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

March 21, 2019

Travis Ford

San Jose, California

MODERATOR: All right. We welcome coach Travis Ford to the dais. We'll have coach give us an opening statement, and then we'll open it up to questions.

TRAVIS FORD: We're just excited to be here, after winning four games in four days, it takes a lot out of you. But to be able to be a part of the NCAA Tournament really makes you forget about how tired you are sometimes. And it's just fun to watch our guys just walk through the hallway, to experience such an incredible event.

Obviously we're going up against a great team, not a good team, but a great team, but a great, great coach in Buzz Williams. Virginia Tech has proven themselves to be one of the best teams in the country with how they've played this whole season, with the wins they've gotten. So we understand the challenge at hand.

Q. Travis, obviously this is their third straight trip to the tournament, and you guys making your first, but you've got a couple of guys who have played here. Do you get anything out of that having two guys? Do you ask them to address the team about anything in regard to the tournament or any words of wisdom?
TRAVIS FORD: I haven't asked them, but I know they've talked about it. I want them to do it on their own terms. We talked about it briefly in Brooklyn, in the Barclays Center, in the locker room after the game, what an incredible opportunity, what an incredible memory this will be and the fact that, you know, this is the greatest sporting event there is. And I told them I wanted them to enjoy this whole experience, but also we can't get caught up in all the outside things that we forget about the job at hand, and stay laser focused on preparing for Virginia Tech.

And I think they've done a pretty good job of that. It's hard sometimes, especially the first couple of days, to get your guys' attention because of all the excitement, the excitement of the city of St. Louis, the excitement of the university. But you want your players to enjoy that.

But these last 48 hours we've tried to do the best job we can to try to get our guys laser focused and stay within the mindset of let's prepare like we always have.

Q. Coach, your team obviously started the year fantastic, 5 and 0 in conference play. Then you hit a wall and kind of went downhill but you were able to rebound and win the conference championship. What does that tell you about your team?
TRAVIS FORD: Well, a pretty resilient group of guys. We've had a lot of ups and downs, no question. A lot of ups, sitting here with 23 wins right now, with going through a lot of injuries, a lot of injuries. We know exactly -- when we were struggling at our worst, there were reasons behind it, many of them out of our control, a lot that weren't even talked about that we kind of kept pretty close to the vest, just to not really not make a lot of excuses, but just compete.

And I think you learn through all those when you go through adversity. I think you can go two different directions. You can give into it and start making excuses about it or you can learn from it and make it make you tougher. And that's kind of my mindset, and I think our guys did a great job of not making excuses. You know, you start the year with obviously great expectations. And you go through a tough period, and I think that to some extent made our guys even fight more towards the end of the season to prove themselves, to prove themselves, that, hey, we can beat this team.

And what was fun about it and interesting was just to see the different guys step up night in, night out, and everybody kind of play into their role and what we expect out of them. We've spent a lot in the last month, month and a half talking about what makes our team successful. And I think we've done a very good job of that in the last month, even in some of the losses, I thought we played at a high level in every game, except maybe the second half of the St. Bonaventure game at St. Bonaventure. I think the last six games of the -- not counting conference tournament, I thought we really competed at a high level. Even though we might not have won some of the games, we competed at a very high level.

And the toughest part of our schedule, not even close, was the last six, seven games of the conference. I mean, it was all against -- every single game was against teams that were ahead of us, and we won several of those, and if we didn't win, it went down to the wire in some of the toughest environments in college basketball, beat VCU at VCU, at Dayton. So we thought we were playing pretty good basketball headed into conference play.

Q. What did you do particularly well during those four games in the A-10 Tournament that you kind of want to bottle and continue doing tomorrow?
TRAVIS FORD: Perseverance was pretty good because seemed like we were coming from behind the whole time. But, you know, we just -- we won with defense, but our offense complemented or defense, and that hasn't been the case a lot of times this season. We've had our struggles on the offensive end at times. Our defense for the most part has been pretty good. But I thought we did a great job of changing up defenses a lot. I thought that helped keep us fresh and also keep our opponents off balance a little bit.

But we changed defenses a lot in conference tournament, quite a bit every single game. And I thought that allowed us -- because we don't play a lot of guys, I thought it allowed us to continue to play as hard as we needed to play, especially in the last game.

Q. Coach, Coach Williams came in and talked about Travis Ford basketball being mean and physical. What kind of basketball do you expect out of coach Buzz Williams basketball?
TRAVIS FORD: Similar. Very extremely well prepared. Execute extremely well. Buzz, I've said it, is one of the elite coaches in college basketball. I've gotten to know Buzz and even study him over the last couple of years, and he may not even know that. We know each other pretty well, but he doesn't probably know how much I've really watched his teams and studied some of the things he does.

And I say he's one of the elite coaches because he's the total package as far as he's a guy that understands Xs and Os. He prepares his teams, and he does all the little things off the court to improve his players and to prepare them, not just for basketball, but in life in general.

And that's what has impressed me so much about him. But you're going to see two teams that are going to play pretty aggressive, hard-nosed, and I think we both coach very competitively, very much so. But yeah, Buzz is somebody I've got the greatest amount of respect for.

Q. How much time have you spent looking at the film of your game against these guys from a year and a half ago, or have you bothered with it?
TRAVIS FORD: No. Briefly. I haven't sat and studied it like I'm doing their team right now. But briefly. Different things, breakdowns, but haven't spent a whole lot of time doing it, but we have looked over it a little bit. Not much.

Q. Coach, when a recruit who's interested in coming to your school or someone who's never seen SLU play basketball before tomorrow night, when they watch you guys play, what do you want them to take away from when you guys step on the court and play basketball?
TRAVIS FORD: I want you to see a group of men who are enjoying playing the game of basketball, that are enjoying playing the game together in an aggressive style of basketball where we have schemes and structure but we give our guys freedom, a lot of freedom to be who they are as individual players, with great preparation, hopefully a team that looks prepared.

And these are a group of guys that have really come from different areas, but they've all come in and succeeded and helped continue the process of us trying to build this basketball program back up.

Q. Obviously since the last time you've played, they changed their defensive approach now and they really try to keep teams out of the paint and see if you can beat them by making three-pointers. Do you have the kind of team that can take advantage of that in terms of your ability to make threes?
TRAVIS FORD: I hope so. You know, they are very good in the paint. They are very good defensively. They're all connected defensively. I've been very impressed watching them aggressively. So, yeah, we've gotta be able to move the ball and hopefully make a few shots.

Q. Obviously they're pretty good at making threes, but you're a pretty good defensive team in terms of stopping the three-pointer. What kind of has made that a defensive strength for you guys?
TRAVIS FORD: Well, we're fairly a big team at every position except one, and I think we have length a little bit, and we've done a good job of, you know, for the most part, taking teams' strengths away.

But it's hard. You look at Virginia Tech, you don't know where to start. They are so talented, so well coached. He uses -- Buzz puts his guys in the right spot. They play as well together as any team I've watched on film. The way they pass the ball has been impressive to watch.

But, you know, we have done a pretty good job stat-wise of taking away threes, if you just look at numbers. But tomorrow night we'll be challenged. We will definitely be challenged in that area.

MODERATOR: All right. Thanks, Coach.

TRAVIS FORD: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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