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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: COLUMBUS

March 22, 2019

Columbus, Ohio

North Carolina - 88, Iona - 73

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by North Carolina head coach Roy Williams and student-athletes Nassir Little and Cameron Johnson.

COACH WILLIAMS: Needless to say the second half was a lot different from the first half. I thought the first half we were very tentative on the offensive end and didn't do what we planted to do on the defensive end.

They changed their game plan a little bit, and needless to say it worked. They've been playing at a fast pace, but they controlled the clock and shot 3s and made 10 3s in the first half. And our offense was not very good. The only offense we had in the first half was Nassir taking the ball to the basket.

Second half, Cam makes a big 3 the first possession and all of a sudden we have a little more energy and passion about what we were doing defensively. And we defended, got some turnovers and got some points off that. And they missed some open shots as well. But I think we shot, like, 63, 64 percent in the second half because we took better shots as well.

But Nassir gave us a great lift off the bench and Cam did, like I said, the first shot of the second half was really big, and he had a couple assists and baskets later than that as well.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes.

Q. Cam, what did he say to you guys at halftime? And did he need to say anything?
CAMERON JOHNSON: He just said that's not the way we play; we need to pick it up. And we received that message pretty loud and clear. We knew that the way we played in the first half was unacceptable. We knew that wasn't us, and that's what he emphasized to us, that we have to come out and play better.

He had faith in us. That was important to us. And we just had to go out there and execute and use our advantages.

Q. Cameron, what did Iona do in the first half? They shot well, but what did they do that made it difficult in the first half?
CAMERON JOHNSON: Making shots. It was -- really took them a long way. It took us out of getting any transition opportunities. Made us play offense in the half court. They slowed down the tempo, used a lot of the clock and hit a lot of 3s.

They kind of controlled that tempo. And we were swinging the ball around the outside too much, not really getting it on the inside. And they did a pretty good job of keeping us off the glass for the most part in that first half.

Q. Naz, do you look at yourself as an energy guy? And even if you don't do you feel like you've inserted some of that into the team in the first half when you came in?
NASSIR LITTLE: Yeah, for sure. I just look at what the team needs. I felt like early on we was taking too many outside shots. And before the game Coach and all the coaching staff was telling me to be aggressive and get easy buckets on the inside and play inside-out. I think by doing that, opened up a lot of things in the second half.

Q. Nassir, just looked like in the second half you decided to push the ball up the court and go to the basket, either a pass for a drive. Was just what you wanted to do to try to change the flow of the game?
NASSIR LITTLE: For sure. We did a scout and we knew they weren't the strongest team in transition. I felt early on we weren't getting enough stops to take advantage of that. So once we picked it up defensively we got easy buckets in transition. Guys were being more aggressive taking it to the basket, putting pressure on their guys, getting people in foul trouble, and that's how we were able to get away.

Q. Cam, coaches love to say the first four or five minutes of a second half is the most important part of the game. Is that clichÃ© because it's true?
CAMERON JOHNSON: It is true. It is true. We came out and we tied it up pretty quick and it gave us some momentum and we rolled that way for the majority of the half. So we came out, we called the play, we ran it. My guys hit a good screen. The first one fell.

Then Luke came down, got an easy basket and the stops started to come. You just hope a team that hits 10 of their first 21 3s kind of cools off. And they did that a little bit and we took advantage.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Questions for Coach.

Q. Can you just speak to the ball movement by your team in the second half after only three first-half assists there?
COACH WILLIAMS: For North Carolina to play a half and only have three assists, that tells you right there that we're not moving very well. And we talked about that. We had zero points off turnovers. We had three assists. Everything was just an outside shot except for Nassir basically, and Luke had a lot of things inside, but for some reason he was worried about getting his shots blocked or something because at half he and Cam together were 3-for-16. And you go back look at what they did in the second half, it was much more aggressive and poised and confident in what they were doing.

Q. What do you have to say about Iona guard Rickey McGill's performance? He had 26 points and was really impressive from deep?
COACH WILLIAMS: He's a four-year guy, four championships, four NCAA Tournaments, and I congratulated him on that in the line as we were shaking hands at the end. We knew that he's a good 3-point shooter, but the other guys shoot more. But today he made his first one, made his second one and I think he made six in a row before he missed.

But I think he's a heck of a player. And scouting report said, you've got to watch No. 0. He plays in the passing lanes and still gets two steals like that. I think he had a heck of a game.

But Tim changed a little bit and gave them the best chance to win by using clock and spreading, and he was counting on his guys making shots and in the first half they did. And fortunately for us we made more in the second half and they didn't shoot it as well.

Q. I know you prefer not to have gone through that first half. But now that it's done, do you feel like maybe you can use that to your advantage, as maybe let these guys know that they're not invincible and they need to come out and play well?
COACH WILLIAMS: I don't think that they felt like they were invincible. Probably the thing I despise more than anything in basketball or in life is somebody trying to be cool. And I thought in the first half we didn't have the passion.

And I don't think that they thought it was going to be easy. I just don't think we had the passion to play. And especially in the defensive end when they're spreading you, it's not easy. You've got to get there and you can't let a guy stare down at your feet and pull up shoot a 3. You can't let them drive to the basket and lay it up.

It was a total breakdown on the defensive end and then they're making the 3s, and we started looking at the score and I think perhaps got a little tight.

But no, I told them in the locker room, every tournament's different. You build your momentum once you get in the tournament. And some of you guys have heard this before, but I was on the staff of a pretty good team -- 1982. And the first game we played James Madison in Charlotte. And we blew them out, 52 to 50.

And so it happens. And we had a guy named Worthy, a guy name Jordan and a guy named Perkins on that team. We ended up winning the national championship. So it's one game, but learn from this one game. We've got to have more passion.

Q. Can you coach or uncoach tight?
COACH WILLIAMS: No, I think what you've gotta do is kids have to have confidence. I've always said, don't worry about anything; just lose yourself in the game. And that's what we tried to get the guys to focus on and be positive and lose themselves in the game, yes.

Q. Obviously when they were coming out shooting a bunch of 3s early, you knew they were going to make them. I guess the question is --
COACH WILLIAMS: I did not know they were going to make them.

Q. I didn't say that right. Once they started hitting a few and you see that, what was the adjustment you made at halftime knowing that you could kind of sense that they were going to shoot a bunch of 3s?
COACH WILLIAMS: We knew they were going to shoot a bunch of 3s period, because that's what they do. They try to open the court and try to drive and penetrate and pitch for 3s. That's what his teams have done for ten straight games in the winning streak, and they've done a good job of it.

But they did a better job of it today because I think they shot like 40 -- 47 or something like that in the first half and that's pretty impressive. But in the second half, you know, we just talked about playing with passion. We did start switching the screens on the ball 1 through 4. 5 was the only one making a hard edge. But they didn't really set that many screens, so that didn't change it much. It's just that we had more passion and got to the shooters more. But more importantly we didn't stand around on the offensive end. We started moving and we got some stops and that got our breaks so we were better offensively.

Q. You're a No. 1 seed which is obviously an achievement, something you want to be. Does that come with a little pressure that affected you a little bit early on?
COACH WILLIAMS: I think so. And I think UMBC last year made it a little more pressure. And it's part of the game. And I understand that and told them that. But if you're a tough competitor and you invest yourself into the game, you're not just worried about the score; you want to be concerned about how you're playing.

And I think for a couple moments there we were concerned about the score more so than how we were playing. So I just tried to get us to focus on playing better, playing better and doing what we've done all year long.

Q. Second half, it looked like you really tightened up the defense in the paint. Whenever Crawford went down the lane he always was being met by two players. Was that the key adjustment on defense?
COACH WILLIAMS: When you say it was a key adjustment, it sounds like it's coaching. We did the same thing; we just did it better in the second half. The only thing we changed was playing the screen on the ball differently in the second half.

And, like I say, they didn't set nearly as many in the second half as they did in the first half. But we were trying to be in there to make it difficult for somebody to drive off because if you're in the gaps and they drive and penetrate, you just have to go one way.

If you're out denying like we used to do, we were denying, you gotta get back and then you go two ways. The game plan was to be -- to have them in there, stopping people driving to the basket. We just didn't look like it was a game plan in the first half.

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