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

March 15, 2018

Chris Mack

Nashville, Tennessee

THE MODERATOR: The head coach is here, Chris Mack. We're going to ask him to make a quick statement on being in Nashville, and then we'll go to questions. Chris?

CHRIS MACK: We're excited to be here. Obviously, it's what you shoot for, to get to the NCAA tournament. Hopefully, our team will be ready to go tomorrow. I think we had a good couple practices leading up.

Face a really good team in Texas Southern, coached by Mike Davis. Got a lot of respect for their talent level and be a good game.

Q. Chris, if I could ask you about the game itself, they have a 5'7" guard that could fit the prototype of guards that have given you guys trouble over the course of the season. What do you make of his play and what did you see about him last night?
CHRIS MACK: What I've known about Demontrae for a long time, he's electric with the ball. He's tiny but gets where he needs to get. A lot of times, when guys are smaller in stature, they tend not to shoot the ball as well.

He's not that way. Our guys have a lot of respect for him because they've known him for a long time. He's been a YouTube sensation ever since he's been in high school. He's given a lot of freedom, very deservedly so. Pushes the ball from end to end.

He can finish in the lane, even though he's smaller. He hangs in the air. When the shot isn't there, he finds teammates. So, again, he's the guy that sort of stirs their drink and makes things happen for them. And our team's very well aware of how talented he is and how much of a playmaker he is. We've got to do a good job on him.

Q. Chris, y'all ate at the Jeff Ruby's restaurant last night. How did that come to happen?
CHRIS MACK: "Y'all ate..." wow.

Q. Suddenly southern. How did that come to be? I heard a rumor you were able to meet Kid Rock. Did that happen?
CHRIS MACK: Both, yes. When we were assigned Nashville, I got a text from Mr. Ruby. He said we'd love to host you. Obviously, we leave a couple days before the game. Last thing you want to do is eat a Ruby's steak the night before. We did that a couple nights before.

Ironically, he texted me and said my favorite entertainer was going to be there. I was like a kid in the candy store, waiting for him to come in. I was pretty composed. I was pretty composed. Didn't stutter my words. You can check with my daughters. It was pretty cool, meeting Kid Rock. Really cool.

Q. (No microphone.)
CHRIS MACK: He doesn't follow college basketball. He talks about Detroit being a really pro town. I just quickly diverted the conversation to, you know, having seen him in concert seven or eight times. Pretty cool. It's good.

Q. Coach, how much of your improvement on the defensive end of the ball, with man to man defense this year, how much do you think is personnel and size and depth, and how much is execution?
CHRIS MACK: Defense is always personnel driven. Got to have guys that have the DNA to get it done: length, quickness, strength. And the IQ part might take a little bit of time, especially for younger players.

But I do think our team has gotten a lot better defensively over the last three or four weeks of the season. And as I told him, you know, our season will end if we don't make good decisions with the basketball and we don't defend at a high level.

And nothing exposes you more than the NCAA tournament with all the talented teams and talented players, well coached teams you're going to play. Our defense will be up to its first challenge and hopefully won't be our first and only challenge tomorrow evening against a team that likes to push the ball and give their players a lot of freedom.

Q. Coach, if you sort of look at, I guess, the early discussion about the NCAA tournament and Xavier is commonly considered as the weakest No. 1 seed. I was just wondering if you have talked to your guys about that and, if so, what those conversations have consisted of.
CHRIS MACK: If I've talked to our team about being the weakest No. 1 seed?

Q. Just the general perception that you guys are the weakest No. 1 seed.
CHRIS MACK: I don't worry about general perceptions. I've got other things I have to worry about, starting with Texas Southern's personnel. Whether they think we're the strongest 1 seed, the worst 9 seed, the last 16 seed, who really cares.

You throw all these teams in one tournament and the better team on that particular night wins. They get to advance and the other one gets to pack up and worry about the next year. I got a lot of other things to worry about talking to our team about.

Q. Chris, this Kid Rock thing has shaken my understanding of who you are as a person.
CHRIS MACK: Hey, no problem, man. No problem.

Q. What's your favorite song?
CHRIS MACK: I wear it proudly.

Q. I didn't mean it in a disparaging way. What is your favorite song and did you do all rap metal? Were you like a Limp Bizkit guy too?
CHRIS MACK: "Devil Without a Cause" would probably be my favorite song. I can give you a ton of them. "Flying High" with Zac Brown Band, one of his later albums. He's really changed his approach to music. He's more rhythm and blues and country now that he's older.

So am I, so maybe we're on the same sort of wave level. I don't know. People make fun of me for loving Kid Rock and you know how much I care? Zero.

Q. I do know that you care zero. Seriously, I wasn't insulting you.
CHRIS MACK: Believe me, I didn't take it as an insult.

Q. Serious question.
CHRIS MACK: That wasn't serious?

Q. More serious regarding tomorrow's game. They have an interesting setup at forward/center with Marquis and then the 7'2" player coming off the bench. What do you make of that matchup, relative to your personnel group at that position?
CHRIS MACK: Our players have a healthy respect for Trayvon Reed. He's 7'2" we played against him at Auburn, the first game he was eligible as a freshman. We had "Spalding" tattooed on our head three or four times in that game. He has NBA length, NBA shot blocking ability. We'll do what we can to draw him away from the basket.

It's been my belief and the way I was raised in coaching, you have to go at a shot blocker instead of going away from him. If there's air space, he's going to win. He likes to block shots off the ball, rather than, you know, on the offensive player that he's actually guarding.

But he changes the game defensively, and our players are going to have to recognize, when he's committing to the shot versus, you know, when he's committing to the player that he has underneath for the dump-off. So he's a big part of what they do on both ends of the floor.

Q. With the perception of you as a No. 1 team, have you addressed with your team the idea that a 1 has never lost to a 16? Do you address that at all with your team?
CHRIS MACK: No. I think our players are very well aware of that and they watch ESPN and FS1 and they have Twitter accounts. So we recognize that no 16's ever beaten a 1. That's not really my concern. We don't have to play those other 80-something games that were played in the past. We have to play Texas Southern tomorrow. We have to be better than them. If we don't win, we don't win. We're going to give it our best shot and play really hard. Being locked in and having fun and being a group that is playing to win a national championship tomorrow night is who we're going to be.

Q. Chris, this is the fourth year for three of our core seniors to come together. How would you characterize the difference of each trip as you take this fourth one?
CHRIS MACK: It's hard to sort of compare and to think back, because you're so in the moment. I look back on their career with a lot of fondness, because when they came in as freshmen, we sold them on a dream of playing in the NCAA tournament every year and based on our history, why wouldn't you think that.

But for those guys to be in their senior year, in their fourth NCAA tournament, having won a Big East regular season championship, earned the two highest seeds in the history of our program in NCAA tournament play, along with all the personal accolades, I feel like I sold them a dream that was not a dream. It became reality and it was through a lot of hard work that they gave.

I'm going to miss those guys and hopefully have a lot more games to coach.

Q. Coach, after the Georgetown game in which Naji Marshall scored a career-high 21 points, he hasn't scored that many points combined in the last four games. Are you happy with his shot selection? What can he do to be more of the player he was offensively a few games ago?
CHRIS MACK: Number one, Naji, his best attribute and his best gift for us as a freshman is to be a terrific on the ball defender. We give him a lot of different challenges from point guards to power forwards.

I don't necessarily worry about his shot selection. I want his confidence to be at an all time high. He doesn't take bad shots. Early in the season, his biggest downfall was turnovers. And I think he's done a pretty good job for the most part of trying to keep those down.

But, you know, offense will come and go at times. It's the effort that you have to give on the defensive end that he can really help this team. I think he recognizes that.

There's nobody on his team that's lost confidence in Naji. Things just sort of worked out right against Georgetown, and we have other guys that can score the ball when maybe it's not going in for him as well.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much.

CHRIS MACK: Thank you.

THE MODERATOR: Good luck, Chris.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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