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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: DES MOINES

March 21, 2019

Des Moines, Iowa

Michigan 74, Montana 55

THE MODERATOR: Like to welcome the Montana Grizzlies. Opening statement from Coach?

TRAVIS DeCUIRE: Whew! That's a good basketball team we played tonight. You know, I think more importantly than this game, I just proud of my team. You know, our seniors led us through tons of adversity this year. The way they helped me lead this team to what it is now. The level of expectation is way different than it was five years ago. The emergence of the underclassmen to get us to this point was huge. I think it's unfortunate we couldn't get the ball in the basket, 27% is never enough in these types of games and someone has to make shots.

But I credit the Michigan defense. They did what they do. They make it very difficult to get good shots and I thought for a while we were doing the same thing, but then it just kind of snowballed on us a little bit and it got away. But we wish that team the best. I'm proud of mine. From there, I will answer questions.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for our student-athletes first?

Q. Ahmaad, how did you want to be remembered as a Grizzly?
AHMAAD RORIE: Just knowing I gave it the best effort every game. When I came here I was complacent. I didn't have good study habits, basketball habits, and Trav, all I can do is thank him, honestly. Known him for a long time. From the same area, and he pulled me in when I was a sophomore and told me from the jump just to, it's all about your reputation. I was kind of a guy that didn't care about reputation. Just wanted to play basketball. Didn't care about school, but I think I've improved in that regard, graduated, got a degree and working on another one in media arts. The kind of guy who improved off court and now basketballwise I feel like I've grown a lot as a leader.

Q. You guys were down double digits the last three minutes and you stepped on to the court after the last timeout and it was the last few seconds or minutes you were going to play with Bobby and Mike. What was going through your head and what were you saying to each other?
AHMAAD RORIE: Definitely with them being part of the senior class and me, they're two guys that I've loved to compete with. So just tried to tell them let's go out there and fight, give it our best shot, no quit. They're two guys than don't miss practices, don't miss games. They work hard all the time. So I feel like myself and the rest of the team owed it to them to work hard and try to go out there and cut into the lead, not give up. That's why I tried to pull the team together and then just try and do that. It's been an honor to play with them and be a part of the senior class with them.

SAYEED PRIDGETT: Me being out there with those guys and telling them that this game didn't make their legacy. Just trying to let those guys know just because we lost by however many points, this is the best the senior class that we ever had in Montana. Just trying to keep the confidence in those guys and let them know we will always be brothers. It's a family.

Q. Sayeed, talk about the seniors and what you learned from them?
SAYEED PRIDGETT: These guys taught me a lot, honestly, and I only wanted to score and Ahmaad told me you're not always going to be the person who is going to lead in scoring. Sometimes you're going to be the hot guy and sometimes you need to do what the team needs you to do, and Bobby and Mike had faith in me that I could make shots even when I didn't have it in myself.

Q. Ahmaad, how did this year feel compared to last year as far as your level of comfort at the NCAA Tournament having had this experience last year?
AHMAAD RORIE: I feel like last year we came out and kinda just wanted to enjoy the process. We're here. We made it here, but I don't think our full focus was on winning. This year we kind of flipped the switch and said we want to win. They're a beatable team, but we have to do all the right things to beat them. We came up short but we fought. Last year, I don't feel like we fought. We weren't fighting and having a great effort, but everybody fought tonight and it just not didn't go our way. We actually felt like we could come out and compete. We weren't just happy that we were here.

Q. Talking about you guys fighting, you kept up full court pressure on the defense. Talk about how that speaks to your ability to fight through adversity and keep going?
AHMAAD RORIE: Yeah, um, you know we have this year in practice. We get up and down a lot, a lot of guys, you know, even when you're tired you have to guard. Trav is honest about that, fighting to the end, end of practice. We run for free throws and our practices are really tough. We knew that and came together and we knew how much we were down the fight we wouldn't give up. We wanted to do that. We want to go there for each other and on national television if we were going to go down we weren't going to go down without a fight.

SAYEED PRIDGETT: I feel like Mike and Bobby were being aggressive and I felt like that was greatest thing about Coach because it let the guys know that we were going to pick them up full court just to scare them a little and let 'em know we are still here.

Q. Sayeed, what was your offensive approach tonight being guarded by such a big guy like Jon Teske? What did you try to accomplish tonight?
SAYEED PRIDGETT: I knew I was faster than him, so I tried to get him in the lane and close out, get penetration for the other teams and make plays for everybody else if I didn't have anything. So tried to use my speed against him, honestly.

Q. Travis, can you talk about the situations being switched this year? You were up 10 last year and this year you guys didn't come out shooting very hot. How did you keep the team on track and keep them focused?
TRAVIS DeCUIRE: That's one of those tough timeouts, right? We just got off to a rough start in terms of how we were playing. I don't think we were on the same page offensively. A lot of tough shots, not a lot of patience. So a lot of the conversation was playing together, staying together, staying focused, scoring off of the defense if we can get some stops. Once you get a basket your confidence tends to increase and it took a while to get that going. Once we got a spark we had a little life in us, and I thought we were decent coming out at halftime. But we had another cold streak, made it tough.

Q. Coach, you mentioned Michigan's defense. I know you watched a lot of film. Was it more or less what you expected or when you see it in person is it a different animal?
TRAVIS DeCUIRE: We faced it a year ago, so watching film I saw the same things. There's a lot of openings to take advantage off because they do what they do. They have rules like any good defense they guard certain things a certain way and so on offense you try to manipulate those things. We did that early, and we got shots leading into the game. But the problem is we didn't make those shots. When you watch Michigan State against them, they got those shots in the second half. They were down and they started making shots to get back in the game.

For us, we just gotta make 'em, right? But on the flip side of that, for them, they're a very physical basketball team and they adjust well. So once we started knocking a couple down, they took some things away and changed how they defended those actions which forced us to change. So it's a game of adjustments. I think Beilein is probably one of the best in the country at making adjustments. Once again, this happened last year. We got some things going and it was gone and then we had to find something else and then it was gone. Eventually if your team can't continue to adjust as quickly as they do defensively then you go into ruts and that happened to us early and late.

Q. Coach, your guys talked about legacy. What kind of legacy do you think the senior class left at Montana?
TRAVIS DeCUIRE: There have been a lot of good senior classes, so if you compare them basketballwise, it's argumentative. But for my group, we were about more than just basketball. We've been fortunate to have 100% senior graduation rate. None of our guys have gotten in trouble off court. You don't read negative things about our team, our guys.

So with the consistency that these guys have had for four, five years as seniors in this program, I think their legacy is that they're the best senior class in the history of Montana basketball because of what they represent and how they represent it. The way the community supports them and embraces them proves it. There have been some kids that have won more games. Maybe there's one class that might have three rings as opposed to two, but my group is the only group that's 100% graduated and no issues off court.

So I think they represent all those things Ahmaad talked about which is growth. To me, that's what's more important than winning games is the growth of these young men. When I sit across from their parents there is only one thing I promise, is to be fair. If I'm fair and I treat them all with the same amount of respect I want in return from 18-22 years old they mature and they're men because they're not quite men when we get 'em. That's the most important thing with our job, and I think that all of my seniors are walking out of the door as men.

Q. The senior class has been with you for most of your time as a coach at Montana. What did you learn from them and what are you going to take away going forward in your career as they leave and go on to other things?
TRAVIS DeCUIRE: I have coached for a long time before moving on to Division I and then before being a head basketball coach. At high school level you don't get to recruit your kids. You just coach who is in the hallways, and kids might transfer in or whatever. But you pretty much have whoever goes to that school. In junior college I had a taste of recruiting kids in my community that could represent me as players. So I had a slight taste of what that is, but I always dreamed of the Division I level having an opportunity to go into different communities and pick the kids that I think would represent me the way I wanted to be represented and play basketball the way I think it should be played.

For me, I finally got that. So this class is that. They're the first group that I actually brought in. This is the first team that's 100% mine. I enjoyed last year a lot more than this year, but I'm more proud of what this group achieved this year than last year because of the adversity they have been through and because of that I feel like these guys are ready to move on with their lives. It won't be easy and they will hit speed bumps and they will see more adversity, but I think they're ready for it.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Coach.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: DES MOINES

March 21, 2019

Travis DeCuire

Ahmaad Rorie

Sayeed Pridgett