NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - BYU VS UCLA

March 20, 2021

Mark Pope

Hinkle Fieldhouse

BYU Cougars

Postgame Media Conference

UCLA - 73, BYU - 62

THE MODERATOR: Coach, thanks for joining us. We're ready for your opening comments.

COACH POPE: Congratulations to UCLA. They played great today. Really good team that does an unbelievable job with those guys. They had a great season. They caused us all kinds of problems and played through it, got the win.

Super proud of my guys. They're really special young men and really special locker room.

Q. Wanted to ask just about the shooting, 3-of-17 from beyond the arc. You feel like you guys got good looks and just didn't make them? What did you make of the shooting?

COACH POPE: Yeah, clearly we didn't shoot the ball well from the 3-point line or the free-throw line. Credit UCLA for that putting pressure on us. They had us on our heels for some substantial part of the first half. And it happens sometimes. We've been able to overcome nights like that before this season. We just couldn't overcome it tonight.

So we'll get better. But there's going to be nights where we don't shoot the ball well and we have answers, we can still win games. We just didn't get it done tonight.

Q. How big of a setback was it for your team to cut the deficit to four and at the next stoppage you find UCLA back up double digits?

COACH POPE: Yeah, you know, I was really proud of my guys in the second half. They kept fighting and kept trying to chip away. And that's this locker room. That's what they've been all year. And in some crucial moments we just couldn't come up with stops.

Johnny was a handful tonight. And we didn't have answers for him. And UCLA can be so meticulous with their -- and demonstrative with their pace of play. So it makes it harder to claw back in. And -- it's a game. It's March. It happens. And, like I said, credit UCLA. They played great and we just couldn't quite get over the hump.

Q. What is something that you can take away from this game that will help you start moving on to next season?

COACH POPE: Well, the game teaches you all the time how you need to get better. And so there's a number of things that we can take from this game to get better. I'm not really there right now. I think it's a hard locker room right now. We're so grateful for the opportunity we have to be here for this tournament.

And personally I'm so humbled and grateful that I get to be in that locker room with those guys. They're extraordinary young men. And down the line they all sacrificed so much for each other. And they fought really hard to try and learn how to love each other. And, so, I don't know. I mean, we'll piece away the basketball stuff.

It's just hard to do that right now with what I got in that locker room right now, a bunch of dudes that are brokenhearted and I think as much as anything, just devastated that they don't get to play together again. You know, when you forge a bond that these guys worked so hard. It doesn't come by accident, when you work as hard as these guys do to forge the bond that they have with one another, it is devastating to know that you're not going to be in a locker room together again in the same forum. So I'm not sure about the basketball stuff. We've got to deal with our guys first.

Q. Can you assess the performance of your seniors, not just tonight, but what they meant to this team this season?

COACH POPE: Yeah. I mean, again, what a gift. For anybody that's managing or leading or coaching any organization, to have three extraordinary young men like Matt Haarms and Brandon Averette and Alex Barcello leading, what they did on the court is incredibly impressive. What they accomplished this year is incredibly impressive. Their numbers are all super impressive.

But what they did in terms of bonding and binding hearts and minds together in the locker room and finding a way to come everyday and work hard and find a way to build a team that's better than anybody thought they were going to be. They're great human beings. And they're going to do great things in their lives.

And it's super humbling to be able to witness that. So I'm so grateful for those guys. I don't know if we're going to have three dudes walk through our doors that are quite like these guys. But they're special human beings.

Q. We saw BA pretty emotional coming off the floor. You've noted it as well. But what was your message to the team in the postgame locker room moments after the final horn?

COACH POPE: There's no message. There's no message to make it better. At least I don't have it. Sometimes you come to the end of a season and you have guys that are exhausted and frustrated and fatigued and ready for it to be over. And that's not our locker room. So that makes it doubly hard.

There's no words that I can say to them that will make that better. I just told the guys how much I loved them and how grateful I am for them to allow me the privilege of pushing them as hard as we pushed them and asking them for as much as we asked them for. So I don't have any better words of wisdom.

We'll unpack everything. These guys, they live to respond to adversity. They're experts at getting back up off the mat and moving on and making great things happen. And I know that this locker room will do that and I know these young men are able to do that. But there's going to be some mourning and grieving that goes on. And we'll do that together just like we competed and won games together this year.

Q. Kind of building off that question, as you consider the totality of this season, what you guys have gone through all year long, do you just have any overall thoughts on what they endured just to get to this point?

COACH POPE: I don't know how much -- we probably talk about this all the time guys, but these guys accomplished extraordinary things. They're a Top 25 team. They're metrically astounding, probably made the biggest jump in their ranking in the preseason to the end of the season as any team in the country. And they won huge game after huge gave after huge game.

They came every single night and every single day in practice ready to go. They took a eclectic collection of guys from all over, with all different backgrounds, they came together and forged a special team. So, so many accomplishments.

But again that's all the stuff that's good for you guys and good for me. What these guys did that is so spectacular nobody is going to understand -- I'll keep saying it, but nobody is going to understand -- is these guys formed a relationship, the likes of which you rarely have in your life. And with each other.

And that, like I said, I say it over and over, that just doesn't happen. These guys work at it and sacrifice towards. I care about wins and losses. I care about numbers and I care about all those things and all those things are super important. And this team accomplished incredible things. They're walking out of this season with a pocketful of records and incredible accomplishments and huge contributions to BYU basketball, to the history BYU basketball, some great things.

But at the end of the day all that stuff is fine, but they got something that's way deeper and way more important than any of those things. They've got each other. And if you don't understand what I mean, I get it. But it's just -- I don't know if that answers your question.