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

March 23, 2019

Columbus, Ohio

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by North Carolina student-athletes Luke Maye and Garrison Brooks as well as head coach Roy Williams. Questions for the student-athletes?

Q. Luke, just talk about how the game's becoming more inside as you go further into the tournament. And also, Noah was here earlier and said you guys have a little bit of history, that maybe you can share a little background with that as well.
LUKE MAYE: Yeah, we're going to try to play the same way we've played all year. But it starts inside first. And myself and Garrison need to do our job on the glass and also making the shots inside that we can make.

And I think the biggest thing for us is to continue to play our game and play how Coach wants us to play, and that's just doing our jobs and making it easier on the guards.

And with Noah, we played against each other at a lot of camps and he played on a similar AAU circuit as I did. So we've played against each other a good amount. And he's always been a good friend. And I've enjoyed playing against him and I'm going to enjoy playing against him tomorrow.

Q. You guys are a No. 1 seed, considered one of the favorites in the tournament. But most of the year, nationally, you've been overshadowed by Duke and Zion and all that stuff. How do you think that's affected you? Has it bothered you? Has it helped you in a way?
GARRISON BROOKS: I feel like it's helped us a little bit. Gave us a little bit of motivation. It's fine that people overlook us and, like, the national scene, it's fine. But we just continue to work and get better every day.

LUKE MAYE: I'd second that. I think the biggest thing for us is focusing on ourselves and making sure that we do what we can do on the court to put us in the right position to where we are now and get a No. 1 seed.

And at the end of the day everybody's going to play and everybody's going to have their opinions on games and on players. And I think we're just trying to do our best to get the right image in people's minds.

Q. Luke, that would logically make sense, would it not, that you have to have a certain pride in the ACC to have the three No. 1 seeds. It's good for everybody.
LUKE MAYE: Yes it's the best basketball conference and I would take that up with anybody.

Q. What kind of adjustment do you see, Garrison, when you do play a team that obviously you're not familiar with? Is it going to be advantageous that you've played Syracuse a couple times during the course of the year and know that Mike Hopkins has taken a lot of those basketball practices out to Washington?
GARRISON BROOKS: I think it helps. It benefits us. We've seen it before. I think we've seen pretty much everything we need to see this season. I think we just do what we normally do, just play our game.

Q. Is there always the adjustment of seeing a team on tape that you're not familiar with, thinking you've got it? And then you went through it a little bit yesterday in the first half, and then you see them in person and the reality hits?
GARRISON BROOKS: Yeah, it's different. Film doesn't do some people justice.

Q. Luke, it's been established, you have a history with Noah a little bit. He was an all-conference player two years ago and didn't make it this year because I think everyone figured out they have to double him or they're going to be in trouble. Just as a one-on-one matchup, what's it like dealing with him in the post?
LUKE MAYE: Yeah, he's a great player. He's always been able to use his body really well, be able to finish over people. And for somebody who plays the 5 spot at right around 6'8", some people list him at 6'9", but I think he's pretty similar size as me, maybe a little taller.

And I think he does a good job finding his areas and finding his angles, and he's a great scorer in the post. And we're going to do our best to slow him down and make sure that we have a body in front of him and the basket every single play.

But everybody at this stage is going to be really good in respect to their leagues. Everybody has a lot of accolades, and we're just trying to win a team game, and that's what we're going to try to do tomorrow.

Q. Garrison, is there a comfort level with the officiating during the regular season because you generally get three guys that you know, and then you come into the tournament and you're really not sure of these three guys, maybe one, and how they're going to call a particular game?
GARRISON BROOKS: I'm pretty sure every referee is different. So you have to really adjust to the style that they're going to blow the whistle for pretty much every call.

Q. Do you know five minutes in what it's going to be like or does it change?
GARRISON BROOKS: You can pretty much tell from the jump, you can tell by the first foul, tell basically by the first rebound, basically, that's how I feel.

Q. What is the most annoying aspect of playing against a Syracuse zone?
LUKE MAYE: I'll go first. I think the biggest thing is how active the top two defenders are. I think one of their players is leading the country in steals and does a great job. I think it's Thybulle does a great job of getting in the passing lanes. We have to make sure that we make good fakes and get it into the middle of the zone and try our best to attack.

And I think playing against Syracuse has helped us. And it will help us moving forward. But then again every team's different. Every team has their strengths and we've got to find our strengths against a good team like Washington.

GARRISON BROOKS: I'll agree with Luke, like the top two guys they're really active. It makes it tough on, like, the whole team.

Q. Luke, is there additional pressure on you guys as a team because you've got Carolina on your jersey?
LUKE MAYE: I think it's definitely -- playing against any team they're going to bring their best shot, especially in the NCAA Tournament. And I think going off of what happened last year, I think we're going to come out with a little bit extra motivation and making sure that we play our best basketball.

And we struggled a little bit the first half yesterday. And we can't have that let-down tomorrow. And we've just gotta do our best to make sure we come out the right way and gotta punch them in the mouth early.

Q. Was the adjustment at halftime yesterday more technical or emotional?
LUKE MAYE: I think it would be more emotional. Coach got on us about playing a little bit harder, playing with more passion. He felt like we missed some shots we usually make. And they made some shots. And I think just playing harder and playing with more aggression would benefit us the second half. And we made some more shots. And kind of affected them, which was big for us.

Q. I'm only asking this because the Washington players said their coach was crazy. Is there any part of Coach Williams that you find to be crazy?
LUKE MAYE: I think I could probably speak on it a little more than Garrison just because I've been around four years and I've had a lot of experiences with different attitude changes, different mood swings. And I think the biggest thing for us is that Coach gets on us, and Coach really wants to push us in different ways, whether it be yelling or kind of aggression.

But I think he knows it that -- he knows that we know that he cares about us. And he wants us to realize how much he wants us to succeed. And that's the biggest thing that Coach tries to imply every single day. And no matter how hard he's on you or how mad he gets, you understand that because he shows you every single day. And that's been big for my growth and development.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Coach Williams joins us and we're ready for your questions.

Q. You guys have had some really good success over the years against Syracuse and that zone, and Mike's going to play pretty much the same kind of defense. What has made you guys so successful at attacking that?
COACH WILLIAMS: I'll give you a better answer after the game if we're successful against Mike's. It's a little different, but the basis the same. They're long, athletic, quick to the ball. They're aggressive. They'll probably double team in the corner maybe more than Jimmy's teams have done in the last couple of years.

But for us we try to get the shot that we want, not just the shot that they want us to take. And so for us it's got to be a balance. We want to get the ball inside and attack the basket area and shoot open 3s, but not just be content to just pass the ball around the perimeter and do what they want us to do.

But the good news is that we have played Syracuse, because it would be hard to get ready for this type of defense with just half a practice, which is what we're going to have today. But at the same time, some other teams have played the zone, and guys played some zone against us yesterday and we didn't handle it very well in the first half, particularly.

But it is, with their length, they take away your open shots, because they can -- football terminology, they can close on you, like they talk about defensive backs, you think you're open and they can close. I can go all the way back to 2003, the national championship game, my last game at Kansas. We have what we think is a wide-open 3 to tie the game, and Hakim Warrick came out of nowhere and blocked the shot.

You have to understand that, that they have athleticism and can really cover ground and they want to get there. They want to bother your shot. But we've got to try to get the shot we want.

Q. I can remember back to your Kansas team in '93 and when you talk about length, it seems like every team now has seven or eight of those guys you describe with length. And when you go back to earlier in your head coaching career, if a team had one, it was a story, wasn't it?
COACH WILLIAMS: Yeah, but these guys, they're 6'7" up to 6'11", and they do have the length and athleticism to cover to a lot of ground.

Q. You've been asked this many times this year, but you're a No. 1 seed, no one's overlooking you. But you've been overshadowed to some degree by Duke and Zion Williamson. How does that affect you negatively or positively this year?
COACH WILLIAMS: Me, it hasn't affected me at all. I'm serious, not one iota. This doesn't bother me. It doesn't bother me. It doesn't make me happy or anything. I just don't think about it.

But I think Zion, the attention that he's gotten, he's deserved. He's stood up to all the accolades that he got before. And we tried to recruit him as hard as I've ever recruited anybody. I thought he was a unique young man. There wasn't anybody like him.

I've been married 46 years, my wife's been to a lot of high school games over the years. I took her to a game when we saw Zion one night. We left, we were in the car and she didn't say anything, didn't say anything. I said, what do you think? She said, I don't think I've ever seen anything like that.

That's pretty perceptive. And you watch the games, and that's what you say, man, I haven't seen anything like that. I think he's that blend of power, explosiveness, athleticism and competitiveness that I haven't seen maybe ever. So that part doesn't bother me. He deserves what he gets.

When we win, we get good publicity. If somebody else beats us, we don't. And gotta get ready for the next game. But I haven't really cared about it.

Q. It's been a while since you encountered Washington in the finals and lots of things have changed. But I wondered what you remember about that 2011 game in Charlotte, where I guess you woke up sick that morning and got a little sicker as the game was going on?
COACH WILLIAMS: I remember they were very, very good. We were lucky to win the game. We have a 3-point lead and John Henson, standing under the basket jumped up and sort of caught the ball -- it was definitely going to be short; so it should not have been called goaltending.

But I about had a heart attack because we had a three-point lead. I said, John, why would you do that? He said, Coach, he was inside. It was just going to be two.

I said, how do you know that? That kind of thing. That's what I remember the most about at the end of the game. We got a great deflection, they had the ball out of bounds. I think with just for us, a one- or two-point lead, and John was able to get his hand on the ball in front of the ball and deflect it. We came up with it and scored again on the other end.

But Lorenzo was coaching, I believe, at that time. Isaiah, I think, was there. They had some good players. And I remember getting in the locker room thinking that we just beat a very, very, very good team, and we were lucky to win.

Q. I'm not sure how well you know Mike Hopkins, so there might not be a lot in there, but I'll give it a shot. He's a different guy. Yesterday he was trying to decide which candy he wanted on the scorer's table and played "eeny, meeny, miny, moe." He tackles players in the middle of practice, starts doing push-ups, all that kind of stuff. I'm just wondering if there's anything that you've come across where, that's a different guy. He's not like the other coaches.
COACH WILLIAMS: What the crap do you think people say about me? I spit in rivers. Mike and I are twins. That's what the hell it is. (Laughter).

I've never gone "eeny, meeny, miny, moe" with the candy on the side of the table, but I've got two different kinds in the locker room.

I really think he's a good guy, a really good coach. I'm old enough to remember when he played. I think he was so loyal to Jimmy and great to Jimmy Boeheim for a long time and Jimmy was loyal to him. The teams they had at Syracuse, they beat one of my teams in the 2003 National Championship game.

So I've known Mike for a long time. Two or three years ago, whenever it was, that Jimmy sat out those nine games and Mike was in charge of the team, and it didn't go as well. I don't know what it was -- it was 4-5, 5-4, 6-3, whatever it was, but it wasn't very pleasant.

And the first game that they played when Jimmy came back was against us at their place. And I remember grabbing Mike before the game and saying, hey, I know that hadn't been the most pleasant experience but you did a great job. It's a hard job. It's unusual circumstances. Just put it behind you and one of these days it will be a very small blip on what you're doing. And I don't know if he remembers that, but it was very comfortable for me to say that to him.

And I think he's one of the good guys. Now, I've not -- in the old days I would do crazy stuff but I've stepped down and done pushups on the floor. So what you're describing isn't unique, that sounds normal to me. That's all I've got. (Laughter).

Q. We've got to find some storylines here, so we've got to nitpick a little bit. 3-3 in the second round last six years. Anything to that? Has it just been matchups that have been stumbling blocks, or what do you read into it?
COACH WILLIAMS: 99 percent of the coaches in the world would take that. Seriously. 3-3 in the second round. Hell, a lot of guys are sitting at home getting ready for their golf game.

But probably -- let's see, Texas A&M last year was really a bad matchup for us. Year before that we were okay. We were 6-0. There wasn't nobody else 6-0. And so I'll take 3-3 all the time if you'll make two of those three years go to play for the national championship game. So that would be the one I'd have the best answer for you.

Frankly, my dear... (laughter).

I didn't mean to shut the crowd up. I was being nice. (Laughter).

Q. Sterling Manley, talked to him yesterday. And have you had it in your career where, a situation like that where a player has been playing enough and then gets hurt and you have to sit him down because the rotation that you have has been so good? How has he kind of been receptive to that?
COACH WILLIAMS: I don't know. But I've been a head coach for 31 years. So I'm sure I've had some things like it. But it depends. Before he got hurt, he was playing 11 or 12 minutes. But Garrison was in front of him. And Sterling was doing some things that were good for us or he wouldn't have been playing 11, 12 minutes a game. But he got hurt for a long time.

And now coming back, my job -- to be honest, if we don't win, I get fired. So my job is to win. And the group that we have, got a pretty good rotation set. We won 15 out of 16 or 16 out of 18, something like that.

So if it ain't broke, don't fix it kind of thing. But I'm sure that I've had some guys that I was able to get back into the rotation. But it's where they started. If a guy starts and beat everybody else out, then you've got to try to give him a chance to do that, too. But I'm trying to think Jacque Vaughn, at Kansas, he broke his wrist, missed the first nine games.

When he started playing, you know what he did, he started because that's what he deserved over time. So I don't think there's been an exact situation like that.

But Leaky was playing a certain number of minutes, too, and not playing as many now as he was at that time. But none of those kids want to get hurt. And I understand that. And they want to play more. But every kid wants to play 60 minutes in a 40-minute game and take 60 shots. And I understand that. But Sterling's handled it well, and he's practiced better now than he was before he got hurt. And so I like that. But his life in basketball is not going to be over tomorrow.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

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