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NCAA MEN'S REGIONAL SEMIFINALS AND FINALS: ATLANTAMarch 22, 2018Barry Brown, Jr.Xavier SneedBruce WeberAtlanta, Georgia Kansas State - 61, Kentucky - 58 BRUCE WEBER: You know, it just shows our resilience, our character of our guys. We've been through a lot this season, and we've been able to keep fighting and battling and making the plays when it matters. They made runs. We got 30 fouls, seemed like everybody on our team was fouled out. We were playing with 6'4" and under, and they're one of the biggest teams in the country. But we got big rebounds down the stretch, big stops. And obviously Barry's baskets was huge. Xavier rolls up and played his special -- we needed somebody to be special. I said before, a Mike McGuirl moment, and Xavier had his moment. It was huge, not only the points, but nine rebounds and battling bigger guys inside. And then you've got to give Dean some credit. Without playing basketball for two weeks, got in there, got four points, busted his butt for us. We said we had to fight it out, grind it out, and we did, and now we have a chance to go to the Final Four. But it will not be easy because Loyola is a very, very good team. We got to have fun for about 15 minutes tonight, but then we've got to get refocused and ready for a chance of a lifetime. Q. X, as Coach mentioned, they finished that game with Mike McGuirl, Barry Brown against one of the most athletic teams in the country. How proud were you of those guys the way the finished that game against that group? XAVIER SNEED: Just proud of my guys. Proud of them all year. They've been fighting all year and just to tough it out and get that W is big for us. Q. Barry, can you just talk about that last basket and also the emotion that made you go jump into the stands the way you did and what you guys are feeling right now after pulling that out? BARRY BROWN, JR.: We kind of just played on our principles a little bit, and they would space the floor and I was able to get in there. We knew they were trying to block the shot. Just with their length, they've been blocking the shots all game. Once I got past my man, I just wanted to get the ball away from the people that was going to block my shot, and I was able to make the lay-up. Q. (Indiscernible). BARRY BROWN, JR.: Coach Weber, I wasn't going to go, but he pointed to the stands, told me to go to the stands. So just wanted to celebrate with the fans that came all this way just to be with us. Q. X, could you speak to getting out to the 13-1 lead and what that did for your confidence, yours in particular, the way you were shooting and the team's confidence? XAVIER SNEED: Jumping out to a lead on anybody builds confidence for the whole team, especially on a great program like Kentucky. Just to show them that we can play with those guys. And I feel like it was a great energy boost for the whole game, and I feel like that's what it did. Q. What does it say, four guys fouled out and Dean can't play. You're basically down to five guys. Could you describe the intensity it takes to pull through there? What kind of stuff did you have to reach back for? BARRY BROWN, JR.: I mean, like Coach said, Dean, he went in there and fought his butt off just for us for those eight minutes. We needed him. He had four points, which was great. But we ultimately knew he wasn't going to play 30, 20, 15 minutes. But just to have him in there, it was big time. But we had some guys step up, X stepped up, and we were able to make the plays down the stretch and win the game. XAVIER SNEED: Just Coach put us in a position to win ballgames. He did a great job of that all year, especially in practice, making it tougher for moments like this, to make it easier out there on the court for us, and Coach does a great job of that and helping us. Q. Barry and X, both of you, did you guys coming into this game feel disrespected? Nobody was respecting you and just kind of looking past you guys? XAVIER SNEED: You know, we've been picked eighth in the Big 12, finished fourth, and we saw the new seedings come out, 16th in the Sweet 16. So we felt disrespected all year, and we just came out here and proved people wrong, and we're going to do that game by game. Q. Xavier, I saw you were pretty emotional when you got that fifth foul. Can you tell us what was going through your head? XAVIER SNEED: Of course, me not feeling like it was a foul, but just not being on the court with those guys. But I knew they was going to finish off the game, and that's what they did, and it was a big win for us. I'm an emotional type of player, so I like to get hyped for anything. Q. Barry, you guys have not been a good three-point shooting team. Where did that come from tonight? Was it just necessity, you had to hit those? BARRY BROWN, JR.: Just came from us staying confident, staying poised. We may not have made shots in the past few games, but we know we can make shots with any team. So I think this game, we just moved the ball a bit more, got some better looks instead of just heaving it up from three. So I think our shots were able to fall just because they were good, open, uncontested looks. Q. X, also about the threes, you had been struggling a little bit coming into this game shooting the three. You go 5 of 8 tonight. You hit one in the second half where you left your pose up in the air after you made it. How good did your stroke feel tonight? XAVIER SNEED: Felt pretty good all night long, and warmups -- had a pretty good warmup. And also yesterday got a good shootaround, got a good feel for the rims, and I felt like I had a pretty good game. Q. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had been playing very well up to this point. What did you do defensively to stop him tonight? BARRY BROWN, JR.: We kind of just crowded him a little bit, kind of played our principles, kind of watched him a lot, just to know what he did. In the first half, he was killing us just drawing fouls and getting to the line, 11 of 12 from the free-throw line. I don't know what he had at halftime. I think it was 14 or something like that, 13 or something. For him to finish with 15 just shows that we got it together. Can't say we stopped fouling, but we stopped fouling him, and we was able to keep him off the line. Q. Bruce, can you just speak to the intensity at the end of the game and the resourcefulness, trying to find a way to win that way? And as a follow-up, did you get to talk to Ernie Barrett in the locker room? BRUCE WEBER: Actually Ernie came in. He did a hype video for us in only Ernie's style. It was great when he came in. He hugged everybody, and when he hugs you, you might be hurt after he hugs you. It doesn't matter, whatever he is, 80, whatever he is, that dude has some strength. But it was great for him. I don't know if he had tears, but it sure looked like it. Obviously, he didn't get to play against Kentucky years ago, and he called me after we beat UMBC, and he said, Coach, you've got to get revenge for me. We had a chance to do that. So it was great for that. But we have great kids. You know, I've said since the beginning, we have a great group. They're tough. We can yell at them. We can get after them. Barry is the leader. When you have a leader that you can get after, and he doesn't back down, it helps with everybody. And they respond. You know, they -- probably a little bit disrespectful. They came out, but I think more than anything, they just wanted to win, and they knew they had an opportunity and rose up. We always talk about winning games with stops down the stretch, and we got some -- we didn't get many rebounds, but we got some key rebounds down the stretch. Q. Coach, did you have a hard and fast time limit for Dean, or was it just kind of a halftime decision not to put him back in? BRUCE WEBER: Yeah, we talked about two-minute little windows. We were hoping to keep it at six or seven at halftime, but obviously we had a lot of foul trouble. Dean said he had some soreness at the foot, and our team doctor and trainer just said, if you can go without him and want him on Saturday, you might want to see if we can rest him. And our other guys rose up and made a lot of plays. You know, so it was -- but again, I've got to give Dean credit. He told you guys he was going to play. He told us he was going to play, and he gave it his all. And that's without -- he got four points without playing basketball in the last two weeks. I mean, that's not an easy thing to do. A lot of guys showed a lot of character and a lot of courage tonight. Q. One of those kind of hustle plays was (inaudible) getting on the floor to get the rebound and call a time-out. Could you speak to that moment? BRUCE WEBER: Yeah, I told the guys, and I don't know what our play hard was. One, I said we had to get a lot of steals. We had 13 the other night, and it was a K-State record, and I said, that's got to be there. We've got to take charges. We took a charge. We had to get on the floor and get the loose balls because we weren't going to get -- we couldn't out jump them. We did early. I thought we were pretty good on the boards early, and as it went on, their length, their athleticism, our foul trouble just kind of took a toll on us, and they just kind of owned the paint. But I used a couple different quotes. One was Vince Lombardi about playing to exhaustion and laying on the floor victorious, and I hope they took that to heart. But the other one was about doing all the little things added up. That's how you get a victory. Not by one thing or this thing, but all the little things that add up. You always hear Coach Knight talk about that, the discipline and the little things that make a difference. I think that kind of play is a difference maker for us because that allowed Barry to get the go-ahead basket. Q. You chose not to foul up 3 late. I have to imagine it's because you're playing five guards against -- BRUCE WEBER: First we said, Barry, we missed the opportunity against TCU. Barry said, we're going to foul, Coach. And then we all talked about it as a staff, and we just said, hey, we're all guards, man up, make them take a tough shot. We didn't want to give them a chance to get a rebound. I don't know, how many offensive rebounds did they get on free throws? It seemed like every one. They missed a bunch, but they got offensive rebounds on those free throws. We gave it a shot. I think we were running a squeeze and then trying to run Gabriel around. They kind of used Knox as a decoy. Our guys switched, switched, switched and Alexander was the one who shot at the end. He only had a tough shot at the end. I thought that was going in. I could have died if that would have happened. But we got the bounce and we made the shot at the end and made the plays that make a difference. Q. Can you speak to the courage it took your team to overcome what they faced tonight? BRUCE WEBER: Yeah, I mean, it's just -- they're a resilient group. You know, and again, the leadership Barry -- and we just kept saying, grind, grind, grind, keep fighting. Don't leave anything out on the court. You know, one, we believed we could win going into it, and we had talked about winning that first five-minute media time-out. I didn't know we were going to go up, whatever it was, 13-1 or whatever the score was. And we said we wanted to be pests like UMBC was to Virginia and they were to us, and I think we were. I'm not sure they were ready for it. We got after them and got a nice lead. And then obviously the second half, the run where we got those steals where we didn't finish one fast break against UMBC. Other than Xavier's dunk, we made unbelievable plays and passes off those steals, Kam to Barry, and I think somebody to Mike McGuirl, maybe it was, and a lot of big plays that made a difference. We really wanted to clog the lane and get a lot of deflections. I'll be interested to see if we -- I challenged them to get 40, but we'll see if we were close to that because those things are the difference makers. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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