NATIONAL INVITATION TOURNAMENT: WASHINGTON STATE VS TEXAS A&M

March 29, 2022

Buzz Williams

Manny Obaseki

Quenton Jackson

Madison Square Garden

Texas A&M Aggies

Semi Finals Postgame Press Conference

Texas A&M 72, Washington State 56

BUZZ WILLIAMS: In summer of 1991, I was 18, and I worked 12 basketball camps that summer after my freshman year of college. First basketball camp that I worked was at SMU. And the first camp coach that I met in my first-ever camp coaching experience, his name was Kyle Smith.

And the job he's done in his career is remarkable. Has had only hard jobs, and has been ultra successful everywhere he's been. And he's created a niche from the Ivy League all the way to the westernmost university. I just have the utmost respect for him and his staff.

Really enjoyed studying them, how good they are, how well-coached they are, and I thought our guys did a really good job executing the plan that the staff put together, and we're thankful to be able to play one more game.

Q. Either player, I'll start with Quenton, how were y'all able to come back and have such a strong offensive showing in the second half and was so dominant after having some troubleshooting in the first half?

QUENTON JACKSON: What do you mean by "come back"?

Q. At one point y'all were shooting 73 percent late into the second half, and y'all were dominant. I guess the difference, maybe not "come back" is the right word, but what was the difference, do you think, offensively in the second half that y'all were able to score and shoot such a high percentage as opposed to the first half?

QUENTON JACKSON: I would just say the ball was falling. We were playing the right way. We were playing for each other. We were able to run a bit in transition and get out.

But most of all we played for each other and we played with energy, and the shots happened to fall. Every shot we shoot we expect to make. In the first half, if they wasn't falling, I don't know why. That's just how the game goes sometimes.

Q. I know, kind of piggybacking off that, the lane seemed to open with about seven minutes in the first half, you were able to drive and get a lot of buckets, and I think 69 percent of your buckets were on drives. What was the switch that opened up the lane for y'all?

QUENTON JACKSON: I really couldn't tell you. Throughout the game we tried to stay aggressive. Everybody stayed aggressive. We didn't want to be passive. They went to a zone at one point. We didn't want to be passive in the zone. We wanted to stay aggressive in the zone.

We were able to just attack while they were flat-footed. We had a lot of dunk downs. Henry ate this game off dunk downs.

As guards, we tried to be aggressive, get downhill and make plays for each other.

Q. When you have a game where you start out not shooting so well, how much did it help, and were you surprised at just you guys were able to get into the paint just at will?

MANNY OBASEKI: That's a testament to the trust that the staff and players have in me. When you're going through a slump, you don't put your head down. You keep it up and you keep going. That's what I told myself, because I already knew what Q was going to tell me right when we got into the locker room, is just keep going, keep being aggressive. Coach Buzz tells me the same thing, Coach Lyle tells me the same thing, Coach Dev tells me the same thing. Everybody does.

So I think me just keeping my head up, being even keel and try to make the right play, I think that's what helped me get into the groove.

Q. Manny has the ability to elevate and hold it in the air and hold it for a second. Talk about his growth, being like a big brother to him this year and what you've seen him do.

QUENTON JACKSON: Really make me happy talking about this. Get ready.

Manny is an incredible person, not even just a basketball player, but on a personal level, Manny is probably the sweetest kid, the best kid I've ever known. He means no harm to anybody. His growth as a basketball player has come a long way. When he first got here, he wasn't as confident in his game; but when I seen him working out, I knew he had the ability to be something great.

I just kind of took it as me putting confidence in him, so I would tell him all the time, like you want to work out, let me know. We used to be in the gym four o'clock, I used to tell him, come to the gym with me, and boom, he used to come to the gym.

Once I seen that he was willing to put in the same effort that I was, then I knew he was going to be all right. He just needed confidence. I just keep trying to instill confidence in him. And even when he gets do you know on himself, I tell him that's how the game goes. You've got to keep going.

Manny is an exceptional kid. I love him.

Q. Looking at the position y'all are in now, if you could tell yourself one thing during y'all's losing slump, what would it be?

MANNY OBASEKI: Just keep going. Just keep going. That's one of the biggest things that's helped me through this year as well is through the slumps, the ups and downs, once you quit, you quit. You let the devil win.

And that's something that I hold really dear to myself, and I know Q does the same. I think that's what's helped us get to this point is nobody gave up on each other, nobody gave up on the staff. We all love each other, and we all want to win for each other. We want this group to win as long as we can, and that's what we've done. I think that's the answer to your question.

Q. Job not done?

QUENTON JACKSON: Job not done.

Q. Just the confidence you guys are playing with right now.

QUENTON JACKSON: Yeah, I don't know, we're locked in. We're in a great groove right now as a team. The coaching staff has done a great job with the scouting reports and all of that, working overtime.

We are overly prepared for whatever is to come next as players. We just have to go out there and play with confidence and stick to the script, and we'll be all right.

Q. Just thoughts on getting to play in this kind of venue and what that was like, not only warm-ups and shoot-arounds, but coming in here and getting to do what you did in this kind of place.

QUENTON JACKSON: As a basketball player, it was a cool little vibe, I can't even lie. It was kind of cold in here, it was really cold, so it was hard trying to get going. But just the history behind this arena, monumental. It was exciting. As a senior, have two of my last games be at Madison Square Garden, it's huge. It's huge. I can't ask for anything better.

Q. You had such a big discrepancy in points in the paint. What allowed you to be successful and also lock down Washington State on the defensive end?

BUZZ WILLIAMS: 12 that shot 100 more balls than No. 4 on our team from three. And 2 had shot a hundred more balls from three than Q on our team. I think from studying them, one of the things that I don't think they got enough attention for, they were Top-30 in threes in the halfcourt nationally, Top-30 in threes in the full court nationally. And then Top-30 in offensive rebounding percentage. I think their team knows who is going to shoot and who is going to rebound.

So our concern was, can we only give them one shot. Their success in the NIT, specifically, they have been dominant on the glass, on the offensive rebounds. So we wanted to shoot more balls. And then for us, we always want to get to the bonus first. We fouled a lot in the first half. We had multiple guys -- I think every starter had one foul prior to the second media time-out.

We are not comfortable playing like that. I'm for sure not comfortable coaching like that. We did do a really good job putting pressure on the rim. We got to the paint 82 percent of the time. And statistically speaking, within how we play, when teams are in rotation, our guys do a really good job of playing for one another. 15 assists on 32 baskets, that's a decent percentage.

But us getting to the paint and keeping them in rotation, now that gives us a chance to get an offensive rebound, and we are okay at doing that.

Then on the flipside defensively, how can we not get in rotation by guarding 12 and 2 so that we have a chance to get a defensive rebound. Once we are in rotation, we are too small and we are outnumbered on the weak side, and I thought we did a pretty good job with that as well.

Q. The key, for lack of a better word, the defensive success y'all had against their three-point shooters. And I know y'all played well, especially of late, defensively. Did you even outdo yourself by keeping Flowers from having a three-pointer?

BUZZ WILLIAMS: Yeah, so our staff, what we tried to do, I know you've watched us play every game, except when you took a vacation to Vegas during conference play, within our Seattle-three concept, our guys have become very good at executing it as the ball moves.

And our staff has done an incredible job at trying to decipher, whether it's Oregon, whether it's Wake, whether it's Washington State, specific to how they are at their best, what adaptations are we going to make to Seattle three to try to control their best players; is it 12? Is it 2 tonight? Was it 31 and 0 against Wake Forest?

Then this late in the year for those guys to handle those changes conceptually is good, but for them to execute those changes is I think why we are still playing.

And similar to what you saw against Wake, even against Oregon, tonight those changes specific to 12 and 2, it's not just the guys that are on the ball. It's the guys that are behind the ball and those are the guys that are making the difference.

We are anticipating it. We are in unison, we are aggressive while being disciplined. And for the most part, we played without fouling. We didn't at the start of the game, but I think that has been a big portion of why we are still able to keep playing.

Q. Kind of the same question I asked them. Things seemed to open up. Was it simply the zone that allowed you to be more aggressive to the paint, or what caused that opening up to where it was drive after drive?

BUZZ WILLIAMS: Yeah, I think it was a little bit of what you and I talked about when you came to the facility the last time. It becomes matchup specific. They had 35 guarding Mo. They had 12 guarding Boots. And so within how we are playing offensively, we are paying attention to how you're guarding us and who you are guarding us with, because within what we are doing, all of it is interchangeable.

Henry is probably not completely interchangeable. He can do two things. Aaron, Ethan, J.B., they are only going to do one, but the rest of those guys on our team, we can kind of manipulate it and be malleable in how we want to adjust.

I thought -- it's just the reps where we are more comfortable, where, hey, we are running the play Travis, and normally when we run Travis, the original version looks like this, okay, run Travis, but we are going to change spots, and we are just changing spots based on what the matchup is.

I think when you can get a team in rotation, just by osmosis, everybody feels like they want to go downhill. We weren't playing off two feet early, but when we adjusted to play off two feet, that's where the assists came. And we were playing a rim shot -- yeah, 56 percent of our possessions we got to the rim, and we scored at a 62 percent rate. Those are green numbers.

Q. I don't know if I heard you right, but you said P. Diddy? Is that a play in y'all's playbook, and why is that the name for it?

BUZZ WILLIAMS: Without giving away all of our secrets, every play has a unique context of how it came about, and there's always a code in the word. I've never been the coach that wants to say what the play is that describes the action. You know, like I spent a lot of time studying football, and I don't know anything about football, but those football plays have a lot of words, and all of those words are triggers.

And so I don't ever want to do that as a basketball coach because the coach can hear me and the players can hear me. We have adapted a language of there's code word within the play call. So I'm too old probably to call a play P. Diddy, but our players think it's cute and they remember it.

But there's a code within P. Diddy, and they know what it means. And so one of the officials, he asked me the same question you did. I felt like I was at a press conference. I said you worry about what's happening out there, not what we call our plays.

Q. Henry was huge coming out of the second half. Next thing you know, Hass hits a big three and gets a foul. Talk about how they feed off each other.

BUZZ WILLIAMS: Yeah, I think that's why we are still playing. I think there's a camaraderie that our guys have off the floor that's as genuine as I've seen in my 28 years in college coaching.

But the thing we've tried to emphasize over the last couple of months is we need that camaraderie off the floor to be evident to everyone that doesn't know who you are on the floor.

And I think if you watch us play for the first time in person or maybe if even you're watching on TV, I think you can sense it. I think you can feel it. I think you can see it. I think you can hear it.

There's just great symmetry between those guys, and I think it's because of the character of who they are and how they were raised. There's not any drama going on in our program. There's not any selfishness. There's not any, well, let's have a Kumbaya meeting, Buzz, go talk to this guy. We don't do that. And I'm not saying we should, I'm not saying we shouldn't, I'm not saying I can coach, none of it am I saying like that.

But we all are transparent in how we talk to one another and in how we treat one another. And when the words are not right, when the body language is not right, when there's not humility and genuineness in how we treat one another, even when it's me, we stop it immediately.

And to me, that's an intangible. It doesn't have a number assigned to it. But that is as big a reason why we are still playing and we have won 13 out of our last 15 games as any.