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NCAA MEN'S REGIONAL SEMIFINALS AND FINALS: OMAHA

March 23, 2018

Omaha, Nebraska

Duke - 69, Syracuse - 65

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim and student-athletes Tyus Battle and Frank Howard. We're going to ask Jim to start off with a statement on the game.

COACH BOEHEIM: I thought, you know, coming into this game Duke was playing at a tremendously high level. We knew we had our work cut out for us and we had to play better offensively. We did in the first game. We started playing out as well offensively as we have in a long time. We hit a little dead spot in the end of the first half that we couldn't just quite come back from.

But these guys have -- I mean they've had an incredible end of the year. I've never been any more proud of a team for what they've done in this last ten days. To go and play in that first game and be able to get that and then to beat TCU and Michigan State, these guys have a tremendous amount of courage. Nothing fazes them.

Tonight, things weren't going our way for a long time, but they just kept coming back. And Duke, I think, is a great basketball team. They've got as good an offensive team as you're going to find. And we've done a very good job with them both games. But tonight we were better offensively, just not quite good enough.

Q. Late in the game, what happened on the play where about 15 seconds of clock was burned and then there was a foul? What was the approach on that?
COACH BOEHEIM: We were trying to get a steal and then foul. We just didn't get it quick enough.

Q. Jim, you guys are almost through some of the worst scholarship restrictions ever put on a college program with a Final Four appearance and a Sweet 16. How do you feel you guys have navigated it? And is next year kind of, do you feel like you're back to full strength?
COACH BOEHEIM: We come in every year ready to play and we don't think about any of that stuff at all. We just get ready to play and do the very best we can. If we thought that way we would never win a game.

Q. Frank and Tyus, Coach mentioned offensively that things were clicking. But there were some turnovers. How costly were those mistakes tonight? Did they throw you off your game a little bit?
TYUS BATTLE: Yeah, we turned the ball over a little too much in the first half. But we got together in the second half and took care of the ball a little bit better, moved the ball better, got the ball to the middle better. But the first half turnovers kind of hurt us.

FRANK HOWARD: I think we had too many in the first half. Kind of gave them a little cushion. But we cut it in the second half. They got some big-time steals down the stretch. And it kind of help them win the game. So those definitely hurt.

Q. Frank and Tyus, Coach, what he just said, he's never more proud of the team, the way you guys responded. What's your emotions right now? You go from not sure of making the tournament to the Sweet 16, and pushing maybe the best team in the country to the limit, yet your season is also over. Can you take me through how you're feeling right now?
FRANK HOWARD: I mean, the game just ended. So we all want to win. We play this game to win. Coach has built a culture around this program for a long time around winning and doing things the right way.

So right now it hurts because we made a late run. Fought through so much adversity through the year. So we all understand what we did this year. We appreciate everyone on this team.

Like Coach said before, this year could have been bad with the adversity we hit, but we fought through. Guys just played with hearts. I'm proud of each and every one of these dudes and I'm proud of myself, proud of Coach, and happy to be here.

TYUS BATTLE: Like Frank says, it hurts right now. As a player, you want to win every time you step on the floor. And we believe we could have won the game. Just a couple mistakes at the beginning of the game and first half, stuff like that.

But other than that, I couldn't be more proud of this team, and just to see these guys grow as the season went on, it's been an amazing run. And I'm just happy to be a part of it.

Q. Tyus, can you sum up these last two or three months where you barely came off the court and in particular this tournament, where I think you played every minute of all four games?
TYUS BATTLE: The minutes on the floor, I don't even think about it. As a basketball player you want to be on the floor. So I'm fine with it. Frank, Oshae did the same thing. And that just proves how much mental toughness we have as a team, how much heart we have as a team, because every game we play is a grind-out game, and playing 40 minutes is not easy. So it just shows how much heart we have as a team.

Q. Tyus, that final possession, I think Grayson Allen maybe missed the front end on a one-on-one. Did you think they were going to foul you? Did you think you maybe had a chance to get a shot off before they fouled you? Just take us through that quick sequence there.
TYUS BATTLE: I think they fouled me around the half court line. I don't think I was going to shoot it from half court, so they fouled me at a good time, and I didn't get a chance to get a shot up.

COACH BOEHEIM: Obviously with this group I think that sometimes we forget that we had seven guys and one of them has got a bad knee. So for these guys to do what they've done, I think it's an amazing thing.

And our defense has, we've been good all year, but in this tournament, it's funny, everybody just keeps missing against us; we just must be really lucky. Because I'm sure if we had snuck this game out, which we had a chance, it would have been because they didn't shoot well -- just like Michigan State didn't shoot well, just like TCU didn't shoot well, and Arizona State didn't shoot well.

These guys did it. It wasn't any team playing bad or shooting bad. Good teams that shoot 40 percent from the 3 don't shoot 25 percent from the 3 -- unless you make them, unless you get them away from the shots they want to take. And these guys have done that for four straight games. And I don't think you can give them enough credit for what they've done defensively.

Duke is a great -- Duke is a great offensive team. Bagley is as good an inside player as I've seen in a long time, as far as a guy that can shoot it and get the ball, rebound it, catch the ball. He's a tremendous player.

We didn't play anywhere near as good as we can play tonight. We missed shots, wide open shots in the second half. Ty had one, Oshae had one when it was a two-, three-point game. So we missed shots as well.

But what these guys have accomplished, I don't think you can give them enough credit to be able to beat the teams we've beaten and play the defense the way we've played it. Four teams in a row don't shoot bad. Maybe one or two, but four, I don't think so.

So these guys deserve an awful lot of credit. I'm really proud of these guys. They've done just about everything you could hope for. And it's been all year; it's been seven guys all year. It hasn't been just a few games. It's been all year. And they deserve an unbelievable amount of credit. Thank you.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

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