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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: JACKSONVILLEMarch 22, 2019Mark TurgeonDarryl MorsellEric AyalaJacksonville, Florida THE MODERATOR: Give us a review of yesterday, looking at how that game went yesterday. What did you take away and what can you do moving forward after practice today to get ready for this game tomorrow? What's the biggest takeaway from that game for you guys? ERIC AYALA: You know, just staying resilient throughout a game. There's a lot of ups and downs in March Madness, teams go on runs, and just knowing that, sticking with the game plan and not giving up throughout the game. Q. Darryl, you hit some big shots down the stretch; how was it important for the team and for your confidence moving forward in the tournament? DARRYL MORSELL: It was big. It helped my confidence moving forward, but these guys also gave me confidence throughout the game. At the beginning of the game I was missing some layups and stuff. Defensively I was struggling against the kid on Belmont, but these guys kept me confident, and it helped me, and that's why I had success in the later parts of the game. Q. Darryl and Eric, you're big men, you two guys will match up against Naz and Kavell for them -- ERIC AYALA: It's definitely going to be a battle in the paint. I think our guys are ready for the challenge. I don't think maybe we've faced a team with that kind of interior presence this year. It's going to be a fun being able to see how well our big men match up against theirs, and the best shall prevail to the end. Q. Darryl, in terms of finding a comfort zone and finding your role this year, how hard is that to do when you don't necessarily have a designated position? DARRYL MORSELL: I really don't think it's that hard. At the end of the day, it's basketball, something I've been playing my entire life. So whether I have to play point guard for a possession or if I have to play power forward or whatever I've got to do to help the team win, that's kind of my role. My role is to be that guy who can play multiple positions, guard multiple positions, score and stuff like that just to help the team win. Q. Just to follow up, you had a meeting beginning of the year with the coach, I think after the first game, and you had a normal conversation with him later in the year talking about turnovers, and since then I think you've committed one turnover in like four games. I don't know if the timing of it is exactly that, but what do those meetings with Coach do for you in terms of how you can sort of refocus and get an understanding of what is expected? DARRYL MORSELL: Coach kind of talked to me about being a leader. We've got a young team. I'm a sophomore, but I'm one of the older guys on the court most of the time. So rather than just leading with my voice, he wanted me to lead more by example, which I kind of focus in on protecting the ball, trying to defend as best I can, and just stop trying to make like the home run play and stuff like that, and just have confidence in my guys. I'm just trying to lead by example and just help the younger guys throughout this process. Q. LSU is a team that wants to turn you over, get out in transition. You all have been doing better with turnovers recently coming off a season low. How do you keep that up and keep the ball in the half court? DARRYL MORSELL: Just continue to do what we're doing. Slow down, let the game come to us. We've improved in the double-team in the post. Our guards, we're getting older, we're getting more experience. We done seen pretty much every defense throughout the year, so just with this experience and just improving in the double-team and stuff, that's why I feel like we've found our success, and we've got to continue that. Q. Eric, talk about Darryl and -- he talked about his toughness, and how does that translate to guys like Stix, who sometimes can be passive, and just sort of giving the team more of an identity that way? ERIC AYALA: Of course Stix and Darryl have played together throughout high school, and I'm pretty sure they look to each other as far as like comfortability out there on the court, just being around each other and knowing that they've got each other's backs. But Darryl is somebody I look to as far as being that tough guy out there. He carries that mentality on and off the court, and it spreads throughout the team. When we need it, it's brought, and it's a key thing for us. Q. Darryl, you and Bruno came in as a much smaller freshman class and are now the leaders. What did you guys learn that year and how have you guys helped lead this younger group? DARRYL MORSELL: Last year me and Bruno played a lot as freshmen, so we seen everything. We seen tough environments, like in road games. We seen great teams. We played against a lot of great teams last year. Just through that, we just learned. We just learned, gained knowledge. So coming into this year, we've prepared for everything. We knew what to expect. We knew how to approach the off-season and stuff like that. And just our approach rubbed off on the younger guys. These guys came in hungry, every single one of them, and they've done well, and I just hope they continue their success. MARK TURGEON: Obviously we're excited. We were excited yesterday sitting up on this stage to win a game, and just to be a part of a game like that yesterday where the atmosphere is terrific, game is back and forth, two really good teams that I thought played well, took care of the ball, executed at a high level, and that was terrific. And for my young team, seven of our top eight players being freshmen and sophomores, it was not only good to help us have confidence tomorrow but as those kids grow older and hopefully be a part of more NCAA tournaments down the road. That said, got a heck of a challenge tomorrow playing I think the most athletic team in the country, and one through eight, they're really athletic. Their point guard is terrific, one of the best if not the best in the country because he can score it and he can really pass it. So it's a tough challenge for us, but one that we're looking forward to and happy to be a part of. Q. Tony Benford was in here earlier and he said that he felt the matchup is in the paint. That's the key match-up. Do you look at that the same, and what do you see from LSU's big men? MARK TURGEON: Well, they're terrific. Got great length. Naz, we recruited him a little bit. Obviously he's a great player and a great kid, can score a lot of ways. He can also shoot the three, shoots it well. I think he's talking about the way Bruno can score for us, Stix around the basket, the way they can score around the basket and the way both teams can rebound. I think that's really what he's talking about. There's also some really good guards on the court tomorrow, too. It's a high-level game. It's a high-level game with a lot of talent, and should be a fun game to coach in, a fun game to be a part of. Q. You mentioned Stix yesterday, I think, and kind of his confidence. You can almost see which way he's going to go early in a game. How have you tried to mitigate that and manage that, and do you think he can start piling up games in a row based on how confidently he played yesterday? MARK TURGEON: Well, you'd like to think because if you don't, the season is over. I think what happened yesterday is sometimes you're in the middle of a grind of the season, especially when you play in a league like the Big Ten that was so tough this year, you might hang your head a little bit. Well, you don't have time to hang your head in this tournament. So if a play didn't go well, we were really encouraging guys to go on to the next play, and I think our guys did that yesterday, so I think Stix did it. Got in foul trouble, bounced back, played through foul trouble, which was great to see. But he's a terrific player, and we need him to play well. Doesn't have to play great, but we need him to play well, and I was just really happy for him yesterday. He came through. Q. You've talked in the press conferences back in College Park about how young your team was when they went to Purdue, some of those early games. You talk about how your relationship has grown with the freshmen and how your team has aged through the season and are they where you expected them to be? MARK TURGEON: Yes. We've gotten a lot better. You throw that tape in right now, we don't even look the same. And neither does Purdue, obviously. But we've gotten a lot better. I think what's happened is Bruno, Darryl and Anthony have really grown, too, as players, and then the young guys in their own way have come and gone a little bit, whether it's Eric Ayala, who's been terrific most of the time, Stix has been really good a lot of the time, and Aaron Wiggins, who's been good a lot of time, too. So they've all grown. And then guys figured out kind of what their roles are and how they can help us. A guy like Ricky Lindo just goes in to defend and rebound. He knows that. If he can get an offensive rebound from a basket, that's big for us. We've watched them grow. I think they're all comfortable. We never looked at them as freshmen. I just kept saying how young we were so people could appreciate what this team is doing, because sometimes you don't do that because you're so caught up in everything that's going on. But we don't think we're young anymore. There will be a lot of young guys on the floor tomorrow for both teams. But none of them think that way. They've grown. But our sophomore and our junior, they've grown quite a bit, too. Q. Anthony yesterday said that he felt like it was a little bit of a weight off of his shoulders getting that win. Do you hope maybe with that off of him he can get some shots to start falling? MARK TURGEON: Yeah, you never know, but what I was proud of Anthony is he had six assists, one turnover, and he did a heck of a job guarding that kid. It was a heck of a tough match-up, coming off those ball screens all day and having to get over him. The good thing is that Anthony got a lot of wide-open shots. That's the great thing for me as a coach. If he's shooting contested, late shot clock going down over a hand, we probably don't win that game. He got a lot of really looks. It's really good for us Anthony was 3 for 18. We scored 79 points. That's a good sign for us moving forward. I just hope for him he makes a few shots, but if he doesn't, we'll just have to try to overcome it again. Q. Kind of going off that, for you and the team as a whole, do you feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders getting that first win, getting on the board, ending a bit of a drought and now you can just go play? MARK TURGEON: We don't feel like we're in a drought because it's just this team. Everybody just wants to make it a drought about what we've done the last couple years. We don't think that way. Now, unfortunately guys read social media and it gets in their head a little bit. I don't, as you guys know, so it doesn't get in my head. But yesterday was huge for us, to get the deflection and get the steal, one-possession game, goes the other way, we'd have to answer all those questions all next March. So now we don't have to answer them, okay. When you have seven of your eight freshmen and sophomores, I said it early, it's going to help us moving forward for tomorrow and it's going to help us down the road. That's what was huge about yesterday. And then for our young guys to play in a game like that, that was an incredible college basketball game and a great environment, and it moves quick out there. For them to be a part of that and just -- so like we lost to Michigan late in the year, and just late in the game they were better than they were, because they know what the reward is. Those players have been to a National Championship game. They've had success. We don't know what the reward is. Now the guys are starting to, "Oh, wow, that was pretty cool." So that was a great reward, and so now next year when these young guys are back and we're fighting to get to the tournament or win a conference championship, they know what the reward is. We didn't know it. We didn't know it. So that's what was big about yesterday. Q. With all the improprieties that's going on in college basketball right now, I can imagine it can be very, very difficult to be a college basketball coach. You've been doing this a while. Do you find that there's more camaraderie now among the coaching fraternity? Have you spoken to Coach Benford at all about what's going on down there, given him any encouragement? What's your feeling on the mindset now? MARK TURGEON: We are a close-knit group, okay. Have I talked to Tony, no. I just bumped into him when he was leaving the building, but I've known Tony for a long time. So he's doing a terrific job under the circumstances. So we are a close-knit group, and that's really what's important. Like it was such an honor for me yesterday to coach against Rick Byrd. Do you know how cool that was for me? And I've been doing it a long time. The guy has won 800 games. That was a real honor for me yesterday. We are close. We all talk. We encourage each other. We really know how hard it is. Like when I talk to Gary Williams during the season, that's a really good thing for me because he knows what it's like to be in my shoes. It's hard. It's a hard business. It's a great business. We love -- that's why we do it, and we love being in it. We are a close-knit fraternity, if that answers your question. Q. You've had a couple of meetings with Darryl over the course of the season, one early in the year after the opener and I guess he got benched for one game, and then more recently talking about turnovers. What has he done to sort of get to where he is right now the last few games, where he's not turning the ball over, scoring more and still playing really good defense? MARK TURGEON: Two things happened: One is total buy-in, okay. So if you don't totally buy in, and lucky for him, we are a young team. So he was able to keep his spot through a lot of those mistakes he was making. But he had total buy-in after the Penn State game. Threw it right to them the first two plays of the game, they get six points, live ball turnovers. Since then, I don't know what his assist-turnover was yesterday? 14-1 now in the last four games. So that's total buy-in. And I can't remember what game it was, I think it was leading into the Michigan game, so it was probably that same time, I said Darryl Morsell is going to guard the best player on the other team. He's our best defender. We need him to do that. We don't need Darryl to score a lot of points for us, even though he did yesterday, but he has to defend. So I told him in front of the whole team. Now, I thought he did a great job on that kid yesterday and he had 35 or whatever. So I think that was a big moment for Darryl as far as growing up and maturing, and just total buy-in. Total buy-in is very important for young people. If they do that, they usually succeed. Q. One of the guys on LSU, talking about your team, said that Darryl is the X factor. Do you agree with that? MARK TURGEON: What's that mean? Well, yeah, we'll give him that. We'll call him the X Man, the X Factor. Yeah, he does all the little things, the dirty things. He is a big X factor for us. So is Eric Ayala, does a lot of things for us, really steady. Yeah, I think it's important. Basically what they're staying is he's not a superstar but he really helps our team go. Yeah, he's been -- Darryl has been good. I'm really proud of him the last four games. It's total buy-in on his part. Q. I think you mentioned yesterday that your team was feeding off of people around the country picking Belmont. Is that over? Can you still beat that drum? Can you still use that as motivation going forward? MARK TURGEON: Well, are they picking LSU? I haven't been paying attention, so hopefully they are and we'll use it. This time of year you use any motivation you can. Obviously the players are highly motivated at this time, but there's an edge you've got to get certain ways. So as a coach you love it when they pick the other team. A lot of guys picked the other team. That's good for us. But in the end you've got to win the game. And you've got to play well to win it. We'll see. It's still early. I don't know what's being said out there, and the game is so early tomorrow, you're going to wake up and you're going to show up and you're going to play the game. Q. I've heard that you are a rather superstitious person. How is that part of your personality affected by the different schedules and craziness of the NCAA Tournament? MARK TURGEON: Yeah, it's crazy. I've gotten better, but my sons wanted to come to shoot-around. I asked them if they came when we beat Hawaii two years ago and went to a Sweet 16, and they said they were there, so they're here again today. So a little superstition there. It is what it is. I've gotten a little bit better with it as time goes on. I've always been that way since I was a little three- or four- or five-year-old kid watching my Chiefs or my Royals or my Jayhawks. I was really superstitious. I had to listen-to-it-on-the-radio-a-certain-way type thing when I was growing up. It's who I am, I guess. Q. How does your time as a big-time college point guard affect your relationship with your guards? What can you tell them about your experiences that translates to what they see tomorrow? MARK TURGEON: I try really hard not to talk about myself. One, I don't think I'm as good as the point guards that I'm coaching. But I just try to coach them. When you have such a young team, it's really more about positivity. I've been more positive this year than I've ever been. I don't know if the players feel that way or not. But I've had to bite my lip a lot, let some things go, but I've just really tried with this group to be positive because I knew how hard our schedule was and how good the league was and how young we were, but I'd like to think that we've done a good job with our point guards. I know Eric Ayala likes to hear my voice. It's very important to him. He wants to relay what I'm saying. I think Matt Brady has been really good for Anthony. I know Anthony hasn't shot the ball great but Anthony has become a better basketball player. I think Matt Brady has been good for him. He's really helped him become a better player. Q. You mentioned speaking with Gary before, having been in your shoes. How often do you speak with him? What has your relationship been like since you've been there? Obviously you've been there a long time, and has it changed since you first got there? MARK TURGEON: Yeah, it's changed a lot. We've become much better friends. We probably hang out more in the summer than we do during the season. Gary is a hands-off guy. He's never going to call me and give me his opinion. If we're going to talk, it's because I reach out to him. But he's been around a little bit. This year we had the 100 years of Maryland basketball, so he's been around a little bit more, so it's always great. I love when he's around. Early this year he came to a couple practices, helped us with some things. We had a staff meeting at my house. He came, spent a few hours with us. It was really cool to see. Just to get him back around it. But I look forward to hanging out at the beach with him this summer. Should be a lot of fun. Q. You kind of touched upon Coach Benford for a second, but can you kind of imagine -- it's not what he signed up for, to be pushed in the forefront like this at a time like this and the pressure of winning in the postseason, can you put yourself in his shoes and what that's like to go through? MARK TURGEON: Yeah, because I've been a head coach for 21 years and every time you step out in an NCAA Tournament game it's a lot. He's handled it great. He's been a head coach before. He's been around a long time. He's been around a lot of great coaches. He's doing a terrific job. He's got a really, really good team, and they really look like they're together and sticking together and playing well together. I thought he did a great job yesterday. That was a tough game. Yale was really, really good, and I thought he did a great job preparing them, and he'll do the same for tomorrow's game. Q. In terms of Anthony taking his shots, last night it looked like he took good shots, they just weren't falling. You said similar things about Melo during his team where if he has a tough shooting night, you thought the next one was going to go in. Is there a difference now with the team that you have and especially this year's team, when you have such potentially dominant players inside, which you didn't necessarily have for most of Melo's time there, with Anthony, and whether it's an open shot, do you still want him to take a look inside first? MARK TURGEON: Yeah, I think we play inside out. They were just doubling Bruno all night, so it made it tough, but Bruno still had a double-double, I believe. And we made the right reads. The key thing is that Anthony took good shots. He had to rush a couple late shot clock, you know, but he missed three or four lay-ups, missed five wide-open threes. Those are great shots. I mean, for a heck of a player. For him personally, I just want him to make a few, okay. But the great thing is it didn't affect his game yesterday. He was terrific. We share it. We went to Stix. We went to Bruno. We tried to get Aaron Wiggins involved. We ran plays for Eric Ayala yesterday to get him going. So we're sharing the wealth. But a lot of times the ball gravitates back to your best players late in the shot clock, and it does, but we overcame it, and it was a big relief for all of us. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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