NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST FOUR

March 15, 2023

Johnny Jones

John Walker

Joirdon Karl Nicholas

UD Arena

Texas Southern Tigers

Media Conference

Fairleigh Dickinson 84, Texas Southern 61.

JOHNNY JONES: First of all, I want to say congratulations to Fairleigh Dickinson. Came out, did an outstanding job of getting off to a great start, and knocking down shots, making plays. I thought we did a good job of continuing to battle in the second half, made a bit of a run, and they did a great job of settling in and making the necessary plays.

But I thought our guys fought there in the second half and got after it, at least gave us a chance. I think we may have wound up cutting it to 10. Unfortunately we just could not get over the hump in doing that tonight.

But excited with what our kids were able to give to be here in the tournament. Especially after a difficult, I guess, season through injuries and illnesses, for the guys to stay together and stick together to be sitting here tonight, I think just kind of speaks volumes to their focus and their toughness and their mindset.

But unfortunately just didn't have enough to overcome those guys and their three-point shooting tonight.

Q. Karl and John, what it means to have a coach like Johnny Jones being around, being a part of your career, and sometimes it's bigger than just basketball on the court. What does the relationship mean with Coach Johnny Jones?

JOHN WALKER III: Yeah, absolutely. I think you can see how important that relationship is, just me coming from Texas A&M and just kind of being uncomfortable and being so shocked at the Division I level. And me coming over here to Texas Southern, he kind of took the pressure off everything, saying hey, you're good enough. He played the game, so he kind of knows what players worry about sometimes. He'll know something is going on with you without even saying anything sometimes.

I think imperative especially for a lot of players coming up now who maybe don't have success at the PWI level, but to come back the HBCU level with a Black coach, it did wonders for my career.

JOIRDON KARL NICHOLAS: I just want to say thank you to him because I came from SFA, and I didn't know where my career was going, and he gave me more than enough chances, and he really helped me revive my career. I really do thank you, Coach, like for real.

I'll fight for this man. I'll do anything. It's that serious.

I think it's important to have a coach like Coach Johnny Jones because we've been here for three, four years, and I'd do it all again. I can't even explain it. He talks to us. He's been where we've been, so it's easy to relate to him. He's a fun guy. He's a great coach, but I like to say he's a better man. He taught me a lot of lessons that I'm still learning to this day. But I get it, Coach. You taught me, and I'll be forever grateful to you for that. That's how I feel about it.

Q. What are some of those lessons that you have learned, if you can share some of those with us, about how he was able to mentor you and guide you with your time at Texas Southern.

JOIRDON KARL NICHOLAS: Just first, lessons off the court, just being a better man. Little stuff like being on time or being early, five minutes early is really being on time. He's getting you ready for a job and just holding us accountable. He holds everybody accountable, and us as seniors, he really held us accountable this year.

Learning stuff like that and just -- it's a million and one things I can say, but he's taught us patience. He's taught us how to get through adversity. He's taught us a million things.

I've been with this man for three years, so I could just go down the line of everything he taught me. But I'm a better man because of Coach Jones, better leader, better man, better basketball player, and that's all because of this man, Coach Jones to my left. That's probably some of the most important lessons he's taught me.

JOHN WALKER III: I can get real specific because I talk to my dad about it all the time. He taught me how to be poised in a game, because if you have any talent they're going to come at you verbally. Anything to get you out of your focus. I reacted every time the first time. Any time I get a tech, they're going to try to keep doing it if you keep reacting. I'm like man, Coach. That was just a constant and now it's to the point where I don't think I got a tech this year at all. Coach already told me he was coming like that, so he's like, no, I can't do it, I can't do it.

That's one thing I really -- that was something I was really bad at. But my pops especially said, you be calling (indiscernible). I be like, yeah, coach talking about 17 for them techs. He can keep them. No techs, no more, so that's for sure something like dead on specific that I could point out just off the top of my head that this man helped with that will be able to help me for the rest of my career.

Q. Were you guys -- you guys are a talented bunch. You guys have won quite a bit. Are you surprised, though, that you couldn't make a second-half comeback against these guys?

JOHN WALKER III: I mean, I'm always surprised when we lose because I think we're going to win every game, but sometimes, like I say, it just don't go like that. I've won enough and I've lost enough to understand it ain't going to go your way every time, and this was just one of them nights where it didn't go our way.

JOIRDON KARL NICHOLAS: I'm going to say I'm always surprised just because of the faith I have in my guys and my team and everybody around me. We was fighting an uphill battle, so it's kind of hard to come back when they're hitting threes like that. They shot the ball really good today from the three-point line. That's all I'm going to really say about it.

But yes, I was surprised because every time we get between those lines, I think Texas Southern is going to win, so for sure.

Q. I know it wasn't the way you guys wanted to end the season, but can you just give a brief recap of your seniors there that just left? They sung your praises, but can you just talk about them.

JOHNNY JONES: Yes, as a coach I can just say I'm very blessed to come into a situation as a coach early on, in my fifth season, to be able to get a group of guys like that, and that's including who wasn't up here on the podium, Jordan Gilliam, along with Karl Nicholas and John Walker.

To have a group of guys like that that bought in, one, to the things that we were doing as a basketball team and a program, guys that obviously were extremely skilled when you've got a guy like Walker coming from Texas A&M. But at the end of the day, the thing that was most important to those guys was winning, and I was very blessed that we kind of got the four pillars for those guys, and I think they did a great job of buying in, of trying to get better and putting their best foot forward academically. They've graduated already, both working on a -- all three actually working on their Master's Degree.

I think spiritually those guys have really grown in our program. I think socially they've done a tremendous job, and athletically I think they've continued to improve, and they've done an excellent job within our community. As a coach, I absolutely love them because they are family-oriented guys.

It's hard coaching, it's hard having guys around for a long period of time like that. But these guys did a great job of taking a group of freshmen along with them this year because we had a big turnover, and helping those guys through some tough situations throughout the year. And we wouldn't be sitting here today had it not been for the impact that those seniors made on our program. To continue getting those young guys to continue to fight with them, they put us in position to win our conference tournament to get here tonight.

Q. Coach, it started off with the Knights getting off to a quick start. They seemed to be able to get into a flow, and no matter how many runs your team tried to make, you just couldn't seem to get going. Also on the three-point shooting, you saw that there were airballs, there were badly taken shots, but it looked like your guys just couldn't get set for the three-point shot. Talk about that, Coach.

JOHNNY JONES: Well, one, the place we live and the way that we've played this year, we don't shoot a lot of threes because we do utilize our size inside, and that's where we generally play from. We're probably about a 28, 29 percent three-point shooting team on the year, but we utilize our post guys, which we generally do. And that culminated tonight for us with 46 points in the paint compared to 18 for our opponent. They did shoot them. They shot 27, knocked down 11. I thought there was a big huge difference in the game for them, and they hit a high percentage, as well.

Unfortunately we only connected on one of 17 tonight. Generally we get to the free-throw line. We only got there nine times after getting 46 points there in the paint. That's where we play at. They were able to steal after shooting 27 threes, get to the free-throw line 31 times, and that's a big difference in the ball game, especially their consistency in knocking down the threes.

But we had some looks, clean looks. Unfortunately they didn't go down for us tonight.

Q. Yes, it's over, you've got to go back to the drawing board. Good things that your guys said about you. It's been a pleasure watching them these four years, and you've got to get back to it.

JOHNNY JONES: Well, absolutely. Unfortunately we're losing a great group of guys, but at the same time it's the nature of the business. We've got to go out, make sure we can bring some guys in with these great core guys we have, returning to put ourselves in the best possible situation to compete at the highest level again next year. It's certainly something we look forward to.

Q. What impressed you the most about FDU, and what made them so tough to defend?

JOHNNY JONES: Well, one, they did an excellent job of knocking down threes. They're really good in terms of their motion offense that they run, and they run it at such a great pace. But if you make a mistake in terms of your ability to switch, they can get to the basket. They can play in the mid range game, but also they're really, really good when they get going from behind the three-point line, and they did tonight.

Unfortunately for us, I thought they got a big lead there in the beginning. I thought we had to raise our level, and you can't raise your level of intensity to match theirs. You've got to try to exceed it. We were able to do that for a period of time. I thought we came back and cut it down there a little bit in the second half, cut it to 10. Unfortunately they got away and started making a couple more threes and then got to the free-throw line on numerous occasions, and they just was able to hold us at bay at that time.

Q. Were you surprised that even though they were the shortest team in the whole Division I that they were able to out-rebound you guys for this game?

JOHNNY JONES: Yep, they did a great job on the glass, and that's what they're noted for. They did get five offensive rebounds, and generally they're a really good offensive-rebounding team. But they shot a good percentage, 50 from the field, which limited the opportunities there for them. We were able to get 10 offensive rebounds tonight to their five, but obviously we shot a little bit lower percentage.

But that's part of the game, and sometimes a long shot, long rebounds, and if you're aggressive with trying to get to the rim, those opportunities present itself, and that's something that they're noted for.

Q. Three-time SWAC conference championships, three NCAA tournaments, coaching at Texas Southern University, HBCU basketball, tell us how special that is. You've done an outstanding job at Texas Southern University; talk about what that means to you and representing HBCUs at the highest level.

JOHNNY JONES: I've been very blessed. Texas Southern University is a tremendous program, sits in a great city, and I couldn't be more happy and excited about the administration that I work for. From our president to our athletic director, to our board, you name it, they've done everything they could to support our program the right way, and giving us a great deal of support.

At the end of the day, we're fortunate to win games and play a certain way. We've been fortunate enough to have kids in the program that were able to buy in, and my hats off to the guys because they're the ones who win basketball games. They're the ones who really have to buy in and really put the work in every day, and I've been blessed to have a good staff throughout.

Three years in a row -- winning is extremely hard. Winning championships is extremely tough to do, and I'm very blessed to have been in position to win three straight championships and to really get to the NCAA Tournament three straight years. Those things don't happen -- we're not sitting in a league where you get two, three people in, and you finish on top. You really have to do it the old-fashioned way and that's winning the championship, and that's the way those things happen.

And we've been fortunate that our kids have had the opportunity to share this experience for three straight years.