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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: BOISEMarch 15, 2018Chris HoltmannKeita Bates-DiopKam WilliamsBoise, Idaho Ohio State - 81, South Dakota State - 73 THE MODERATOR: We'd like to welcome Ohio State. CHRIS HOLTMANN: Listen, we have a lot of respect for South Dakota State. And I think our preparation certainly defensively, certainly defensively was on point. We did not always have as good of attention to detail as we needed to against them. They're a matchup nightmare in a lot of ways. And I give them a lot of credit for how they played. I just thought they kept battling. They had the benefit of the crowd behind them. It got loud for them. But our guys responded and came down the stretch. Players win games, and they did that. Q. You shot 40 3-pointers, today, was that in the game plan? KAM WILLIAMS: I'm going to say yeah, but not really. We knew if we got the ball we'd get rotations to drive to the basket. We were taking what the defense was giving us. We forced a couple of them. Once we got settled down we were able to execute like we were supposed to. KEITA BATES-DIOP: It wasn't really in the game plan, but the game kind of called for it. We had good shooters and for the most part had good shots. Q. It had been a couple of seasons since this team had been to the NCAA Tournament. What did it feel like getting back here? KAM WILLIAMS: Amazing. Ohio State's been in a drought. And myself, JT, everybody on the team, Kaleb, we've been hungry for this moment. The coaching staff has been preaching to us: Embrace the moment. You never know when you're going to make it back here. So just embracing the moment and just hopefully we can go as far as we can. Q. You talked about it yesterday, you finally were matched up against Mike Daum. What was that like and was it what you thought it was or did he do anything to surprise you? KEITA BATES-DIOP: It was about what I thought it was. It was a tough matchup because of his size. He's a tough matchup, but everything we expected. We did a great job scouting. Q. The corner 3 they made when you had a guy in your face, you made it and get the shot to go down, and then scored the next seven points. KAM WILLIAMS: I give the coaching staff the credit. They called the play for me. They had enough confidence to do that down the stretch. And as hard as I worked, my confidence is never going to be shot. So as soon as I let it go I felt like it was going to go in and it just went in. It just felt great. And everything just kind of got rolling from there. Q. Now that you've had a game there's a lot of talk about whether the long break would be helpful or hurtful. Do you have any opinion on the impact of the longer break? KEITA BATES-DIOP: I feel like it was good, just because we fine-tuned some things, especially on defense. We had a lot of time to get back to basics and defensive principles specifically. But I did think it helped and we won the game. KAM WILLIAMS: I think it definitely benefited us. Because the way we went out in the Big Ten tournament, that made us more hungry. So we had to fix little tweaks that we had in the games previous. Once we did that and we got our game plan together we felt like we'd be here for a while. Q. In that second half it seemed like they were maybe about to go on a run, what did you do during that one run to put separation between you guys? KEITA BATES-DIOP: Tried to stay poised. It's a game of ups and downs and runs. We went on a run obviously and just kind of played our game. Q. What do you remember about your game with Gonzaga? KEITA BATES-DIOP: Like you said, it was a long time ago. We're two completely different teams, especially us. I remember they were obviously big and long. But they killed us on the big point shooting, I'm pretty sure. That was months ago. And not even close to the same team. KAM WILLIAMS: We're nowhere near the team we were back then. We've progressed in so many different areas. And the whole team is excited for this one. We've been wanting this matchup ever since the bracket came out. Hopefully when they take the court they'll feel us, because they didn't feel us in the first game. Q. Everyone knows about you're the Big Ten player of the year. But what was it like seeing Kam and CJ have a monster game. In the second half they seemed to take over the second half. What was it like to see those two players and what do they mean to the team? KEITA BATES-DIOP: I wasn't surprised at all. This isn't like a one-man team in any sort of way. I trust Kam to shoot the shots he took, and CJ to do what he did. I get a lot of credit sometimes, but this is a team, this is a great team. Q. Were you surprised when you looked at the stat sheet and saw 40 3-point attempts? CHRIS HOLTMANN: It's not really who we are. It wasn't the game plan. It's really difficult because they're literally giving you tee-up 3s. I think they knew we liked to play inside out. And they were taking away all the interior stuff that we wanted to do. We have got -- probably could have shot about 8 or 9 of those 3s, honestly. If we were at 30 or 32 -- it's a tough thing as a coach where you're trying to figure out, Are we going to get a better shot than a wide open 1, 2, step 3? And talking to coaches in the past we knew they were going to play us like that here. We didn't always make the ones that we had open. But certainly 40 is too much for us. Q. Can you just talk about Kam's role, 7 points and kind of iced the game and talk about his play down the stretch. CHRIS HOLTMANN: It was great. One of the assistant coaches, Ron, we had a call on an action we run for him. We were struggling there late, we were saying, Somebody has to make a play, and someone has to take an open look and make an open shot. And he's that kind of a kid. He wants the ball in his hands in those moments. And he's got that look in his eye. And I thought Keita did a nice job screening for him, and Dakich did a nice job tipping out. When he gets the offensive rebound the bench is screaming, Pull it out, pull it out. When you have a guy that can shoot it like him, I don't know if you're going to turn the off switch there in that moment. I was happy he took that shot and got fouled. Q. Dakich never left the floor in the second half. What did you think of his performance? CHRIS HOLTMANN: Good. Andrew has given us a lot of quality minutes, he's glued our team and connected our team in a lot of ways. Missed some open looks, had some defensive errors. But Andrew has been terrific for us. And he was terrific again tonight, he really was. It's hard for me to -- I don't know if I'd have thought this going in the season, but when we put him out there a lot of times he's hard to pull off the floor. Q. In the second half it was pretty tight. But you ran that 16-0 run. How big was that run for you to set the tone of the game in the second half? CHRIS HOLTMANN: You can't get a whole lot of separation from these guys. I'd watched them against Wichita State and Colorado and Ole Miss and Iowa. It's hard to get separation from them. They're so proficient. So to get a little bit of separation and then kind of keep them at bay, and we knew it could get tight late, again, I think we anticipated a road-type environment. I don't know that we anticipated that it would be quite as loud as it got. Maybe I should have prepared them more for that. It was great to see our guys respond. Q. How does the fact that you played Gonzaga earlier this season affect your preparation for Saturday? CHRIS HOLTMANN: Two different teams a lot of ways right now. I've got so much respect for them after playing them. I'd never coached against a Gonzaga team before. Mark does such a fantastic job. They're physical. They're tough. They're very talented. I thought that they're one of the top one or two teams we played all year. They are one of the very best teams we played all year. And they handed it to us. So we'll go back and we'll watch that. How much they've changed and we've changed, I don't know, because I didn't follow them as much. But they smacked us around pretty good. Q. Daum, in the second half you did a better job containing him. Did you feel you did a better job limiting what he could do? CHRIS HOLTMANN: Yeah, obviously you did. But I didn't think we did a terrible job in the first half. We probably weren't as good -- we left him open a couple of times off of offensive rebounds and then had a couple of slip-ups. He's just a really, really good player. Man, he's a really good player. And when he gets driving it downhill he's a low 2 because of his size. But I thought our attention to detail was a little better in the second half and we had probably about four errors with him in the first half and then the second half we had maybe one or two. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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