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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: JACKSONVILLEMarch 20, 2019Mark TurgeonAnthony Cowan Jr.Bruno FernandoJacksonville, Florida Q. You guys started 16-3 in the second half, back half of the season. Take us through that and how you kind of rallied down the stretch to move into the tournament. How has it been for your team? ANTHONY COWAN JR: Yeah, we just pulled it all together. I think in the beginning, we were still trying to find ourselves a little bit, and then we kind of went on a little run. I think we went on a six or seven-game winning streak and then we started winning some games in a row, and then -- I'm pretty happy about how the season turned out. Q. The road wins especially, you guys did that. ANTHONY COWAN JR: Definitely. Q. How did that work? ANTHONY COWAN JR: We definitely have a young group this year, but like I said, in the beginning it was kind of rough. Everybody was kind of still trying to find out their role, and then like I said, we just kind of pulled it all together. Q. Bruno, what's the toughest part about going out on the road and having to get the job done away from College Park? BRUNO FERNANDO: I would probably say the environment. You're not playing at home, you don't have your fans supporting you, and I think just being able to play and like a lot of the guessing there and knowing the plays and everything, just hearing the coach and like talking to your teammates, staying aggressive and keep the communication going throughout the team, I think that's really the key for us on the road to try to get the wins. Q. Is there any difference in having to prepare for a team like Belmont in a situation like this where you didn't know your opponent until last night? Obviously not a lot of time to prepare for them. ANTHONY COWAN JR: We do what we do against any opponent. Obviously Belmont is a really good team, but I think we're just going to stay with our defensive principles, do what we do on offense, and then we've just got to treat it like another game. BRUNO FERNANDO: I think it gives us a lot more time to prepare and work on ourselves. Like I said, they're a great team, you've got to respect them, but at the end of the day, it's about us playing Maryland basketball. Q. Did you guys watch the game together as a team last night? BRUNO FERNANDO: Yeah, we did. Q. After the end of the season, losing three of the last four, I guess particularly the Penn State game and the Nebraska game in the Big Ten Tournament, how do you bounce back from that and try to keep confidence as high as it can be going into the test of the NCAA Tournament? BRUNO FERNANDO: I think we've got to just stay positive. That's the beauty of sport, and I think there's always a next half, next shot, next game, and we've got another chance to play another game here. I think just us staying positive, I think our team is progressing as the game goes on, as the season goes on. Just like I said, being here, being selected as one of the teams to play here, it's an opportunity for us to really leave everything else behind and just focus on what we got in front of us. THE MODERATOR: Coach, start us off with some opening thoughts about your team and how you've gotten into the tournament the last few weeks. MARK TURGEON: Well, obviously we've extremely excited to be here. It's been quite a journey for this young team to get to this point. I think we have the second youngest team in the tournament, fourth youngest overall this year, and we played a very difficult schedule in a great Big Ten. It's been a great journey. We're really proud of ourselves and happy to be here, and hopefully going to be playing our best basketball this weekend. Excited, guys have been locked in since the Big Ten Tournament, had some really good practices, and looking forward to playing Belmont. I've known Rick when I was a head coach at Jacksonville State 21 years ago and kind of watched him do what he's done over the last 21 years. He's been doing it longer than that, since I came in his life really happy for his team, and they've got a really good basketball team, maybe his best team that he's had, and he's had a lot of great ones. Q. Expounding a little bit on what you know about Coach Byrd, other than Mark Few at Gonzaga, there may not be a whole lot of other mid-major programs you could find that have had the level of consistency that Belmont has had over the last 21 years. Do you think in some ways, even though Rick is very much appreciated by the coaches in the industry, that from the outside, there may be a lot of respect for what he's done but maybe not as much of an appreciation because resources that mid-majors don't have compared to the Power Five? MARK TURGEON: Yeah, obviously he's extremely well respected in our profession, and my relationship started -- we were in the Trans-Atlantic and they were thinking about joining our league, so we talked a lot when I was at Jacksonville State 21 years ago, and we talked. So I followed his career. And then he was at Nashville with Kevin Stallings, who was a friend of mine, and Kevin I used to get together with him and talk X's and O's, he always bragged about Rick, and I've always watched Rick's teams play. You know, guys make choices in life. We all know Rick could have coached at the highest level of college basketball, and his mind is so great, and his demeanor is so great he could have coached at the NBA level, I'm sure, if the opportunity was right. But he chose to be where he's comfortable. I think what he's done the best is continue to recruit the kids that fit his style, and obviously he's a terrific evaluator and a terrific developer of talent. It shows. We all know his mind offensively. He's terrific. He ran a couple really nice plays last night after time-outs, so we know he's terrific. It is tough. They're not on TV as much, all that kind of thing, so nationally he might not be as well known, but I think the whole country was watching last night, so I'm sure that changed a few things. Q. As a follow-up to that, the game last night, his leading scorer is 16 points under his normal average, he gets outscored 14-2 in one run in the first half, gets outscored 21-5 in another stretch, yet still wins the game by double digits. What does that say about the whole sum of the parts and the whole -- just being able to weather when you're not kind of at your -- kind of have some really bad stretches and yet still are able to win? MARK TURGEON: Yeah, I think both teams went through that. But what I was most impressed about was Windler has two buckets, I believe, had the three early and then the back-door play late, but he had 14 rebounds. He had three or four steals, a lot of assists, and he kept himself in the game. He impacted the game in a great way. So that's why they're really a heck of a team. But McClain stepped up. I mean, so that's what happens when you have good teams and good players. They step up. I thought defensively the last 10 minutes of the game they were terrific. I think that was really the difference. They were able to guard them, guard the ball screen and rebound, limit them to one shot, and I thought really that was the difference in the game and why they were able to pull away late. Q. After the stretch toward the end, you lose to Penn State, you lose to Nebraska, what are the keys to keeping things on course and making sure that -- you're trying to prevent that from carrying over to the NCAA Tournament? MARK TURGEON: Yeah, well, we've worked really hard on making this a new season, and by the way my guys have reacted, I really, truly feel that way. We've been dialed in in practice. Our enthusiasm level is good. The Penn State loss really -- the score might be a bad loss, but they did beat Michigan there, also. They were a heck of a team late in the season. We just didn't play well in the Big Ten Tournament, and that was the disappointing part for us. And our other loss was Michigan, who's pretty good. People tend to overreact. Us in the know and in the middle of it, we won't. We're disappointing with the way we played our last game, but we're excited to play well tomorrow, and I believe in my team. I mean, this team has been through it, guys. We gave up a home game. We had eight out of 11 on the road during a stretch in late January, early February, and we battled through it. I believe in my team. Did we get a little bit tired? Maybe. We've been able to get refreshed and practice a lot, and I expect us to play well tomorrow. Q. You've seen enough of Big Ten and ACC basketball to get the differences, nuances of how the styles are different in any way, but for somebody who's in a program that has been in both arenas, do you really recruit any differently whether you're going against the Dukes and North Carolinas on a regular basis or whether you're going against the Michigan States and Michigans on a regular basis? MARK TURGEON: No, and it's been this way my whole career, whether I was at Jacksonville State or Maryland, you try to recruit young men that you can coach and young men that you think fit into your system. I think that's the way we've all recruited. But no, nothing different between -- we probably don't come down to the south quite as much, Atlanta, North Carolina, quite as much as we used to. We still do, but not as much. When it was in the footprint of the ACC, we'd do it a lot more. You look at the history of some of our better players and our history of Maryland basketball, Virginia, North Carolina players, that footprint might change a little bit as we move into the Big Ten in the future, but no, you just recruit the best players you can that fit your style. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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