wait. As soon as you turned, he'd strip you. Because of their lack of size at certain positions, they're excellent at it.

Then our own Kenyon Martin became excellent at it as well as an NBA player. And they just do a tremendous job stripping the basketball defensively. And that's something that's a big concern for us, because it can eliminate your height advantage.

Q. Mick, you're in town, Xavier's in town. You're in separate brackets, different -- you've got the first game tomorrow, they've got the night session. What kind of atmosphere are you expecting tomorrow? Do you expect some fans traveling? Maybe see some Xavier people coming early just to maybe boo?
MICK CRONIN: Here's what I'll tell you. I have Xavier friends. And so all it did was add to my ticket request, because they want to come to both sessions. I'm dead serious on that. So I have -- it's cost me money, to be honest with you. A couple of guys that I owe favors to that are big Xavier boosters but are friends of mine. So it's going to end up costing me four or 500, them being in the same bracket as us, having to buy extra tickets for them.

But I will get it back this summer somehow.

Q. You know that Georgia State's going to try to spread you out with their 3-point shooting. You've faced teams that have tried that earlier in the year. How have you tried to contend with that? What kind of success have you had?
MICK CRONIN: I think, like anybody, it causes you problems at times. And it has for us. Whether it was Cleveland State, whether it was Tulsa, whether it was Memphis in the first half in the conference tournament.

It's a challenge that when teams play small, they're going to do it because they're going to play more shooters. The bigger you are, the more it puts pressure on your defense. You've got to cover out at the 3-point line with bigger guys.

So we've seen it, but that doesn't mean we're going to be able to deal with it. So we've had some days here to practice. But we'll have no excuse because it's not like we haven't had time to practice.

Like you said, we've seen it from multiple teams. You know, even Houston is a great shooting team. So that being said, I think that they do a great job of spreading you out, but they also have Simonds, who is a big-time player. Not just a scorer. He can pass too.

So it all starts with him, because if he gets one-on-one coverage, he scores, he gets fouled, he gets layups, then you start to leave their shooters and he finds their shooters. So he's a concern. He's as good as anybody we've played against probably since Trevon Bluiett.

Q. Coach, you mentioned at the beginning that you don't want your team to get complacent with winning the American Athletic Conference, and you sometimes, like when they hear thank you a lot, that can hurt a team. How do you balance that with your team being hot at the right time?
MICK CRONIN: I agree with you on that. You want to be playing well. And you want to have momentum. I think momentum's a good thing in any sport. And guys believe in -- I think you've got to go into a tournament believing that you have a chance to win the tournament.

If you really believe that, then I think your commitment level will be higher instead of just being in the tournament, being happy to be in the tournament.

So that's one. But, two, I think my job's been to focus our guys on putting those trophies in the trophy case and getting back to staying alive here. And to be honest with you, you know, trying to make sure we just worry about winning Friday.

I think our guys aren't -- we have -- I don't know our seedings, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, stuff like that. We haven't been a 2 seed. So it's a new one. So we've always been really focused on the first game because we've really kind of been playing another team from a conference like ours.

So with this situation, it's been a huge concern of mine, making sure my guys don't look past the first round, that they realize that Ron Hunter's won tournament games, that the Sun Belt's won two of their last three first round games.

Q. You mentioned yesterday about your players thinking about the UCLA game last year, and I asked a couple of them about that, and they said that was true. They said they'd learned from that. They'd learned how to win.
What did they learn from that, do you think, that has helped them win this year or helped them this season?

MICK CRONIN: Well, we talked a lot about, one, you can't get -- whatever our game plan may be, you can't get away from it, which we did in the second half of that game.

Two, we practiced all summer on being in better shape, be in better condition and trying to be a better transition team.

And the last piece is to be -- you know I've talked about this -- be a deeper team. So you get into a high-level game, and Georgia State starts making shots back and forth and it starts to become a back and forth game. You got to be able to keep pace with another team when they're making those kind of shots because everybody's capable.

You know, Memphis did it to us. They were awesome in the first half of that game. We talked about being able to raise the level of our game when the time comes and we have to play at a high, high level or we're going to lose. Everybody's not going to come out, be confused by your defense. They're not going to have a bad night.

In that game, UCLA took it to a level. We didn't go up there with them. When the game got to a certain level, we, A, got away from our game plan; B, we didn't stay at the level with them.

I showed them the film on it too. Fatigue was part of it. That's why I wanted to schedule them this year and then talk about it all summer.

The focus wasn't just on that game. It was what do we need to be able to do to be a high level team.

Q. How did the loss affect you personally? Did it take a long time to get over?
MICK CRONIN: All losses affect me.

Q. That one was no different?
MICK CRONIN: Not really, no. Look, what you got to say -- in my job, you beat yourself up for a while, and then you have to say, in that game who on my team would have started for UCLA last year? And then after about 30 seconds, I answered that question, I went and played golf.

Q. Mick, your 3-point defense is one of the best in the country. Which player do you think is really the catalyst of that that needs to be playing well in that regard for you guys to really lock down from long range?
MICK CRONIN: I can't give you a single guy in that, because they have multiple -- teams that shoot the ball well, it's because they do it with multiple players.

So if they only have one shooter, you just deny him. Everybody deny him. The way we play defense, we change our coverage a lot. So I think the key for us all year has been focus on our game plan. We're a big game plan team. We're game plan specific.

And then what I would finish that answer with is we've shown the ability to get better defensively as games go on and take -- just like we talked about in previous answers, if you need to take -- if a team's really hitting hard shots and a guy gets it going, you have to be able to step it up and play unbelievable defense with unbelievable effort and not just hope a guy misses and almost force misses, force turnovers. We've been able to do that a lot this year. That's why we have the record we have.

THE MODERATOR: Mick, thank you very much. Good luck.

MICK CRONIN: Thank you, sir.

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