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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: SAN DIEGO

March 15, 2018

Bob Huggins

San Diego, California

THE MODERATOR: We are ready for questions for West Virginia head coach, Bob Huggins.

Q. Coach, you're a fifth seed in the East Region, but you had to come all the way out to the west coast and if you win you have to go back to Boston. How do you feel about that?
BOB HUGGINS: I think if anybody is equipped to do it we can do it after what we do in our league. We fly across the country constantly in our league, so our guys are pretty used to it.

Q. Bob, I'm here covering New Mexico State, but I cover the Lobos which is a team that tried to press this year and rebrand itself as a pressing team, even talked to be Kevin Mackey, like I think you talked to in the past when you made the shift. That first year there are some hiccups and maybe some growing pains. A first-year coach, would you give him any advice on the growing pains of making a commitment to pressing the way you do?
BOB HUGGINS: Well, I fully believe coaches have to coach their personality and that was Kevin's personality. I coached against Kevin. I have known Kevin forever and Kevin started doing it in high school.

It's like anything else. You have to have trust in it. If you don't trust it it's not going to be any good. You have to trust it and you're going to give up some layups sometimes and some easy shots, sometimes it's just not going to work. But I think over the long haul, it's been good for us.

It's different. You don't see it all the time. It's like a guy said to me what makes it so effective and I said if you walked out of your hotel and some guy got in your face and followed you everywhere you went wouldn't that bother you? And he said, yeah, and I said that's what we try to do for forty minutes is do that.

Q. You recruit to this now and you tell kids when they come on campus this is what they're going to be doing, but there is probably still a moment when they get on campus and they're starting at practice when they realize this is a lot more than they realized, this commitment. Jevon Carter mentioned earlier there are three-hour practices where they realize they didn't shoot the ball much at all. Do you see that moment with your players and that realization that this is even more they thought?
BOB HUGGINS: First of all, I didn't do a very good job recruiting to this system. This year compared I think to the previous two years we don't have near the foot speed that we had before and when you're talking about covering the amount of area that our guys cover, foot speed is important. Everybody says they want to play fast. If you go into any kid's home they want to know how much do you run and as soon as you get them on campus they don't want to run. They want the results at the other end, but they really don't want to run.

I think it's a learning and growing process. J.C. has been terrific. It made J.C. the National Player of the Year. It's got him a heck of a lot of accolades that, you know, if we played 58-53 he certainly wouldn't get.

Q. Just wondering, you've talked about the run-up to a couple years ago and how you were disappointed in that. How have the practice sessions and everything been to this game?
BOB HUGGINS: Obviously, better than they were then. They could have been better, Mitch. They probably could have been worse. It's a long year, you know. It's a long year of playing against the same people every day. It's a long year of basically doing the same thing every day. We were okay yesterday. Actually, yesterday I thought we were pretty good. Most of us. Everybody wasn't but most of 'em were.

Q. With Carter, was he any kind of a defensive player before he got to you guys? I know he wasn't highly recruited. What did you guys see in him that others maybe didn't?
BOB HUGGINS: Well, I was in Orlando at Disney, got me a big cup of coffee, went in to watch the 8 a.m. game over in the new place, which is not the old place, and he was in the furthest court away that you could be on and I went over there and I'm trying to drink my coffee and wake up and this guy is pressing at 8:00 in the morning. No one else on his team is pressing, just him.

So he's picking up the ball and pressuring people from end line to end line and I called my assistants and said we've gotta sign this guy and they said, what did he do well? And I said, hell, I don't know what he does well. But he sure tries to guard.

He's gotten better and better and better because he works so hard. He really does work. People say this guy worked hard and that means the guy gets in the gym 15, 20 minutes before practice and this guy is in there an hour and a half every single day on top of going to practice and he's made himself a great player.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

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