NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - FDU VS PURDUE

March 17, 2023

Tobin Anderson

Sean Moore

Cameron Tweedy

Grant Singleton

Demetre Roberts

Nationwide Arena

FDU Knights

Media Conference

Fairleigh Dickinson - 63, Purdue - 58

COACH ANDERSON: What a night. Incredible win for us. Incredible win for our program, our school. Hard to put it in words right now. Honestly, it's really hard to even -- it just happened, right?

But I think unbelievable credit to Purdue. That's a Big Ten powerhouse, what they do there is incredible. I kind of felt bad the last couple of days about what I said in the locker room because it was almost a slight to Purdue. I have unbelievable respect for Purdue. I thought they produce tremendous respect.

For us to beat them tonight, in this environment, it was just an incredible win for us. I'm so proud of the guys, what we've done, what we've accomplished so far, and just an incredible night.

I thought the style, our style is hard to play against. I'm sure the Big Ten teams don't press as much. Our quickness, our speed -- my dad was big boxing fan. Styles make fights. And our style, I thought, hurt them a little bit.

I thought the press, the up-tempo, the speed, the quickness and our guys just -- I mean, they defended their tails off and played great. Unbelievable win. We're very happy to survive and advance and move on.

Q. Demetre, Coach Tobin yesterday talked about hanging around. And you guys played what he called pretty much of a blueprint game in the play-in game yesterday. How close to the blueprint was today? And at what point did you feel like they realized you weren't going away?

DEMETRE ROBERTS: First off, we knew coming into this game how good Purdue was. We didn't -- we knew how good Purdue was. So, like I say, every game, we've done this, honestly, all year.

Our job was just to come into the game and, like I said, throw a punch. We knew they would throw multiple punches. Just throw a punch back. We knew what type of game this was.

And, man, it was a game of runs. And we showed why we belong here. Credit to Purdue, but we do what we have to do and now we on to the next one.

Q. Sean, you're a Columbus guy. You were born in Columbus. To do this in your hometown, what does that mean for you, to make history in your hometown?

SEAN MOORE: I can't even explain it. I'm shocked right now. I can't believe it. It's crazy. But it feels amazing. (Inaudible).

Q. How much do you think it helped you just being home, having family around here, the whole thing?

SEAN MOORE: Felt. (Inaudible).

Q. How much family, how many family would you say you had here?

SEAN MOORE: (Inaudible). I don't know. A lot.

Q. Sean, just being home, at what time did you guys feel Nationwide turn today? When were you like they were behind us?

SEAN MOORE: (Inaudible) Coach D says it all the time. (Indiscernible) made a run back. (Inaudible).

Q. Have you been on the court with anyone close to the size of Zach Edey? And could you either tell there was a moment where they started to think, man, we're in for a battle, or you guys, your confidence soared and you said, we can do this?

CAMERON TWEEDY: It was a little bit of both. It was hard guarding him, it was, trying to get a rebound, trying to box him, trying to get in front of him. But (indiscernible) everything changed the way we played today. And so that definitely helped.

Q. Grant, did you at any point hear the crowd chant FDU's name as much as they did late in that game?

GRANT SINGLETON: To begin the second half, we were so locked in, it was really noisy there, but when it got towards the end we got comfortable where we were at. We heard the chants, and that just made us want to go out at it harder.

Q. Grant, you did a lot of different things today -- scoring, rebounding assists and the steals. Did you figure coming in that you would have to do a little bit of everything in this type of environment to get a win over a No. 1 seed?

GRANT SINGLETON: Yes. Of course. We had Cameron Tweedy, Ansley Almonor working very hard on the boards. The least I could do, (indiscernible) and using my athletic ability to come down there and help as much as I can and keep those guys comfortable down there, out of foul trouble.

And they just made sure we got extra possessions. We knew they were a good team. We knew he would score, but just getting those extra possessions, every possession counts.

Q. Talk about your coach a little bit. How much do you feed off of his energy and how does that translate to the court taking that energy that he gives you and putting it into the game there?

SEAN MOORE: (No audio).

Q. You said what you said after the First Four game. Did you really mean it? What did you see in Purdue that made you and your assistants think, you know what, this seems beatable?

COACH ANDERSON: I'm not sure how much I meant it. I wanted our guys to believe. As a coach or a leader, you try to get them to believe in what we're doing, how we're doing it. If I walk in there, say -- I don't say anything.

Now, I would have preferred there was not a camera in there. It was the right message, wrong audience, that's what I would say. I would have said that with no camera in there.

I didn't mean to get Purdue upset. That was not the idea at all. But that's got to be the message. We're trying to win the next game. We just can't be happy to be here.

And the guys gotta believe. You see these guys. Demetre Roberts is from Mount Vernon. I'm not sure I have to tell him that. I think he believes -- no matter what believes he's the best player out there. Grant is the same way. And Sean starting to come into his own. They believe they should be out there.

And it's fun to be around these guys. But I definitely wanted to get that across to them. We're here to -- we're a little irritated. We all have a chip on our shoulder. People say we shouldn't be here, we shouldn't be in the tournament, all that kind of stuff we have to listen to. We want to prove people wrong.

I think people see now that we do belong. Here's the thing, we're getting better, too. We played really well these last two games. And that's a credit to our guys. We're definitely getting better. And that's an exciting thing.

Q. Can you speak to the job he did on Edey? He had numbers, but despite the numbers looks like he did everything you wanted to do against them?

COACH ANDERSON: We talked about it before the game. In their wins and their losses he's averaging the same amount of points. It's like 24 on their wins and 23 on their losses.

If you look at wins and losses it's the other guys around him, in their losses those guys don't play well. In their wins, those guys play well.

What did he score tonight? He got 21. Right? So he still scored some points. We made him uncomfortable, but did a great job on everything else. That was the idea. He's going to score some points. He's going to make some shots. We're going to make him guard, make him run. But then they got tired.

Then sometimes you just say it to your team just to say it to your team, that they're tired. But they looked a little tired in the first half. And our guys saw that. And I think it gave us a little confidence.

Our post guys, Cameron Tweedy, what's he, 6'5", 6'6", Ansley, 6'5", 6'6". We're the shortest team in the country. But we made him uncomfortable. And the things he made were not easy baskets. I don't think he ever felt terribly comfortable. And that was just a great team effort.

We were sagging in the paint. We went off certain shooters. Let's make them make 3s, but not give them 3s -- make them make 3s. Just an unbelievable team effort.

Our guys were so locked in. It would be very easy to come here say, nice win the other day, especially when you get up here ahead of halftime, okay, we're up at halftime. This feels good.

We just kept coming, you know? They got up by five at one point. Could have gone away. It looked a little bit like we were on edge. The crowd was going crazy. We kept fighting back. That's character.

Q. You threw kind of a little bit of everything at Purdue -- full-court press, 3-2. You had two sets of hands on Zach Edey all game. I mean, how do you take this win and carry that momentum into Sunday?

COACH ANDERSON: I mean, we have to be -- Purdue's -- if we play Purdue -- it's like that miracle speech in hockey. Everyone's sending hockey speeches and Hoosier speeches all day long. If we played them 100 times, they'd probably beat us 99 times. Play them 100 times, we have one win. But tonight's the one we had to be unique, we had to be unorthodox. We had to make it tough on them, just be different.

I think a win like that is great going into the next round. Every time you win. The alternative is we're going to go home. It helps our confidence, it helps our belief in what we're doing and we'll get prepared for Sunday. Now I've got to do some laundry, but we'll be prepared for Sunday. I have belief, but I'm not sure I have that much belief. I have to do some laundry.

Q. Storyline around Purdue is whether or not their freshmen guards could do it in the NCAA Tournament. I know you guys press anyway. But how eager were you to put them under pressure and see how they would react in their first tournament game?

COACH ANDERSON: First of all, we have two great fifth-year senior guards, Demetre and Grant, Division II guards for four years, but they've -- their postseason record keeps getting better. They're not used to this. But they're used to big games.

And I think it's hard for freshmen to play against two fifth-year seniors who know how to play and win. Our press, what we do, it's hard to prepare for pressure, the press in two, three days. We won on two nights ago, they had 48 hours, I'm sure they prepared a little bit. But we play that way all the time. Our press was able to cause them a lot of problems.

That's what we do. You can't just start pressing all of a sudden and be good at it. We had a press all year long. We still made mistakes tonight. We did some things we can correct for Sunday.

But I thought we sped them up. We made them play fast. Those two freshmen guards are going to be terrific, terrific players. But I think having two fifth-year seniors who have combined for 3,500 points and won, I don't know how many NCAA games there, we had the advantage there, obviously, I think.