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

March 17, 2023

Jeff Capel

Nelly Cummings

Greg Elliott

Guillermo Diaz Graham

Jorge Diaz Graham

Greensboro Coliseum

Pitt Panthers

Media Conference

Pittsburgh-59, Iowa State-41

JEFF CAPEL: First and foremost, unbelievably proud of my team. What an unbelievable defensive performance.

I said out there and I said to these guys in the locker room, we were a really good defensive team for the majority of the year except for the last month of the season, and we've really dialed back in these past two games and played at an elite level. Really, really proud of them.

We got off to an unbelievable start. We withstood a run from them. We came back from halftime and got organized, got our offense organized again, and we did a really good job of attacking them, but the main thing the whole time was our defense.

It allowed us to keep a lead, to extend a lead, and it's the reason why we won the basketball game. It's really cool that everyone contributed. Everyone stepped up and made some huge plays. One of the biggest plays and one of the coolest plays was to watch these two guys make the pass to each other and see how excited they were afterwards, and in the middle of the play we still had to play defense.

For Jorge to come in and play as well as he did down the stretch for us, it was really big. Nelly and Greg stepping up, making big free-throws, making big plays. J.B., Nike getting the four-point play. Just really, really proud of our team.

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. This is for Nelly or any of the student-athletes that would like to answer this. You guys were one win from sharing the ACC regular season championship, and they sent you to Dayton. I know the disrespect card gets played a lot this time of year, but do you kind of feel like you have something to prove and maybe were a little bit disrespected?

NELLY CUMMINGS: We've had something to prove since the preseason ranked us 14th our conference. We've had a chip on our shoulder the first time we seen that. Dayton was just another example of us having to put a chip on our shoulder again. We're definitely looking forward to proving more.

Q. Both to Guillermo and Jorge. A few nights ago you were hugging each other after the game. This time you guys have an assist and there is a dunk, and you guys are celebrating together. Can you explain what you both are feeling in these moments as you guys are making this rise in the tournament?

THE MODERATOR: Guillermo.

GUILLERMO DIAZ GRAHAM: It was a blast of energy. That ball coming from my brother especially. I know it was going to be big time. Just grateful for the opportunity to be here with him, and it was amazing. The feeling is amazing.

THE MODERATOR: Jorge.

JORGE DIAZ GRAHAM: I said it before I'm going to start to play point guard. No, and that dunk was -- I don't know. It was awesome. Just seeing my brother doing that. And the funny thing is, like, I think it was yesterday in practice he dunk on me and Nate (laughing) and he was talking trash. So I told him, okay, you want to talk now, but just do it in a game. So he did, and now I have to shut up and say thank you for making my assist.

Q. Another question for Guillermo and Jorge: I remember a press conference earlier this year where you guys were talking about how it's one thing to score, you make one person happy, but when you do an assist, you make two. You guys have obviously played together a long time. Is there any play that exemplifies that greater than what you did today?

THE MODERATOR: Jorge.

JORGE DIAZ GRAHAM: I mean, no. Hell no. That three was tough. No, this was, like -- and also, March Madness making that play, yes, I don't think we've done nothing better than that.

GUILLERMO DIAZ GRAHAM: Definitely. This was the biggest time ever, so yeah.

Q. For Guillermo and Jorge and also for Jeff. Is that a play that you guys have drawn up just growing up in your backyard that you worked on a lot? And Jeff, what's it like being able to have the Diaz Graham twins as freshmen being able to step up in this large role?

JORGE DIAZ GRAHAM: I don't think we've trained -- sometimes we, like, back in Spain we used to do ball screens, but I don't think we've practiced that much. I guess, I don't know. It was a solid play. We didn't practice it. It just happened.

GUILLERMO DIAZ GRAHAM: The only thing we played in the backyard was one-on-one. Nothing together. Just like one-on-one against each other.

JEFF CAPEL: It's been great. Like I said the other night, these two guys, they love basketball. They love to compete. They love the work. They're not afraid of it. They're incredible teammates, and their spirit, their energy, since I've known them, they've always been in a good mood and it's infectious. It's really infected our team.

One other thing I would say, you know, the minutes that Frederiko gave us were huge, and to be able to get him back and, number one, for him to experience this, to experience March Madness and then to come in and play well, to score in the first half, to block a shot late in the game and just the minutes that he gave us in and the energy he played with was awesome.

Q. I've got a question in for the two seniors here, Greg and Nelly. Do you feel like whatever nerves that you guys had coming into the tournament were alleviated when you were having to play in the first four and kind of playing in a tight, contested game like that and then being able to come here in Greensboro and just let it all out the way you guys did? Did that play a factor at all for you guys?

THE MODERATOR: Greg.

GREG ELLIOTT: Honestly, we've been doing this night in and night out in the ACC. We were prepared for any type of game. We've been playing every type of game in the ACC and the nonconference we had. We were prepared for any type of game. I would say playing in Dayton gave us a little head start. I don't know how long it had been since Iowa State had played, but we were just coming off a game, and I feel like that gave us a little jolt at the beginning.

NELLY CUMMINGS: I'll second that.

Q. Greg and Nelly, especially you guys, you guys have both talked about leading into not just today, but these two tournament games about rebounding and, again, none of you guys all stand out. No one stands out with 20 rebounds, but all of you kind of have four, five, eight in that range. What does that say about you guys actualizing and realizing the things that you guys have talked about as far as gang rebounding and working as a group?

NELLY CUMMINGS: I think it shows when you look at the stat sheet. My man Greg went out and got eight today. Besides that we're all locked in on gang rebounding because we know it's what we have to do. We understand the assignment in front of us, and we're not go going to miss details, especially not this time of year.

GREG ELLIOTT: It's like a collective thing. Yeah, I did get eight, but Nelly, he be on me about coming in to make sure I can get eight. I think last game I probably got four or five, and Nelly told me that wouldn't be enough, so today I just came in with a mindset of trying to do everything I could to help my team win, and if that's rebounding, I'm going to do it. I think all our guys think like that, not just me.

Q. Coach and maybe one or two players. I mean, you held them to 23 percent shooting. What was your strategy coming in, and, you know, obviously it worked, but what was your idea holding them down?

JEFF CAPEL: Well, the main thing is that we wanted to keep the ball in front of us. We wanted to guard. We wanted to try to contain their dribble penetration as much as we possibly could. We wanted to have an awareness for Kalscheur. We felt like he was the guy that we needed to defend the three-point line against, and we did an unbelievable job.

Greg, Nike at the end Greg and Nelly were switching stuff down there. Guillermo had a heck of a contest off a down screen. I thought the attention to detail was really good there.

Then we wanted to make their bigs try to finish over top of us. Just looking at their stats, watching them play, they had struggled to score really all year. They really needed turnovers. That's how they scored. When we were up in the first half, that's how they got back in it. We started turning the ball over. We weren't organized offensively. I thought once we did a better job of that, then we were really able to contain them.

NELLY CUMMINGS: I think Coach has been on us recently about defending. We had a few games where we wasn't really as locked in as we should have been. When our Coach gets on us like that, he is going to make the effort for us to really go harder in that aspect of the game, and we knew we needed to do that to win today.

GREG ELLIOTT: Like Nelly just said, we knew the last of the season we had a chance to do something big, but we didn't because of our defense. Everybody wanted to say it, but we knew. Our defense wasn't up to par. We knew if we wanted win games in March, we had won some early, but if you want to win, you have to play defense and rebound. That's what we've been doing.

Q. You talked about how the team was more dialed in like you were before the way you ended the last couple of weeks of the season. What exactly did you guys work on? What exactly brought that on? Then from a players' standpoint, after you got home from the ACC Tournament, was there any kind of regrouping amongst yourselves that kind of helped bring that on?

JEFF CAPEL: You know, it's interesting because we're at a point in the season with where we are that we didn't -- we worked, but we didn't really do a lot of contact with our stuff. We tried to talk about what we wanted to do with the ball screen defense and to clear that up, we tried to talk about we want to guard the ball, but to really pay attention more and understand scouting and the attention to detail.

The credit goes to these guys. I mean, they -- I don't know if they met. I have no idea, but when we came back for the Selection Show and once we knew where we were going, the next day they were really, really dialed in. I mean, really dialed in. We had a great practice in Dayton where we got after it a little bit, but they've been really, really dialed in since then.

NELLY CUMMINGS: Like Coach said, we did have a players' meeting where we came in and regrouped with everybody and let everybody know obviously we didn't get the regular season journey finished how we wanted to, but we had an opportunity in March to go out here and do that. So we knew that it was going to require us to be really, really locked in and focused and paying attention to details. That's kind of what we're doing. We have an older group who has been here before, and we understand what it takes to win in March.

Q. Jeff, we sat here about eight days ago, and I asked you about the resilience of your team and what happened with Duke, and you said, "I don't know." I think this shows the resilience we were talking about. Beyond just the practices and everything, what have you seen from the identity of your team all season long that you saw live out on the court today?

JEFF CAPEL: Yeah, well I thought eight days ago Duke happened. They're really good, and it may have been the best game they played all year.

But I never wavered in my belief in them. I don't think they ever wavered in their belief in each other and themselves. The main thing is that we didn't panic. You know, we got home. We got away from each other, from the game for a couple of days. When we got back together on Sunday, I think everyone was refreshed. We had been on a really emotional, like, two weeks. You know, we beat Syracuse in a really emotional game where offensively we were great, and then we get into the next week for the first time on Monday we're ranked.

We never talked about it, but we knew. We knew if we can go at Notre Dame and we can win, we at least won a share. We didn't. I thought we were deflated. I thought we came back and played our butts off against Miami. Miami is a pretty good team, and they had a kid that made six threes against us. Again, we were hurt. We were emotionally drained because we left so much. Then we regrouped. We played a really good first half against Georgia Tech. Not so much in the second half. We were able to hold on, and then Duke happened.

So, again, we didn't panic. We didn't waver. We just talked about let's get back to being us. Like, who we are is good enough. Let's do that. Let's get back to defending, and everything else will take care of itself.

Q. Jeff, kind of following in line with that, Jamarius mentioned in the locker room a message that you had to them that the conference schedule you guys played prepared them for this moment. Could you expand on that at all?

JEFF CAPEL: Well, I just told them we play in a great conference. It really is. One of the things that I think is unique about our league is that there are so many different styles. You know, when I have watched in scouting some of these other conferences, it seems like -- I'm not saying every team is the same, but, you know, schematically the way they play is very similar. In our league you may play a team that plays all zone. You may play a team that plays some junk. You may play a team that, you know, pressures the heck out of you and switches everything. You may play a team that plays all guards, you know, and pushes it and things like that.

So I just felt like we are prepared for the different styles that we could see as we enter into March, as we enter into this tournament. The thing you have to do if you are fortunate enough to win, you have to be able to adapt pretty quickly because the next one comes pretty quickly. The next game happens quickly. I thought that's what helped us for today. It certainly helped us for Dayton because we didn't have much time to prepare, you know, for Mississippi State. I thought it really, really helped us here with our preparation.