NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - LONGWOOD VS TENNESSEE

March 16, 2022

Griff Aldrich

Isaiah Wilkins

DeShaun Wade

Justin Hill

Gainbridge Fieldhouse

Longwood Lancers

Media Conference

THE MODERATOR: Folks, we will go ahead and get started. We will be joined by the student-athletes from Longwood University. We will be joined by Isaiah Wilkins, DeShaun Wade, and Justin Hill.

Q. This is your first appearance ever. What has been running through your minds, and what is your mind like going into the first game here?

DESHAUN WADE: Just to be ourselves, do the things that have gotten us here. Like you said, it's the first time we got here, so we don't want to do too much or too less. Nobody is trying to be a hero. We are going to do the same thing that got us here and focus on being ourselves and getting better every single day while we still can.

Q. For all of you, I'm sure you guys have watched a lot of Tennessee film. Your impressions and what you guys really need to focus on to have a chance tomorrow?

ISAIAH WILKINS: Obviously we have watched a lot of film. We know that they have us outsized. And I think a big key for us this game is to control the boards. I think if we control rebounding and get stops that we're going to be fine.

JUSTIN HILL: I think if we play our game and lock in on the defensive end, I think we're going to be fine.

Q. What has Farmville been like this year? I know there is a new building coming, but you've been able to pack that every night. For those of you who have seen it over the course of the years, what has the atmosphere been like and the community been like rallying around you guys this year?

DESHAUN WADE: A lot of support, a lot of love. People coming to our games. We got a few sell-outs this year. I don't think that's happened since I've been here, and I've been here for three years.

A lot of support, a lot of people wanting to see us do good. It's been really fun. It's been exciting. We are happy that we can put on a show for our people and give them something to be excited about.

Yeah, just been a lot of support.

ISAIAH WILKINS: I think he hit it on the nail. It's been a fun ride. I've enjoyed myself. And seeing everybody else in the town and the community smile and see how happy they are and how they support us, it makes us happy as a group.

Q. I'm sure you have grown up watching the tournament and seen Cinderella teams make it through the bracket. From your point of view, what do you all think could make you go on a similar run?

DESHAUN WADE: From what I've seen, this team is very unselfish. This team doesn't really care about who is getting what, what award, none of that. We're all just playing for each other.

We have a good team chemistry. We all love each other, we all enjoy being around each other, and we're very confident in ourselves. We don't care who you place in front of us, we're just going to go out and play, and we're going to play our game, and we're going to have fun doing it.

Q. You mentioned that confidence. Where do you think that stems from, and when do you feel like that became a part of y'all's team personality?

DESHAUN WADE: I think that confidence just comes from being locked in and working hard ever since July or August, whenever we started. Pointing to the rule every single day, trying to get better every single day.

When you work as hard as us, you can be confident. And when you focus on the process, you can be confident in the results. That's where it comes from, really, just working hard. I know everybody likes to say that they work hard, but we've been through a lot together.

ISAIAH WILKINS: I think it also comes from who we are as people. A lot of us kind of flew under the radar growing up, not getting as many looks and just wanting to be seen. Our confidence comes from playing those type guys and just trying to go out and prove ourselves to everyone.

Q. Can you tell me the attraction for you to go to Longwood? What got you there? Why are you playing basketball at Longwood right now?

JUSTIN HILL: Well, I didn't get to visit because I was a COVID senior, but the coaching staff, they reeled me in. They showed a lot of love, and I thought it was somewhere I could grow as a basketball player. And I didn't know too much about the town, but it just felt like a good place to play basketball for me. That's what brought me here.

DESHAUN WADE: When I was transferring from ECU, Coach Griff and his staff was one of the first to hit me up. One of the things he preached about was not only player development but life development, being able to have the tools to be successful in life. That's what reeled me in.

ISAIAH WILKINS: This is my third school in four years. I played two seasons at Virginia Tech and one at Wake Forest last year. This coaching staff was actually recruiting me after I left Virginia Tech first two years, and they took a chance on me, and I'm glad to be in this position I'm in again, back in the tournament.

Q. Guys, you talk about being confident and don't do too much, just be ourselves. How do you compartmentalize that when you are going into maybe the biggest game of your career so far?

JUSTIN HILL: I think we have to focus on the details, because that's what got us here. If we focus on those, I think everything else will fall in place.

DESHAUN WADE: Coach is always talking about being urgent on the little details and control what you can control.

So we focus on just, I guess, our effort and our attitude and just, like I said, the details, then we will be out there controlling what we can control. And then we're just going to -- like he says, we're going to let the chips fall where they may.

Q. Y'all are a top-5 team in the nation in terms of three-point shooting. Tennessee defends the three-point line well. How do y'all go about making sure that you keep that three-point shot as a part of your game heading into tomorrow?

ISAIAH WILKINS: I don't think that's much of a focal point. We're able to score in a variety of ways, so I don't think we can really be put in a box of three-point shooting.

We have a lot of different guys who can score at all three levels. So I think them defending that is just kind of taking away from one thing, but I think we're able to do a number of other things.

Q. I'm wondering, as you've studied the Vols, what you think in particular about Josiah James, 30, at both ends of the floor, very important for them, especially defensively?

DESHAUN WADE: We don't know too much about any one player on their team, but from what we've seen on film, he's very athletic. He has the ability to impact the game on both ends of the floor. He's a pretty good shot maker. That's all we really know. I think they're all very talented. We like the challenge that we got.

Q. You guys have flown under the radar, obviously Tennessee has 3, 4, 5-star guys. What's it like for y'all to get the opportunity to prove yourselves against so many guys that maybe got the notoriety out of high school that maybe y'all didn't get?

ISAIAH WILKINS: Playing against those type guys is what we live for. We love doing that, and we love to compete. I think it's going to be a pretty fun ride.

THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, thank you. Good luck tomorrow.

We are now joined by the head coach at Longwood in Griff Aldrich.

Q. Your mindset going into this match-up. It's the first time your team has ever been to the Big Dance. What's your mindset going in?

COACH ALDRICH: Our program is really focused on trying to control what we can control, and we talk a lot about pouring into the root.

What that means is you can control your effort, your focus, your attitude, your mindset, and for us that's what we have to -- we have to treat this game no differently than any other game.

Our guys have been working really hard since the summer. So things can't change now just that we are in the NCAA Tournament. This is going to be, obviously, on a much bigger stage, but we've got to focus on what's gotten us here.

Q. Wondering, obviously with y'all making your first-ever trip here, how do you, one, prevent the guys from feeling that they have accomplished everything they needed to accomplish, and how do you not prevent them from getting lost in the moment of the NCAA Tournament?

COACH ALDRICH: It's a great point. There is an important balance for us to strike, which is, on the one hand, this is a significant moment, not only for these guys but for our university and our community back in Virginia.

So we need to enjoy the moment. We can't, you know, let it slip by. But at the same time the moment can't be too big. We've been working really hard for, as I just mentioned, a long time. I think when one does that, you build confidence through the number of reps, through the growth and the development that the team has experienced with one another.

Again, I point back to what is really a philosophical approach from our program, which is -- it may be cliche, but "trust the process," we just say it in a different way, "pour into the root," and that's what we have to do.

If our focus is there and if our focus is on, you know, executing, the highest form of competition is execution. That's physical, that's mental, that's playing with relentless effort. If we can get our mind there and away from the stage, then, in all honesty, win or lose, we will have done what we can do, and we can be extremely proud of that.

Q. Coach, your guys talked a lot about being overlooked when they were getting recruited and things like that. They came here to play Division I ball, and now they're here. As they have gone through their journey, what have you seen from them growth-wise, and what initially attracted you to players like that?

COACH ALDRICH: Yeah, that's probably been one of the special things for me, to watch these guys grow.

They're terrific basketball players, and they're very talented guys. That's kind of the entry point to recruiting. Otherwise you end up with guys like me. That's no good. We wouldn't be here.

They're talented, but they're also really high-character individuals. The foundation of that is, as we got to know them, we understood that a huge part of our program is development, certainly on the court, but they also have to have an attitude where they really want to grow as people. That's a critical element for us as we recruit, is to try to figure out do these guys want to grow?

You look at DeShaun Wade. DeShaun came in here -- I'm glad he's not in here, but he was moody, moody when he got to Longwood. I still remember at the beginning of his first summer with us, he was politely excused from practice because of that moodiness. He has just dramatically transformed as a young man to understanding our culture, then embracing it, and now he sets the standard.

DeShaun is a natural leader. For him, a little bit of it is for him to kind of grow into what he's being called to do, which is to be a leader. And to see him really do that this year is really fun.

I can go down the list. Justin Hill, we recruited him out of COVID, and a quiet kid from Texas, a long way from home. Now he is -- this year he's really started to blossom and become a leader. We're just starting to see the best of Justin. The best is ahead of him.

We really do believe this, that as your character develops and grows, your on-court performance will grow as well.

Q. Griff, you've been at this for four years or so. Rick Barnes has been at it for 35 and change. I'm curious what your impression of him is and his accomplishments. I don't know how well you know him, if at all, and how much of a challenge is it to go up against a guy like that as a coach?

COACH ALDRICH: Great question. I grew up in Virginia Beach, in ACC country, so I knew him -- I didn't know him, I watched him on TV when he was at Clemson. Then spent a lot of time in Houston, so he was obviously at Texas for a long time and had great success there. Then Tennessee, obviously he's done an incredible job.

The thing that impresses me, I've gotten to hear his personal testimony about his transformation. And I don't know him at all, but I would say from an outside observer, he seems like a different coach. He seems free, he seems loose since he's gone to Tennessee, and I don't know if that's tied to his testimony or not.

Obviously a very experienced coach. At halftime I may see if he has any pointers for us. We're going to focus on, again, what we do. Their team is very well coached. They've been fun to watch as we prepare for them. If we can switch it to me versus him, I will try to negotiate a contract against him or something or work on an indemnity clause, see who can do a better job, and maybe we can figure out who wins that one.

Q. Following up on Tennessee, as you've spent time looking at them, what jumps out at you?

COACH ALDRICH: They play exceptionally hard, and they're terrific defensively, obviously. I think, you know, extremely quick hands. They're obviously a big team compared to what we're used to playing against.

So for us, we're going to end up having to handle them. I think probably two of the biggest keys are for us not to turn the ball over and then to rebound the basketball.

There's kind of two phases for us defensively. Number one is we've got to stop them, their actions and their motion, but then there is a second element where the possession really begins once the shot goes up. There's really two phases to our defense tomorrow.

Then on the offensive end, they're really fun to watch. A little bit they remind me of Iowa. We got to play Iowa, that was fun, in the opening game.

But they're constantly moving. So often the game, many offenses have an action, and then there is more one-on-one. They're constantly moving, which is really hard to defend because you're going off screens, you defend one thing and then they throw you right into something else.

So that will require a lot of connectivity on our end defensively, and we're excited for the challenge.

Q. Coach, y'all are one of the best three-point shooting teams in the country. Tennessee is really good at defending that. How do you not stray away from that and to not make the guys feel like they have to try and pull one from deep for an upset?

COACH ALDRICH: Shooting threes, we spend a lot of time shooting, but shooting threes is not something that we are constantly talking about. Our offense is really geared toward putting our players in positions where they can go make plays, whether that's a three, whether it's a drive, whether it's playing through the post, whether it's through transition.

I honestly think our three-point shooting percentage is really more of a product of the right players taking the right shots.

For us, what I think that "more" means is that we're going to have to be disciplined not to get sped up offensively and not try to go make plays but allow the offense to create opportunities for us.

And to me that's been the secret for us. Our guys have really been willing to play deep into a shot clock and continue to execute on our offensive principles. And then when you are constantly making a defense have to make plays, at some point, you know, they're going to break down, you would expect. If they don't, then they win that possession.

So our -- again, philosophically for us, one of our big mantras is we want the other team to have to make a play, not us to have to make a play. If we execute and continue to hit singles, we hope that somebody will make a mistake at some point, and then hopefully we can capitalize.

Q. I read where you have a law degree and had a lucrative law practice and gave that up to be a coach. I'm wondering why and what your family thought of that career change?

COACH ALDRICH: Much has been made about that. I don't mean to be rude, I'm happy to answer this one question quickly, I just -- this is about these guys and their time.

For me, it was a spiritual calling. I was involved with a Christian ministry in Houston's Third Ward, and we were very involved with that program. And the more and more time we spent, it felt like this was something that not just me but my wife and my kids were being called to.

We really thought it would be more AAU. I never thought I would be coaching college, never thought I would be a head coach. That was never the plan. Then I think divine intervention, Ryan Odom is my best friend from college, and he got hired at UMBC. He and I had been talking about it, and he said, Hey, why don't you come help me build the program at UMBC? My wife was the one who said, Don't you love college? And I was like, Yeah, but, you know, that ship sailed.

So we jumped on the opportunity to go join Ryan. Had no idea where it would go. My sense had been that I would be with Ryan for 20 years. We had a blast together. It was really bittersweet when I left UMBC to come to Longwood, but this has been certainly beyond what I could have asked for or imagined.

Q. With Josiah-Jordan James in particular, what do you think of him as a player on both ends of the floor?

COACH ALDRICH: I think he's a special player. My sense is he's one of those guys -- you look at their two guards, Vescovi, and they seem to really be the engines for the team, but Josiah James is the guy who can knock down shots and make things happen.

Then on the defensive end, they've got so many defensive weapons as well, and he's certainly one of them. So, again, our focal point really is more team oriented than individual oriented. So we will approach Tennessee that way.

THE MODERATOR: Coach, thanks for the time. Best of luck tomorrow.