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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: SALT LAKE CITYMarch 22, 2019Mark FewZach Norvell, Jr.Corey KispertSalt Lake City, Utah THE MODERATOR: We have Gonzaga student-athletes Zach Norvell, Jr. and Corey Kispert on the dais. Let's open it up to questions. Q. How much of the Baylor game did you get to watch last night? And what were your thoughts after seeing them play? COREY KISPERT: We got to watch most of it, a bit of the first half before we left and a bit back at the hotel, and gathered how physical Baylor was altogether. They are not very tall but they make up for it with their aggression and physicality. ZACH NORVELL, JR.: For sure. Same. Q. They run that 1-3-1 zone. How much have you seen that and how difficult is that for what you guys do? THE MODERATOR: Zach? ZACH NORVELL, JR.: They close things up a little bit more, but it just comes with swinging the ball and playing together. We seen it a little bit with BYU. But obviously it's a little bit different, but yeah, swinging the ball and staying poised. THE MODERATOR: Corey, anything to add? COREY KISPERT: Yes, the whole point of the zone is to take you out of your rhythm and possessions can seem like they are stagnant. But as long as you get a good shot against the zone, it's a win. Q. This for Corey. Was it really motivational after losing in the Conference tournament? You obviously played very well yesterday. Was that a motivation at all? ZACH NORVELL, JR.: Yesterday was a lot of motivation. After you lose, it is never a good feeling at all. We had nine days off and we all wanted to get that bad taste out of our mouths. You seen it when we came out on the floor, a lot of emotion, we were in attack mode all night. It was really special. COREY KISPERT: Really good to get the monkey off the back. Q. For either one of you guys, Killian had probably scored most points since he's been back. He's been back since January. What does getting his game back do for you guys? THE MODERATOR: Corey. COREY KISPERT: Killian impacts the game in so many ways. He can shoot it like you said. Had a really hot start in the first half. Athletic. His foot seems healthy. He had a big dunk in the second half. Besides that, Killian is a great passer, too. Man or zone he can facilitate. We trust him with the ball to bring it up the floor and making good decisions on the offensive end. ZACH NORVELL, JR.: Yeah, to piggyback off of what Corey said, not only does Killian shoot the ball well, but him being out on the floor, him being a veteran now, him able to space the floor, his physicality on the defensive end, rebounding and stuff like that. He does a lot more than just shoot the ball. Q. This is for Zach. Obviously, Coach Few has had a tremendous amount of success. As a player, why do you like playing for him? Why is he able to get the best out of you guys? ZACH NORVELL, JR.: First, he is just one of the most humble guys in the world. He is a competitor. Any time you get coached by somebody like Coach Few, you always want to put your best foot forward all the time. He has respect for you on the floor. He always asks you how you are doing. It's always fun to play for anybody like that. THE MODERATOR: More questions? Okay. We'll let these two go and we'll wait for Coach Few. Thank you, guys. We will open it up to questions for Coach Few. Q. Mark, you guys have had your share of transfers over the years. I wondered with grad transfers in particular, what do they bring that's better, that's different? They are learning a new system but they have experience which helps. MARK FEW: We've been really, extremely blessed with the grad transfer. They backed Byron Wesley, he ended up a seamless way that he worked himself into our system and into the season. Geno has been -- Jordan Matthews in, was a huge part of our success in the run to that National Championship game. Geno's was probably the most interesting, we didn't finally get him into school and class till right around mid-October. And the way from day one, I remember his first practice, he was great and it's -- he deserves so much credit for just how much of his game he kind of gave up to come be a part of this. And then I think our guys deserve a bunch of credit for openly accepting him and understanding, okay, this guy's going to help us get to where we want to go. That might mean I might play less minutes, get less shots, or have less ball-handling. So it's been a win-win on both sides for Geno to play in something like this and be ranked No. 1 for long stretches this year, playing now in big games like that. That's certainly been what he was looking for, too. Q. Look, I know Killian has been back since January, but he looked more like himself the other day. He's going to give you that. What does that do for this team? MARK FEW: It makes us much more versatile. He is a player that you can put into a bunch of different spots, especially maybe when teams are playing zone or mixing up their defenses. He's got an incredible feel for the game and basketball intuition. He also allows us to stretch the floor a little bit more than we do maybe with those starting bigs. And he's actually moving much better than when he came back in January, I think because he was in a no weight bearing and his legs weren't quite there. This last time we were able to kind of do more things in his recovery. So he's moving better and has a little bit more pop and he is feeling better out there, especially defensively. Q. A follow-up: How was he? This was a big year for him and he's missed so much time. How was he during that time off? Was he down? MARK FEW: To his credit, he was a great teammate and he was pretty darn positive. He's a really positive, fun-loving kid. You could see where, especially after the second one, how disappointing that was. Q. Coach, you've had a lot of great teams over the years. Is there anything about this team that would be more capable of going further than the teams in the past? MARK FEW: No, hey, listen, you get to this tournament, you just need to win your next game. And looking back on the year we did advance all the way to the Final Four, we had a really tough game against Northeastern here in our second night out, where they made a heck of a run at us in the second half and we withstood the rally. Offensively, we've got a lot of answers and tons of versatility and they've shown for 33 games or 32 out of 33 games that we can really share it, score it in a variety of ways. But our defense has been rock solid, too. I think our defense was a big key early last night and then that kind of got our offense going. Q. Mark, on Rui's maturation, not in terms of his ability as a player and learning the language, he is such a big deal in Japan and on your campus, but everybody in this country is overshadowed by Zion, how does he handle all of that? MARK FEW: He's a very reluctant star. I think he's embarrassed about all the attention that he generates, especially back home. So we're pretty careful about overloading him, you know, with everything over here. At the same time he's under constant -- I'm not going to say "duress" -- he's under constant requests for interviews, for sit-downs, for anything and everything because, again, this is a huge year in international basketball for Japan and they're trying to qualify for the Olympics. He is the future of Japanese basketball. He's going to be the first one to ever be drafted. So he's really, really big over there. And so, I think it shows his personality and I think the reason he's embarrassed and a little bit reluctant with it, he would prefer his other teammates get equal time on the podium, in the limelight and things like that. And it shows you the kind of guy he is. Q. Coach, there's no easy way to ask you this, but Jimmy Kimmel has made some pretty outlandish accusations about Gonzaga not existing. I feel compelled to ask you: Does Gonzaga exist? MARK FEW: I'm a Jimmy Kimmel fan. I've been watching him for years and think he's hilarious. I haven't been watching any of this stuff. Some guys have shown me an occasional clip or something on their phone. So it sounds like he's had a lot of fun with it. As long as they are talking about Gonzaga and the program, I think that's probably a really, really good thing. Q. That wasn't a yes. MARK FEW: What's that? Q. That wasn't a yes. MARK FEW: I'm not going to go down the road on some silly little deal. But as long as he's having fun with, he can have fun with it. Q. Your thoughts on Scott Drew and Baylor and what they do that poses the biggest challenge for you guys? MARK FEW: They do a lot actually. Guys, I tell you, I think Scott Drew is -- has been throughout this whole run at Baylor vastly underrated as a basketball coach. He does a really, really good job. We did some pre-season scrimmages with him back in, probably -- actually 2017, we did two or three years in a row. I was always impressed with what they ran, what they did, and they always had a purpose and some real depth to what they were doing offensively and defensively. I'd say he's done an amazing job this year with all the adversity that they've had thrown at them. Within that last week of a Big 12 season they were in the hunt for the Championship. I mean, I think this is arguably one of the best years he's had coaching. And when you watch this team, the thing that stands out to me is just how tough they are. They're physically tough, they battle you every possession on both ends. They're the best or very close to the best offensive rebounding team in college basketball. We played North Carolina, that's a team that's an unbelievable offensive rebounding team here, but these guys are right there with them. And then when they're making threes like they were last night, they are really dangerous. Mason is a heck of a play maker, and they've gotten some great play out of Butler, the freshman. So, yeah, scary team with their toughness, their physicality and the way they shoot the ball. Q. You mentioned Mason. He had missed most of the last two years with injuries. What do you see from a veteran like that? And how much can a guy like that help a team? MARK FEW: I mean, he can help a team tremendously. He's an elite level guard. I know he's been battling injuries all year. But when you shoot the ball comfortably out to 30 feet like that -- and it's comfortable -- he was hitting them from the logo last night. That's tough to face from an opponent's point of view. And then he's got a really good pull-up game, so that makes him very difficult to guard. And then he understands the little nuances of the passes to make, the pick-and-roll of how you're guarding it. We've been fortunate to have some guys like that, Dan Dickau. Kevin Pangos was very much like that. He's a little more aggressive offensively than Kevin was. I have been impressed with how functional he's been battling all the foot injuries that he's had. He's a tough guy. Q. Mark, I have heard you talk a lot about scrimmaging, not that you're the only team that does it, everybody does. Over the years who else has scrimmaged? Over the years, when you play good teams, you are not playing Duke every day, how much does that help over the long haul? MARK FEW: It help us a lot and helps us prepare for those early-season tournaments that we're in and to prepare for the level of size and athleticism, you know, that we're going to see in our pre-season schedule, because we always try to schedule really hard then. So, back when Rick was at Texas, we did numerous scrimmages with Texas, and then we scrimmaged Baylor several times. We had a great -- I mean, very productive scrimmage with Michigan State this year, actually in Minneapolis of all places. So, yeah, that's why we do it. We just try to find somebody that wants to have two teams kind of get after it and kind of prepare ourselves for what lays immediately ahead with our usual arduous pre-season schedule. Q. Would you have an issue bringing in someone who just ended your season like Baylor has done? It is funny how things have worked out there. MARK FEW: Not if you had 31 on us. Geno lit us up for 28 and took us into overtime on our home floor. I didn't have any problem bringing him in. It's a great, it's a pretty strong eval if you can see how he plays against your guys in game conditions. No, not if you can play like Mason. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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