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

March 17, 2018

Bob Huggins

San Diego, California

THE MODERATOR: We are ready with Coach Bob Huggins. There will be no opening statement. We will begin with questions.

Q. Coach, a lot has been made off court about the series and everything. But I'm wondering, the game itself, how do you think these two teams match up? Where do you think the game will be decided?
BOB HUGGINS: Well, they do a terrific job with spacing. I think Danny probably does as good of a job of spacing as anybody we have in coaching.

You gotta make shots. Comes down to at this time of year you don't get as many open shots as you get during the regular season so you gotta make 'em count when you do get open shots. Hopefully we can make some shots and we won't start out 1-14 or whatever it was.

Q. I know in the heat of a postgame and deadline and all those things after your game there is still a lot of discussion today about the series and the history with the teams and the series ending. Just in your mind is that all for us? Is there any bearing on what happens on a basketball court with the kind of history you guys have?
BOB HUGGINS: Yeah, I'm really glad that you guys enjoy it. It really doesn't matter, does it? One of us is going to win. One of us is going to lose. One of us is going to keep playing. The other one isn't. We are on one end of the state. They are on the other end of the state. We don't really cross. From our standpoint, it's not what, you want to make it out to be Duke/North Carolina. It's not that. It's not that at all.

Q. Question about analytics. They're very much into analytics and openly say they base their offensive schemes around them. What part do analytics play in your coaching? You've been at this a long time. Is there any place for them in college basketball in the future? Do you see them becoming a bigger part?
BOB HUGGINS: I'm sure there are. I don't know what it is. Danny could answer that better than I. I'm sure there is. You know, it's a game of neuromuscular integration. That's what it is. Muscle memory, doing the same thing over and over and over again until it becomes engrained in your neuromuscular system. So to me it's repetition. Now, maybe analytics can tell you what kind of repetition to do. I don't know.

I've been doing this forty years. My dad was a coach. I can't every remember not being in the gym. I remember being in a gym when my dad was playing at Alderson Broaddus College, so I've been in the gym a long time. You can make numbers, I think, sometimes say whatever you need 'em to say. I'm more in line with we're going to drill what we do. We're going to try to continue to do it over and over and over again until it becomes a habit.

Q. It's been 20 years since the Jarrod West shot that has been a lasting impact?
BOB HUGGINS: You just won't let things die, will you?

Q. What kind of lasting impact has that left on West Virginia?
BOB HUGGINS: They show it before every game which I can't believe they would do. Every game they show Jarrod banking that shot in and the Mountaineer running out on the floor and shooting the gun and the cheerleaders and it was supposed to have been a technical, but we passed on that. I don't know. Ruben got a piece of it. If he wouldn't have got a piece of it, it probably wouldn't have banked in. It was a great win for West Virginia. I just happened to be on the other side at that time.

Q. Bob, I don't mean to bring up more old history --
BOB HUGGINS: But you will.

Q. But I will. Purdue lost Isaac Haas after their first round game. You had a similar situation with Kenyon back in '97. How do you balance for losing a key player like that without getting away from making wholesale changes and still do what you do well?
BOB HUGGINS: Well, you have to understand we just didn't lose a player. We lost the best player in the country, the unanimous National Player of the Year, and there wasn't even anybody else talked about. He was the unanimous National Player of the Year, and he did it at both ends.

It was a big loss. It was a big loss for us, there's no way around it, he's a great player, he went on and played 15, 16 years in the NBA after the broken leg and after the microfracture scampers all those other kind of things. He had incredible toughness and he brought incredible toughness to every game.

I mean, I know Matt well. We've scrimmaged and all that and he's a really good player. I don't think they depend on him as much as we depended on Kenyon. They've got a bunch of guys that make shots. Really outside of the one big they play pretty small. So, you know, I think hopefully for them they can adjust and do a better job of it than what we did.

Q. I heard you talk about all of your recruiting players that want to play and want to play for your program. How do you determine whether or not a recruit wants to play?
BOB HUGGINS: Well, we watch 'em a lot. We watch 'em a lot and, you know. I think you go on the AAU trail in July and the guys that decide they need a rest we really don't need. We need guys that are going to play hard, play every day to show up and play every day.

I just did CBS radio thing with Mike Montgomery and he said I am amazed at how hard Jevon Carter plays. When I saw Jevon Carter play at 8:00 in the morning, sitting there drinking my coffee and he was pressing then, running around like crazy, stealing the ball, that's the kind of guys we want. We want guys that want to play.

Q. Coach, what does meeting on the stage mean to your state in the tournament?
BOB HUGGINS: Well, a lot of interest, obviously, but you have to understand our state. Doesn't matter who we would be playing there's going to be almost everybody in West Virginia either watching it on TV, listening to it on the radio. That's our state. We're so different. We don't have professional teams and we really only have two major colleges.

People rally around West Virginia. It's not just the people in the state. It's the people who unfortunately had to leave the state to get a job to do other things. So it will be people in Texas. It will be people in New Jersey. It will be people in Georgia, a ton of people in Florida and they're all going to tune in and watch it. But they do that all the time. That's their, you know, whatever it is, San Diego Chargers, they're not here anymore, are they? Padres, scratch that Chargers, thing, Padres. That's what we are. We are the flagship for the state.

Q. Marshall is on the way up with their offense and what they do being unique and you turned things around with your defense being unique. Relative to succeeding, I guess, what's the value just in being unlike other people?
BOB HUGGINS: I think it helps. I think back when Syracuse was one of the few people playing 2-3 zone the way they played it. They didn't play it flat like had been done for years and years and years, they raised those wings. What Jim did with that I thought was very unique and it really bothered people. I thought it took their program to, really, another level.

They were good already, but I think they became great, they became one of the great teams in the country. It was the uniqueness of what they did and how well he taught it.

THE MODERATOR: Okay, Coach. Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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