NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: SECOND ROUND - LSU VS MICHIGAN

March 22, 2021

Will Wade

Lucas Oil Stadium - Unity Court (South)

LSU Tigers

Postgame Media Conference

Michigan 86, LSU 78

WILL WADE: I thought it was a great game, high-level game. The game got away from us I think at the end of the first half. We had a pretty good working margin, got off to a great start, had a great working margin. To be down one at half. We went on a scoring drive out there for 4 or 5 minutes. We got the lead in the second half by six. They made some huge threes. We just had some poor closeouts, some poor switches below the ball, and weren't able to overcome them.

Our guys played hard, gave all they had. I'm proud of them for everything they've accomplished this year and fighting through the season.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Why didn't Josh Gray play tonight?

WILL WADE: We just felt like we needed to keep the floor spaced. Having Days in there, Days didn't get in a ton of foul trouble till the end. Dickinson didn't hurt us as bad as we were expecting. Our doubles were pretty good. In the flow of the game, it wasn't one of those games where we felt like we needed him right now.

Q. He's like a real big energy guy. He can give you a lot on offensive rebounding. Did you have any thought to play him tonight?

WILL WADE: We thought maybe going into the game we were going to play him. But with the flow of the game, it didn't work out that way.

Q. You mentioned the game getting away from you. Do you think it was a little bit of running out of gas? Y'all played so well in the first half, the inability to sustain it, then their ability to affect shots at the rim also seemed to let y'all settle for some perimeter shots.

WILL WADE: Yeah, I think we played two guys 40 minutes. Their run coincided with us having those guys out there a long time at the end of the first half. In the second half we kind of ran out of gas the last 10 minutes. So I do think probably that had something to do with it.

Q. Talk about Javonte's game. He seemed to carry you in that second half. Even when you got down a little bit, he seemed to be a force for you throughout the entire night.

WILL WADE: Yeah, I mean, he stepped up and played great. I mean, he was tremendous, especially in the second half. He made plays. I think he had six, seven assists, one turnover. No, he did a great job controlling the game, controlling our team. He was phenomenal.

Very, very, very proud of him. He just capped off a great season.

Q. You mentioned the game got away at the end of the first half. In the second half you kind of regrouped, had a six-point lead with about 15 1/2 minutes to go. What happened in those next 10 minutes that got away from you there?

WILL WADE: We couldn't string together enough stops. We could just never string together enough stops to make a run and to expand our lead. We could never get the lead above 10 in the first half. Second half, after we got the six-point lead, we gave up a couple threes, we missed a floater in the lane. We could never sustain what we were doing.

Q. People said Michigan looked a little vulnerable because they were missing Livers, one of their best players. They outscored you 26-2 off the bench. Was that something you were worried about, they'd come at you with a lot of players?

WILL WADE: Yeah, I mean, Chaundee Brown is a great player, we knew that. They're a great team. They're a tremendous, tremendous team. Coach Howard and their staff, their offensive execution, the way they move, the way they guard, they're a very, very good team. They're going to be an extremely tough out for anybody.

Q. What will you remember most about this season? Ed Orgeron talked about what he took away from it going through all the protocols and everything. What are you going to look back and take away from it?

WILL WADE: Just how hard our guys fought. We went through so many things off the court. Just how hard they fought. We got in 29 games. Just to get into 29 games, man, every day was a battle. These kids battled, battled, battled, wanted to play and wanted to be great.

We started peaking at the right time. Just happened to get a tough draw and a great team like this. It's a high-level game, it can go either way. They just made a few more shots and a few more plays than we did.

Our guys really, really battled all season. I told them how much I appreciate that in the locker room after the game.

Q. Did Michigan show on film they could shoot the three that well? Second half when we hit the two threes in a row, every time you got a basket, they answered with three.

WILL WADE: They lead the Big Ten in three-point shooting. You can't take away everything. We've kind of lived and died by giving up some threes all year. We had to give something up to take away the points in the paint, to take away everything in the post. That's what we did.

But the threes they hit on the runs really weren't inside-out threes. They were off-the-bounce threes, poor switch-outs, things of that nature. That was stuff we can control that we didn't do a good enough job on.

Q. Looks like y'all did a pretty good job on Dickinson in the first half. Looked like you frustrated him a little bit. Did you feel good about that matchup at halftime?

WILL WADE: Yeah, I thought we did a good job trapping him, confusing him down there, making him work. We had active hands. When we got tired, they just got way too comfortable. I think they had 13 assists on 16 made baskets. The problem in the first half was our closeouts, driving our closeouts. We just did a poor job with that.

Q. I know a couple times this season you talked about this is a team I expected to see, then you would have some lulls. Do you feel like tonight you went out kind of giving your best shot and the best of what your team could be?

WILL WADE: Yeah, we played well. We ran into a great, great team. I mean, we could have done some things differently. We could have made a few more shots, finished a few more in the lane, had a few better switches defensively. We certainly could have won the game.

I can't fault our guys' effort and how hard they played. We were prepared and ready to go. We just couldn't sustain it for 40 minutes.

Q. This is likely going to be the final game that this group plays together, but for some of your star players. Could you talk about the future of LSU basketball as you see it, maybe some of the plans of how you start the process of moving forward.

WILL WADE: We're certainly going to lose some very, very good players. We've got some talented young kids in the program that we feel really good about. We're going to try to mix in some veteran guys here in the spring, have two or three scholarships to mess around with and get some talented veteran guys to join our young core that's really, really good.

We've got to keep the young core together, keep those guys together, get those guys in the gym, get back to work, add a couple veteran pieces. I think we can be right back where we are tonight.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.