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

March 15, 2018

Nashville, Tennessee

THE MODERATOR: The Nevada Wolf Pack are the No. 7 seed in the South Region. They are the Mountain West regular season champions. They'll play the No. 10 seed Texas in Friday's second game.

We'll start off with questions for Caleb Martin, Cody Martin, and Jordan Caroline. They represent the student body of the Wolf Pack.

Q. To both Caleb and Cody, Shaka was up here earlier talking about trying to recruit you two times kind of, I guess. What was your experience with him the first go-around when he was trying to get you to VCU and he said you committed about a week after he talked to you the last time and so he probably didn't do a very good job.
CALEB MARTIN: I saw him in the hallway a little bit ago. I talked to him. Good catching up with him. He tried to recruit us coming out of high school for VCU, at VCU. One of my old teammates who was there as a point guard, Johnathan Williams. He's just a good dude. Came and watched us work out a couple times while we were at our public school.

But yeah, it's not like he didn't do a good job. We seemed to find a better fit at first coming out of high school and that's a decision that we felt comfortable with coming out of high school. It was nothing personal.

CODY MARTIN: I mean, again, it was nothing personal. Shaka's a good dude. He always does a good job. He's great at what he does. We just felt like this is the best option for me and my brother. He's a good dude. I understand he doesn't hold grudges or hold it personal.

Q. If I could get all three of you to talk about you've had a chance for a few days to review Texas's tapes and stuff. What problems do they present for you?
JORDAN CAROLINE: They're a really talented team. They have a lot of depth at spots and they're really long in the front court, so I think that's their biggest advantage. But we just have been watching, seeing where we're going to get our advantages at offensively.

CODY MARTIN: I think the biggest issue is probably just the size. That's the obvious thing going towards our team. But we both like to play fast, so that's something that we're looking forward to. They're really, really good defensive team but we're a good offensive time. I think that the biggest thing for us is just moving the ball, sharing the ball. Like I said, both teams like to play fast, so I think it will work out in both of our favors.

CALEB MARTIN: Again, just jumping off the size, whenever they've got length like that, we've got to do a better job of probably bringing them out, trying to do what we can to get them away from the paint, get them away from the lane and try to expose those mismatches.

One of the biggest things we've done a great job at this year is playing undersize and learning how to get the ball away from those big guys like Brandon McCoy and Juiston at UNLV, guys like that. I think we've done a great job of trying to get the ball out of their hands. I don't think we'll be too shy about it.

Q. Obviously, everybody knows about Bamba. He's not hard to miss out there. But who on y'all's scouting report is a guy that none of us might talk about that y'all are like, we've got to stop this guy.
CALEB MARTIN: I mean, there's honestly a couple of them. Roach is a guy, a really high volume guy for them. We know Young, he's been playing his best basketball lately, been shooting the ball very, very well.

They've just got a lot of people, Osetkowski, he's very good. We've read a lot of articles, watched a lot of game film on him. He's one of the players who can change the entire momentum of their game. We've got to make sure there's a couple guys we have to wrap our hand around and make sure we do a great job to not let them get going.

Q. You have a lot of transfers on your team and you're an older team. How much does that sort of help you guys that there are players in the locker room who have been in other places, who have experienced other things, when y'all put it all in the pot, makes your current team chemistry?
JORDAN CAROLINE: Well, everybody on the team has been to the tournament, so that brings a lot of experience because nobody's afraid of the big lights. I think that helps a lot.

Also, coming from other programs, everybody's came here and we bought into we want to win. We put winning before anything else.

CODY MARTIN: For sure, I think a big thing for us now is having a lot of experience. And I know my freshman year, we made a run in the tournament, that was a big factor to being in the tournament, having that kind of experience and understanding that you don't have to start out slow. There's no getting nerves out.

Something our coach emphasizes is always playing hard. Go for loose balls, playing defense or things like that can encourage you to get the nerves oust. I think that having that kind of experience on our team is going to benefit us.

Q. For any of y'all, you had a great season, but go into the tournament having lost two of our last three. Was there a common thread in the last two losses that you need to kind of get squared away heading into this?
JORDAN CAROLINE: I would say just being ready to play right out the gate. I feel when we played in the tournament we got smacked in the mouth. That's really ultimately what led to that loss. The same thing when we played at San Diego State, we had lapses that came back to bite us at the end.

Q. Caleb, it's a make-or-miss business. You guys make a lot of 3s, 40 percent as a team, which is way up there. There are going to be times when they don't fall. What keeps you guys going, because you shoot a lot of them, and it's make-or-miss-type thing. So what keeps you going, especially knowing that Texas is so big inside.
CALEB MARTIN: I mean, the main thing we've got to realize, whenever shots are falling down, we've got to do a great job of defending people. At the end of the day, keeping guys in front of us and learning how to rebound with the bigger guys, whether we have to double down and box out, take two guys to box out, we're going to need all five guys to come in and do what we can on the boards.

Like you said, at the end of the day, we live by the 3 a lot of times. When they don't fall, we have to rely back on our defense and rely back on our rebounding for sure.

Q. Jordan and Caleb, the direction of this program has been a step forward every season. Do you feel like the next step in this program's ascension is getting to the tournament and winning a game after what you were able to do last season?
CALEB MARTIN: For sure. I think every program has to take steps in the right direction of bettering each season.

Last year, they got to the tournament and then it seems to kind of be like a replay of last year. But like you said, our goal is always -- our intentions are always to win the game, and we came to Nashville to win and win a couple games, actually. So we're going to come here with the mindset, we're ready to play, just like any other game we're going to approach. Exactly, just better every season. Better every season, every year.

JORDAN CAROLINE: To piggyback on that, you don't want to just keep getting there and losing. You don't want to plateau. Each year, we try to get better. Like he said, we came here to win a couple games, not just one. We have big goals ahead of us.

Q. For both the Martins, how has this NCAA tournament experience different than the one you went through in your freshman season at North Carolina State?
CODY MARTIN: Obviously for me, my freshman year, we didn't get to play. You're going there and get to experience everything but it's a lot different when you're on the court. I finally get to experience it and get to have a big impact on the game.

I get to have -- I have different teammates with me. These are a great group of guys that I wouldn't want to be over anybody else. What's different is obviously, we're in a good position. We're in a higher seed. We're looking forward to winning. We know we have a tough opponent so I know that I've got some good guys beside me to go to war with.

CALEB MARTIN: Same thing. Basically just the same thing. Just being some big-time contributors along with Jordan and Kendall and Hallice and everybody. I think the team's different. A lot of our scoring, a lot of what everyone's impacts across the board for our team, everybody does our own things, you know. At a bigger school, you had a couple guys that did the main things and everybody else did the dirty work.

We're a team that it doesn't matter. Could be anybody's night. We've had nights where Josh has had 20, Jordan's had past 20. Kendall's had past 30. You know what I'm saying. You just never know. I think with like the way our team is, it could be anybody's night.

THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, thank you very much. Best of luck.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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