NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - FURMAN VS VIRGINIA

March 15, 2023

Bob Richey

Mike Bothwell

Jalen Slawson

Amway Center

Furman Paladins

Media Conference

Q. Mike, a lot has been talked about your tempo versus their tempo. They obviously want to play slow in the half court. You guys like to get up-and-down. How do you keep a game going the flow you want?

MIKE BOTHWELL: I would think the best thing for us to be able to do that is when we get stops to just not walk the ball up the floor. Even when they score, get it out quick. They're very good at controlling their tempo, so it's going to be hard for us to do it once we score or when we miss.

But I think we have to be able to control what we can control, and that is getting it out quick, out the net, and just running our break when we get a stop. It's just going to be a battle of two contrasting things, but I think we just have to be able to control it when we can.

Q. Mike, I was just wondering, both Furman and Virginia are in the top 10 nationally for assist-to-turnover ratio. How have you kept the ball clean, moved it well, and how has it helped you this season.

MIKE BOTHWELL: We prioritized it a lot starting in the summer. That's something that will get put on the line for the run if we're having too many consecutive turnovers. It's a big emphasis we keep in our heads. Take the simple passes, not try to do too much, keep the ball moving from side to side.

Our play style, all of our guards and our bigs can dribble, pass and shoot, so it's not really anyone on the court that's a liability and very turnover prone, so it's kind of our makeup as players, too.

Q. Jalen, Furman's first NCAA bid since 1980. What has been you and your teammates' reaction to finally breaking through, getting a bid?

JALEN SLAWSON: It's been a dream come true for all of us. We worked really hard for this, and obviously with the way last year ended for us, it hurt. But Coach Richey took us into the locker room the next morning, and he told us that this was either going to be a stepping-stone or a stumbling block.

So we used that as motivation every day, the 6:00 a.m. workouts you don't feel like getting up for or running the extra mile or the extra workouts that you don't feel like doing. We just went back and relived those last couple minutes in our head and saw our brothers crying again, so we used it as motivation.

Then this year, once that horn went off, it felt like it all paid off. It didn't really set in until Selection Sunday that we were playing in the NCAA Tournament. It was more so just like, okay, we won the SoCon, and then it was like two different celebrations almost. Like we won the SoCon, but we didn't realize it until Selection Sunday, until our name popped up on that screen.

Q. I don't believe anybody in your conference plays the pack line or anything really similar. What have you seen from that, and what kind of challenges will that defense present?

MIKE BOTHWELL: I would say we kind of get an advantage because we don't play traditional pack line defense. But we try to keep it tight, our floor tight, and gap the ball a lot on defense our own selves. I don't think it will be a complete shock as if it was someone else to play against them because that's how we practice against each other every day.

It's definitely still a different style of play, but I think we will be prepared for it because we like to gap the ball. It's definitely still a different style of play, but I think we will be prepared for it because we like to gap the ball and we like to shrink the floor and a lot of things that Virginia do, we kind of do, as well, on defense.

Q. What are the advantages of having two super seniors, guys who have been there, done that, seen it, and did you make the decision to come back one more year together?

JALEN SLAWSON: You know, this is my roommate, my best friend, probably be my best man at my wedding. You know, last year when the year ended, we talked about it for probably a couple hours, but there really wasn't much debate. We both put our name in the draft last year, and we told each other like hey, if one of us has a chance to play in the league, then we're going to take it, but we're not going to go play college ball anywhere else.

So that, and then I think the advantages of it are we've been able to lead the young guys, but the young guys have done a really good job of leading themselves, too. I think earlier on in the year, Mike and I had to focus more on making sure our attitude, our demeanor, our spirit was right, because four of our top nine are underclassmen. But as the season has gone on, they've gotten more reps, they've gotten more game experience, they've grown into their own, and they're leading us now in many ways.

We talk about JP Pegues a lot. Ben VanderWal to be a freshman, what he's done is incredible. So the whole team has really relinquished a lot of the quote-unquote leadership roll off Mike and I and made it a lot easier for us to focus on game plan specifics.

It's like a coach saying that it's too late in the year for me to be coaching you guys to play hard. Right now it should all be schematics.

Q. (No microphone).

JALEN SLAWSON: We didn't even entertain anybody.

Q. Jalen, when you think about it, you go out and explore NBA options, Josiah does the same, obviously both guys from the low country, and you both end up in the same spot in the NCAA Tournament. Have you thought about the irony? Have you chatted with him at all about both being in Orlando this year?

JALEN SLAWSON: Well, I talk to Josiah regularly, whether we're playing in the same spot or not. We probably talk two or three times a week.

But yeah, I mean, it's cool. It's cool. A lot of low country being represented down here between me, Josiah and the College of Charleston. Yeah, I talked to him last night, wished him good luck, and I told him hopefully we'll see him at some point down the line.

Q. Jalen, talk about what this means to your father who obviously was a big star at the Citadel.

JALEN SLAWSON: It means a lot to him. When I first committed to Furman, he had some doubts about it because of the Citadel and Furman's rivalry, but he fell in love with Coach Richey, fell in love with the mission that Coach Richey was trying to accomplish, as did I and Mike, and the family atmosphere that we have at Furman and the culture that Coach Richey has cultivated.

It means a lot to him. He never got to experience one of these. One of the first things I did after a tournament ended was handed him a trophy and told him that he never got to hold one of those, kind of joking because I like to rag on the Citadel. But I'm sure he's happy. I know he's happy for me, but he's my father, so...

Q. How much of this weekend is reward, and how much of it is an opportunity to see how far you can actually take this? Can you get to next week? Can you get to the Final Four?

MIKE BOTHWELL: I believe this team ended the reward process as soon as we figured out who we were playing and where we were going. It was kind of a euphoric feeling ever since Monday night up until Selection Sunday. But this team is a bunch of battlers, and once we realized who we were playing we got into game prep mode. I know Sunday night after the selection show instead of going out and celebrating and hanging out, we were watching film. I'm not going to give a prediction how far we're going to go. I just know we're going to go out and compete, and we're going to be ready. That's all I can say about that.

But the reward, obviously we're going to embrace this moment. We're going to embrace this opportunity. People like me and Jalen waited five years for this so of course we're going to enjoy every moment, but we're really into war mode, if I can say that.

Q. Jalen, what was the team's reaction watching the selection show? Your name popped up really early when you saw they were matched against a team with a national reputation like Virginia.

JALEN SLAWSON: We were all excited. These are the teams that we love to play. Like mid-major schools live for games like this, and we only get a few of them a year.

When you get to play a perennial school like Virginia, you hear a lot about Coach Bennett and you hear a lot about their defense, and Mike and I being fifth-year guys, we want to go play the best of the best. We are excited to play Virginia. Not everybody expected our name to pop up that quickly, so it was definitely a little bit of a shock, a little bit of a surprise, but we're all excited for this.

We don't have any regrets about our draw.

Q. Jalen, you guys played a couple high major teams this season in Penn State, NC State, and South Carolina. Any things you guys can take away from those games going into another matchup like that this week?

JALEN SLAWSON: Yeah, I mean, all those games are a little bit different. NC State likes to play really, really fast. But I think anytime we play a high major or somebody who on paper might have more talent or experience or whatever than us, it's a battle to see which team can get to do what they do best.

As Mike was talking about earlier, we play a pack line D, but we have a really potent offense. And so tomorrow is going to be can we get to what we do better than Virginia can get to what they do. We don't like to trick it up. We like to keep our opponents pretty faceless, pretty nameless. Tomorrow is going to be us doing what we do versus Virginia trying to do what they do.

Q. I was wondering, Virginia and Furman in the top 10 nationally for assist-to-turnover ratio. How do you and your team keep the ball clean and keep it moving on offense, and what's tough about defending an opponent that also keeps the ball clean?

BOB RICHEY: Well, I think you have, first of all, my respect for Coach Bennett. I've watched him for years and taken a lot of my personal philosophy from how he's built that program at Virginia.

The things that he values, not only on the court but being a man of faith and the leader that he is, but also the basketball coach he is, I've watched their teams a long, long time.

I think they value the ball, and that's a core component of how they play. We try to do the same thing. I think what you're going to see is you're going to see two teams that have a lot of discipline and understand what seems like such a simple concept, but the more shots we get that are clean looks, the better chance we have of winning a basketball game.

Turnovers not only keep you from getting a great look, but they also put a team in transition offense, so it's a little bit of a double-edged sword in a negative way when you do turn it over.

I think it's something both programs put a lot of emphasis on. We know defensively it's hard to turn them over. They play on two feet. They're very skilled. A lot of times -- we think of skill as shooting, but a lot of times skill is ability to pass, and they definitely recruit to that.

So we're going to have to be super disciplined in our defensive coverages and understand that they're not going to give it to you.

Q. Talking to other coaches in your league, they say you guys want to play "NASCAR fast." Covering Virginia, we know they want to play really slow. How do you dictate which tempo the game is going to be played at, and who are some of your guys who are good at imposing your tempo?

BOB RICHEY: Well, I think that's a huge key to being successful in any type of sport. You have to have identity. I think when you get into big games, what's the best way to win them? Get to your identity.

I think that's always the chess match is figuring out where do we want this tempo, how do we get the tempo where we do want it? And then obviously the other team is going to be trying to restrict you in that area.

I'm sure the way they play, they're going to slow the game down, and they're going to play very efficiently on both ends of the floor. We clearly want to play fast. For us to play as fast as we like to play, you can't be taking the ball to the net all game, so you have to be able to get stops and you have to be able to rebound it.

But our team is built like that. We have guys that we've recruited to play at a certain tempo. And you look at a player like Jalen Slawson who is quote-unquote a post player but has guard skills. He's a guy that can really, really run as fast as really any guard. And both of our bigs, Garrett and Jalen can really run the floor, and JP Pegues is one of the fastest players in our league. Then you've got Mike and Marcus running the floor.

Look, that's what we've done since the summer, and we're going to try our best to do it again, but we know they're incredible in transition defense. They don't send a lot to the offensive backboard, and they're going to put a big emphasis on getting back. That's the fun of the game, it's the chess match of the game, and they're going to be trying to slow it down and we're going to be trying to speed it up, and it's what makes the game fun.

Q. Bob, played SCISA basketball, non-D-I college, we had a million talks in an 800-seat gym. What are the emotions sitting on an NCAA podium right now?

BOB RICHEY: Well, first of all, just appreciate you coming down for this from Charleston, as a friend but also watching how good you are at your craft. To see you here today does not surprise me at all. I know Charleston is playing here, but you made the time to come to this press conference, as well.

I'm living a childhood dream just to be here at the tournament. I think a lot of the things I've been told are soak it up, enjoy it, but then you hear a lot of people saying, hey, go down there and prepare to win a game.

Look, I think you can do both. I really do. I think that there's a couple words I've kept on my desk all year, from experience and what we did last year with the heartbreak of the buzzer beater, and it's joy plus urgency.

It's a deal where I think you can live in those two worlds at the same time. I think it's challenging, but we know in this business you have to be urgent. You have to practice urgent. You have to play urgent. You have to operate daily, off-season, in season. There's a lot of urgency with it, but there's also a tendency to lose joy.

We're playing a game. We're on national TV tomorrow playing what I think is the greatest sporting event in the world. We're a part of it.

We haven't been a part of it in 43 years, so the last thing I'm going to do is go through this moment and not take it all in. But then I also have a high amount of trust in our players that when they get on that court tomorrow that they're going to be ready to play.

You know, you're right, SCISA, it's a small college, D-II player, and I've only been at Charleston Southern and Furman. But all glory to God for allowing me to be the leader of this program, and to be able to walk in this path, I've got a lot of gratitude for it.

Q. In terms of the pack line, nobody in your conference really plays it. The guys were saying that you have some similar so maybe you are familiar and practice. What kind of challenge does that present to a team that maybe hasn't seen a ton of exactly what Virginia does?

BOB RICHEY: Well, I think that, first of all, I need to get your scouting report when we're done. You sound like you've talked to a lot of guys in our league. I'm impressed. We do have a lot of pack line principles in our defense. I think some of that, though, is you practice against what you play offensively. And so I felt like I was in an October practice this week talking about flare screens and pin downs and back screens and things like that. Just a lot of the game right now is 80 percent ball screens and hand-offs.

Virginia will run some ball screens. They have a ball screen continuity to go to, and in the second half of the ACC championship, they ran a lot of ball screen action. There will be some carryover with a lot of that. It's more so discipline in the other concepts that you don't see on a daily basis, which for us, I think that's also why we're successful offensively. We've got a unique identity there.

They're going to hedge the ball screen. We actually hedge a decent amount. We've gotten away from it a little bit this year just with our personnel, but we've played against hedging all summer, all fall.

Listen, the whole thing is true. Like we're not going to be able to simulate how good they are at their defense, so you've got to give them tendencies, and you've got to give them a little bit of framework in terms of hey, here's what they're really, really good at, here are the things you probably need to try to avoid, here are the things you need to focus on.

We play conceptual, so it's a lot of if this, then that. It's not as much set base as a typical offense. You've got to give them the guardrails in terms of how to navigate this.

That will be a big job for me managing the game tomorrow.

Q. How big a difference is there between a brand name and a mid-major champion, and where is that difference found?

BOB RICHEY: Wow, that's a really good question. I think that some of it is getting out on the court tomorrow and looking and saying, hey, that's Virginia. That's national champions. That's a lot of success, a lot of been at the top of the ACC.

Having that healthy respect, which we do, but also understanding that we want to -- and this is tomorrow, this is last week, this is last month. Going back to identity of how we play and always chasing identity in the game, we like to say that we're nameless and faceless in our opponent in how we approach and that our focus is making sure that Furman plays well.

I think not getting caught in that sight line of they're up here and we're here. But at the end of the day, having the confidence and the belief that if we go find identity, that's not guaranteeing a win, that's not saying that we're going to win the game. But we also don't want to get lost in the idea that we're not allowed to win the game or we're on a different level.

Mike and Slawson were both part of winning at Villanova. They were also -- a lot of these players except two were part of winning at Louisville last year, had another SEC win this year in the South Carolina game.

Listen, this is going to be a hard game. We know that. This is going to be a very challenging game. But at the same time, this is a program built on belief, and this is a program built on conviction.

We'll have no chance if we don't go into this game with the right mental approach.

You can respect your opponent. For me, the respect that I have for Tony Bennett on and off the court, right, like I'm going to carry that. My wife is telling me yesterday, she said, remember that Final Four breakfast that we went to when you were an assistant at Charleston Southern and we sat there in awe of Tony Bennett, and we do. He's one of the best in my opinion to ever do it.

But tomorrow, I know he's going to be trying to beat me, and he's going to be trying to beat Furman. We've got to go out there, and we've got to go chin up, chest out, and we've got to go try to play Furman basketball to the best of our ability.

Q. You mentioned belief. And understanding you have a lot right in front of you tomorrow, but do you let yourself think, how far can this team go?

BOB RICHEY: 1-0. That's been the mantra all year. We came into this year with a lot of expectation, and we had to manage that expectation. Early it was kind of this idea, you could feel it with our team, man, if we lose this game, how bad is this going to be. Or we have to win them all, or man, we have to go do this, and if we're not playing well, are we going to be able to do that.

I was really trying to pull the pressure off of them, and we really just changed the focus on let's go win today.

We've done that, and I'm sure some of you guys saw on the ESPN broadcast, all these coaches have notes on the grease board, and when they showed the locker room before our game, the only thing on the board was 1-0.

At the end of the day, I had some people tell me, hey, don't look at it as a 68-team field, look at it as a four-team field, look at this, look at this. Listen, we're going to go try to win the first one. That's what we did last week in Asheville. We've won 14 of our last 15. I think our guys have done a great job of staying focused. There's enough challenge in that one game.

But have I looked for sure? I studied Loyola when they made their run. I watched that whole season the year after they did it. I still remember watching the Miami game in the first round, and it was one of their hardest games. Nobody ever talks about it. But Miami, it looked like Miami there was going to win the game, and then Loyola won it, and then they went on this magical run.

That's not saying that we're going to be able to do that, but my point in saying that is this: You can't look ahead. You can't look down. You've got to have a certain level of belief in this. But at the same time, there's just one thing in front of us. Trust me, there's plenty of challenge in that one thing in front of us.

Q. You have two super seniors on your roster. Can you just talk about the benefit of having those guys on the team and how gratifying is it to see them complete their careers in the NCAA Tournament?

BOB RICHEY: Well, it's incredible. Mike Bothwell and Jalen Slawson, two players that will leave here as all-time winners, players in school history. They will be the players that got the team to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 43 years.

I think the neat thing about them, we all write about the portal, and we all write about how this player is leaving for this place, and it hits Twitter and the media, this NIL deal. How many stories are going to be that they stayed? Is that a story anymore? Is that worth putting on the news? That all of a sudden we had a group that went through the heartbreak that was played on the commercials of the NCAA Tournament all year, and they didn't run from it?

What's the reward, that they're going to be able to live for their whole entire life because when they went through a hard situation, they decided to unite. They decided to connect. They decided to stick to the values that we started all this for.

Is that enough, that that's a storyline, or is the storyline still going to be that so and so left this mid-major player and they're in the portal today. It's not helping our game. You have two players that did it differently, and now all of a sudden they're going to have their jersey in the rafters, and they didn't agree to a dime to do it. It was the relationships, it's the culture, it was the Furman experience.

I'll tell you where they grew the most; we do have two super seniors, there's no doubt about that, but five of the nine that plays are underclassmen, and they got to develop as leaders this year. They weren't just scorers. They weren't just really good basketball players. They became leaders. They learned how to bear the burden of expectation. They learned how to bear the burden of people thinking, hey, is this story going to be written how it's supposed to be written? When they had to look at disappointment, they had to look inward, and they had to lead a group of players that were younger than them that had to grow up. And they taught JP Pegues how to operate in the Furman way, to become a sophomore that was MVP of the tournament last week.

When you look at it, it's really neat that they made it to the NCAA Tournament. That's magical. It's really neat that they're going to leave here the all-time winning players in school history. Are we noticing enough that the easiest decision in the culture of college basketball right now was for them both to leave? And I just hope that doesn't get missed in this.

You know what, we talk about it a lot that we want to inspire people in how we play. And I hope their decisions will inspire other mid-major players to think twice, to value the institution that developed you. Jalen Slawson will be the first to tell you he had more fouls, 31 fouls, than points his freshman year, 19 points. It's a work-while-you-wait culture. It's a grow-every-day culture.

People can say, hey, it's cliche. That shows you it's real. The way this is -- you're never guaranteed to go finish it out and win the tournament, but the fact that they did and how they did it, I think it's an incredible storyline that I hope is not missed.

Q. You talked about starting off with Charleston Southern a couple times. What's the biggest thing you learned at CSU and from Coach Radebaugh that you still using today coaching at Furman?

BOB RICHEY: He gave me a shot at 23 years old and trusted me every single year with more and more duty. To be able to -- in a five-year span when I was at Charleston Southern, I was able to touch every aspect of our program. He was crazy enough to let me call out of bounds plays my third year and then became even crazier to let me call the offense year four and five.

I'll tell you this, I learned how hard it was. I learned that offense is hard. It's hard to score. It made me start to shape my offensive philosophy at 27, 28, because I'm like, man, I'm watching the film, like that's not a clean look, we've got to be better.

Then you study, and I became obsessed with film and just years and year of putting this philosophy together. He trusted me in areas that coaches are slow to trust, and a lot of coaches want to control a lot of that, and he allowed me to develop.

I think when I look back on those five years, I draw off that experience all the time. Just what I was able to do.

It really encouraged me as a leader to make sure that I'm entrusting in the same way in my staff. Am I giving them opportunity to really be able to fail, to be able to mess up, but to be able to grow and to be able to learn.

I'm not in a position of leadership that I am today without the help of Barclay Radebaugh, and he's the person that gave me my first shot ever, and for that I'm ever indebted.