NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - RICHMOND VS IOWA

March 17, 2022

Chris Mooney

Jacob Gilyard

Tyler Burton

KeyBank Center

Richmond Spiders

Media Conference

Richmond 67, Iowa 63

CHRIS MOONEY: I couldn't be more proud of our guys. That was a tremendous effort. Particularly a great defensive effort against one of the best offenses in the country. Big Ten champs, that's a tremendous win for Richmond, tremendous win for these particular guys. I haven't seen the stats yet, but I know Jacob was incredible. Tyler I thought was incredible. Nick was terrific. Really for us. Everybody, everybody contributed. We fought through foul trouble, which was something I was concerned about. Just a great win for Richmond, and we're very, very proud and very excited to advance.

Q. Jacob, what was the key in keeping the pace where Richmond wanted it against a team that averages 84 points?

JACOB GILYARD: I don't think we were too scared to play at their pace. At the end of the day, we had to guard and make it tough. Obviously, it was going to be tough trying to guard Keegan, but I think we did a really good job overall as a team, not just Andre or Nate or Tyler. I think overall we did a really good job on them. And at the end of the day, we knew it would be tough for them to guard us, so I felt like we could score with them as long as we could contain the guys. I think we did a really good job defensively.

Q. For both players, your poise spoke for itself throughout this game. When did the belief enter the equation you could win this game?

JACOB GILYARD: Probably last Thursday. (Laughing) At the end of the day, we knew we're a tough team to scout, the way we run our offense and how many older guys we have. It's tough to try and guard us. We're a fairly confident group, and I think last weekend showed that, and I don't think anybody doesn't believe in each other. One through 20, our guys in the locker room believe in one another, and we go out there and show it.

Q. Jacob, you had no problem shooting today, and we can talk analytics, but how does it really feel right now to send one of the nation's best teams home, dirt nap. You gave them a dirt nap?

JACOB GILYARD: It feels good. At the end of the day, I'm excited. I'm happy for my guys more so than for myself. We deserve to be here, but we knew that's not enough. You got to go out there and make your own luck, and we did that today.

Q. Guys, excellent defensive performance today, but this is really going back five games for you now throughout the tournament and holding teams under 70 points. Over the last five games defensively, what's changed for you guys?

TYLER BURTON: I think we all personally bought in. From top to bottom, we all really just dig in on defense. We focused a lot on it in practice, and just overall that was our weakness this year, I think, and for us to just come full circle at the end of the year and really dig in these last five games, like you said, unbelievable.

JACOB GILYARD: The bench has done a really good job. We have 20 guys on the team. A couple of guys came to sit on the bench. The energy has been great. It's easy to go out there and work hard for those guys when they support us how they do, so it's been really easy for us.

Q. This is for either of you guys. Can you talk about Nathan's defense and just how much he was able to come up in the clutch today?

JACOB GILYARD: He was fantastic. Words don't really do him justice. Offensively, defensively, he kind of saved us, kind of had some here mad race towards the end of that game. He got a big-time and-one, but I think it started when he got matched up with Murray. I think he did a really good job defensively, and that got himself going. And, obviously, defensively he did a really good job today.

Q. Jacob, just looking at your journey, you've said it hasn't always been glamorous or hasn't always been pretty. There's been ups and downs. You went under-recruited. At this time of year, what it means for a player, can you speak to this moment, what it means for you to do this for Richmond and this moment just when you think about the journey to get here to now be on this stage?

JACOB GILYARD: It's incredible. At the end of the day, when I was a freshman or when I was a senior in high school, I decided to bet on myself and bet on Richmond. Turns out four years later as a senior, I did the same thing. Bet on myself and bet on Richmond, and it's paid off. It's unbelievable. I'm happy for the guys I've got to do it with for four and five years. Happy for Coach Mooney, but I feel like me personally, I was built for this. This is who Jacob Gilyard is.

Q. Coach Mooney, what unfolded, is it what you hoped would unfold that way, or did you have other plans?

CHRIS MOONEY: Well, I think certainly the result, but, yeah, I feel like it's so challenging to guard them because while they have an NBA-level player, you know, he is not -- they don't run quite as many plays as some teams. Their patterns are a little bit more reads, and he is a pretty selfless player for someone so great, which makes me more nervous because just him being able -- we would have so much attention on him.

I thought that Jacob not only played a tremendous game offensively and controlling the game, but he guarded Bohannon the whole time. One time we were mismatched in transition. He was able to get a three and another time, he got a three while Jacob was guarding him, but that was really the only one.

So it was very, very anxious about guarding such a prolific offensive team, but one thing I thought that we had multiple guys that we could put on Murray. Not that we could stop him or guard him, but we had multiple guys that we could put on him. We started with Andre. Foul trouble limited that. Tyler guarded him most of the rest of the first half, and then Andre and Nate guarded him down the stretch, and I thought, again, he is a tremendous player, but I thought we did a very good job on him.

Q. Jacob just summed up the journey, and you talked a little bit about it yesterday, that journey of getting here. When you think about this moment for you and your program, you said it means a lot to Richmond. Why?

CHRIS MOONEY: Well, Richmond has a great basketball tradition, and there are teams -- there are schools around the country that mean a lot to Richmond fans. Auburn, Indiana, Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt that are teams that we've won NCAA tournament games against. It's so hard to make this tournament, and for our guys to have done everything they did starting with coming to Richmond, next was returning to Richmond, for everything that they did to be in the hotel ballroom in Brooklyn two years ago when everything was canceled when we had a great season to just have the perseverance and the togetherness and the camaraderie to want to be at Richmond. That's what's special to me is especially in this day and age guys are great players. These guys have done it and committed to Richmond. As someone who is part of Richmond, that means that much more to me.

Q. It seems like the Big Ten, among all the Power Five, Power Six conferences, the A-10 takes a little extra pleasure in beating and proving its worth as a conference. What do you think today showed about the Atlantic 10?

CHRIS MOONEY: Well, we're a very good team. We have probably six really good teams in our conference. Unfortunately, we only have two that can go. It just illustrates how difficult it is. We don't have those opportunities late where we might get back-to-back home games against two ranked teams. I would like an A-10's team's chances in that scenario.

We have great depth and really good players and commitment and great coaching. That means a lot to us. I think that, obviously, I think the world of Iowa, of Fran. They just won the Big Ten Championship, but when you go out there, when we take the floor, I don't see anybody that can guard Jacob necessarily. I feel like Tyler could have a big game. Grant could have a big game. It's not as -- once you get past the conference or the size of the school or whatever it is, you're just playing, and then you're starting to focus on the Xs and Os. It means a great deal, but I think there are a lot of teams in our league capable of it.

Q. You talk about team and tradition, and you seem like a selfless guy yourself, but what is the Chris Mooney culture look like? You listed off the names of teams that you went through in the tournament, but what does that culture look like?

CHRIS MOONEY: I think our culture is -- I think it's built, one, on trust. I feel like we try to not bring guys in who are going to be -- have a lot of issues. I saw Fran's comments about Murray, and he said he is no maintenance and that he wasn't low maintenance. He is no maintenance. For Richmond, we feel like that's the standard is no maintenance.

We have a tremendous school with 3,000 students. It would be hard to be a jerk at Richmond during the course of your day. There would be a lot of people who would notice that. At this point, there would be a lot of people who would report that to me, but I think it's built on trust. I really trust our guys because we've tried to recruit them the best -- the very best we can get in terms of character, and then I do trust them. I trust them to make the right decisions. I trust them to pass along to the younger guys what they've learned, and this senior class especially has done that to a very high degree.

Q. Last week, last Thursday going had in the A-10 tournament, there's probably a good chance that unless you run the table out there that you may not have been in the tournament. Now coming up to today, you run the table, you win today. What's that say about these guys in that locker room, what you guys have accomplished, and you're out there and the crowd is cheering you on to try to pull this upset? What's that say about you?

CHRIS MOONEY: When these guys decided to come back, there was a lot of excitement, first and foremost, from me. But our fans and everybody was very, very excited. We had some really heart-wrenching losses. We lost at the buzzer a couple of times whether we missed a shot or the other team made a shot, and I would tell the guys at that point that as much as you don't want to hear this, that's part of the reason you came back. You didn't come back. We weren't going to go undefeated.

It wasn't going to be all perfect like their careers haven't been perfect, and I said this is part of the reason you came back is to handle that adversity, handle those losses, and to rebound, to show perseverance, to come through, and the guys certainly have done that in a great way all season, but especially this last week.

Q. I want to bring you back to a couple of late buckets by Nathan. First of all, you guys did a great job scoring inside. Did you think that that was going to be the way you would beat them up, and, secondly, how big were those baskets? Especially one of those shots was pretty spectacular.

CHRIS MOONEY: Yeah, for sure. Those were really big. Nate is one of my favorite Richmond Spiders ever. He has just been a very diligent worker and somebody who has just done so many things for us over the course of time, and just he -- I feel like he is the kind of guy who loves the work, the work that goes into it. Those baskets were big.

I did think we would be able to score inside, and I feel like we missed some -- in the first half, I thought we missed some baskets around the rim, but he had those two baskets late. One was an and-one. Really, really impressive. You know, we're very committed to throwing the ball inside. Very committed to sharing the ball. That could show up to be anybody, and today those big baskets were Nate, and I couldn't be happier for him because of how much he brings to our program and to our school.

Q. (Over Zoom) Coach, first of all, I want to say congratulations on the big win. The thing about the tournament is one game ends and you have to worry about the next one almost immediately. I wanted to ask, what do you know about the Friars and what you are looking forward to playing Providence and Coach Cooley?

CHRIS MOONEY: I know very little about them. I saw them today for the first ten minutes of the second half. They look big, strong, talented, but I don't know much about them just yet. I know Coach Cooley. I think he is probably one of the smartest people that I have ever met. He is hilarious. Just a tremendous part of college basketball. I think that he just makes -- he makes the game better by virtue of being in it. We'll get ourselves prepared, and hopefully we'll find out when we're playing Sunday -- or I'm sorry, Saturday, and make the most of our scout.