NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: SECOND ROUND - CREIGHTON VS BAYLOR

March 18, 2023

Greg McDermott

Ryan Kalkbrenner

Baylor Scheierman

Ryan Nembhard

Trey Alexander

Arthur Kaluma

Ball Arena

Creighton Bluejays

Media Conference

Q. Talking to the guards here, obviously Baylor's challenges are mostly in the backcourt. Can you honestly say you've faced a guard court like this, and what are some of the challenges about defending them?

TREY ALEXANDER: No, I don't think we've faced three guards that are as good as the guards we're going to play tomorrow. I think the Big 12 is a very good conference in terms of guard play. I feel like each guard that they have on their team averages over 15 points a game, and they shoot the ball from three very well.

So it's going to be a challenge for us just to be able to guard all three of them and contain all three of them. But like 2 said in the last press conference, we've just got to play the way we play and play our brand of basketball and they have to guard us as well.

Q. Ryan, how much does it help you as a center to have really good shooters around? Does that take a lot of pressure off of you.

RYAN KALKBRENNER: It definitely makes things a lot easier. They've got to pick their poison, either send two people to guard me and give up an open three to one of these guys who are going to make the shot, or stay on them and play me one-on-one in the post. And it just forces them to make a decision. So it definitely makes my job a lot easier and I think opens up a lot for us on offense.

Q. Ryan, it's changed a little lately, but when you were a little bitty kid -- I don't know if you were ever a little bitty kid -- but when you were a youngster, it wasn't so cool to be a traditional center. Growing up, did you try to be a point guard, or have you always embraced using your size and being the more traditional shot-blocking center?

RYAN KALKBRENNER: I mean, I never went on like a growth spurt or anything, so I was kind of taller than everyone else in my class, so I just was always a big man. I didn't try to be like anyone else. I just tried to play basketball. I didn't really start taking it seriously until high school anyway. I was just having fun and playing and just doing whatever.

Q. As a transfer coming in, how important is it to immerse yourself with this team? How do you engrain yourself with a team and how has that gone?

BAYLOR SCHEIERMAN: It's been pretty smooth. Ever since I stepped on campus, the guys have taken me in and treated like I've been there all along. The process coming in has been smooth and the chemistry on the team is very good, at a very high level right now.

Q. Baylor, obviously in the past we talked about different players, different teams targeting you, whoever it might be. Tomorrow no matter who you're defending, it's probably going to be a tough challenge. What are you hoping to prove tomorrow on that end.

BAYLOR SCHEIERMAN: Yeah, just that I can defend. And with our defense, it's not necessarily just one-on-one. It's all five guys working together. Like you said, teams have targeted me in the past, and I feel like for the most part, I've done a pretty good job this year, and I'm just continuing to prove that as I go along.

Q. Ryan, I've always been the shortest kid in my class, so a local question. It's my understanding you're a big fan of Nikola Jokic, his style of play as a player. Can you expound on that a little bit?

RYAN KALKBRENNER: I mean, I don't think I have like a specific NBA team that I follow, but Jokic is definitely -- obviously won the MVP the last two years, so he's definitely the best big man in the league. It's fun to watch him and try to take little things from his game and try to put them in my game. I don't know if I'll ever be that good, but definitely something to try to get to.

Q. For both Ryans, you guys both missed the round of 32 game last year. What do you remember about sitting out, and what has kind of built up to this point, getting back fully healthy and being able to play in this moment?

RYAN KALKBRENNER: I have to say, it's just really exciting to be able to play in it. Last year got a taste of it in the first round. But you kind of just work toward this moment your whole life of being able to make that deep run in March, and sitting out of it last year definitely was not fun.

But it kind of made me proud watching these guys that were playing put up such a good fight against Kansas. But just excited to play in it this year.

RYAN NEMBHARD: Yeah, same thing, he said it perfectly. Just excited to get back out there, excited to be in the round of 32. Hopefully get a win, so excited to be out there with my guys and excited to go play.

Q. Baylor, having the same name, do you follow Baylor closely, and what's it going to be like to go against them?

BAYLOR SCHEIERMAN: Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun. The past 24 hours the coaches have been saying Baylor a lot and it's kind of thrown me off a little bit. I didn't really follow them like a lot growing up and whatnot. Obviously I always knew that we had the same name, but at the end of the day, it's just another basketball game. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Q. Baylor, are your mentions just flooded with memes because of the matchup?

BAYLOR SCHEIERMAN: I really haven't looked, but I'm sure especially tomorrow I'm going to see a lot of fans supporting me, regardless if that's Baylor fans wearing Baylor shirts or not. But we'll see.

Q. Art, is there a different confidence heading into this game compared to last year's game against Kansas when you didn't have the two guys next to you?

ARTHUR KALUMA: Definitely. I mean, we were confident back then as well, but having these two pieces back with us is a whole 'nother aspect that is definitely going to push us to a W, I feel like.

Q. Trey, for you, just in the short turnaround for this game, what have you seen from Baylor? What are you expecting? I know you touched on the guard trio, that kind of thing.

TREY ALEXANDER: Yeah, just we know we're going to have to guard. In terms of guard play, pretty sure 1 through 4 is shooting well over 35 percent from three. And that's kind of what we've been harping on is really just knowing defensive principles and knowing what we have to do in terms of on the defensive end, because we know that we have a lot to deal with.

We haven't really played a team like the team that we're going to be playing tomorrow. Really just us being locked in and focused on, whether it be play calls or just people's tendencies on whoever you're guarding. Has just a lot to do with just knowing who you're guarding.

Q. Art and Trey, you guys according to the seedings are the underdog. What do y'all bring to the table? What are your advantages?

TREY ALEXANDER: I just feel like we want to win. I feel like a lot of teams in this tournament -- like everybody has the same goal in mind, but I feel like in terms of just the way that we play, I feel like we play better together than a lot of teams. I feel like everybody on this team just has one goal in mind, which is to win.

We really don't care about individual stats and things of that sort. We're all just trying to win at the end of the day and just continue to work towards the goal that we have as a team.

ARTHUR KALUMA: To build off that, this is probably one of the first years that I wasn't viewed as an underdog or the team I'm playing on wasn't viewed as an underdog. And I feel like when we're an underdog, like the expectations aren't as high, but we still perform to a high level.

Q. R2 and Trey, both you guys, you've played guards that are going to press up on you and be pretty physical with you. What are the challenges of controlling the pace of the game when the guards on the other side play like that?

TREY ALEXANDER: I just feel like it's one of those things where we just have to be able to weather the storm a little bit. I feel like when guards are like up there pressuring you, there are a lot of opportunities for them to try to create turnovers and try to create havoc. And I feel like R2 does a good job of not letting guards speed him up and things of that sort.

It's mostly him being able to control the pace like he does on a nightly basis and just being able to not let the game just get very hectic and play the way we want to play.

RYAN NEMBHARD: Same thing, and I think just our pace, too, it's hard to pressure if your pace is good if you get the ball to the rim quick and you have good tempo, it's hard to pressure and cause havoc. I think that'll be a key for us in the game, and yeah.

Q. The guards obviously Flo Thamba and Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua are also prominent big men who did a good job two years ago against Drew Timme, another strong big man. What challenges do those two present?

RYAN KALKBRENNER: Like you said, they're big strong big men. They know what they're doing. I like to try to approach every game the same way, try not to make it too complicated on myself. I think when you go up against bigs who kind of know what they're doing and are big and strong like that, just keep it simple, do the fundamentals, and everything will be all right.

Q. You played 38 minutes, which is hard as is, especially with a high altitude. How is you guys' recovery process as you prepare for tomorrow?

RYAN KALKBRENNER: I mean, anytime you play a game, you just go into the next day doing what you can do to take care of your bodies. But we've worked since the summer to condition and get ready for playing big minutes at this time of year. It's something that we kind of know how our bodies feel the day after a game and what to do to make ourselves feel good, and I think we'll be ready for tomorrow.

TREY ALEXANDER: That altitude is not a joke. It's hard to prepare for something like Denver. I just know that I never really got my second wind yesterday, especially after getting elbowed in the throat. But it was rough yesterday. I'm not going to lie. So I'm hoping tomorrow we're able to be more ready in terms of the altitude.

GREG McDERMOTT: Great to be back in this situation again and have an opportunity to move on to the Sweet 16. Obviously we're playing a terrific opponent in Baylor. We've always had great respect for Scott and the job that he's done. Obviously competed against him some when I was at Iowa State, and actually his dad, Homer, was the coach at Valparaiso when I was playing in college. We were in the same conference. I was at Northern Iowa at the time.

I've known his family a long time and tremendous respect for the job that he's done. We played them a couple times in the round of 32 in 2014, and we played them in Kansas City in the final of a tournament there five or six years ago. So we've come up on the short end, and hopefully third time is a charm.

Q. Obviously you probably play some back courts this year that were packed between two guys, but three guys is a handful. What is the challenges of Baylor's guard corps and what have you seen from them over the past week?

GREG McDERMOTT: Really, really talented. Their ability -- their shot making ability is elite. To your point, some teams have two, very few teams have three. They can afford one guy to have an off-night and still be at a pretty high level on the offensive end.

Great three-point shooters, electric flying off screens and shooting the basketball.

We'll have to be on point defensively and try to be there on the catch as good as we can.

Q. I know you don't try to dwell on the past, but I'm sure you've been reminded of 2014 quite a bit this week. Have you reflected on that at all and the possibility of avenging that team in a sense?

GREG McDERMOTT: Nobody has to remind me. That was a tough, tough day for our program. But the credit went to Baylor. It was just one of those games. They played terrific and we played about as poorly as we could play. That happens every once in a while. You just hope it doesn't happen on that stage.

I don't think that there's any revenge in my mind. I'd just like to get this team in so we can keep playing and keep practicing.

Q. Ryan obviously a unique player, especially these days. Can you maybe talk a little bit about his uniqueness in this era of basketball?

GREG McDERMOTT: Kalkbrenner? Yeah. We fell in love with his work ethic when we recruited him, and his unique ability to block shots. He led the EYBL in blocked shots by a large margin playing for Mac Irvin Fire out of Chicago and never was in foul trouble. He knew when to leave his feet, when to stay on the ground, and wasn't very strong at that point, didn't have great stamina.

But we saw something that we thought could be special and that would be a lot of fun to work with. He's been that and more. He's about the right things. He respects the game.

I think when you respect the game, the game has a way of giving things back to you. He's worked really hard to refine his skills, from working on his shooting form when he was a freshman with Coach Lusk, who's now at Purdue, to really working with Jeremy Anderson, our strength coach, to really develop his body. So some of those seals and his stamina has gotten better, his conditioning has gotten better as a result of that.

It was fun to see it all come together for him yesterday. He really performed at a high level when his team needed him the most on the biggest stage.

Q. You think back to that 2014 team and it seems like at times they struggled to win when shots aren't falling. Then you look at Friday, you guys go 3 of 20 from three and you're able to win that game. Was that kind of a conscious effort on your behalf to build this program in a direction where you're able to win those games even when shots aren't falling?

GREG McDERMOTT: You know, you go back to 2014, and that team was recruited to play the Missouri Valley, and we played in the Big East and finished second. That team was built heavily on shooting.

There weren't many games that we shot it poorly because there were so many guys who could shoot it on that team. As we've moved into the Big East, obviously we've gotten a little longer, a little more physical, and you pretty much had to to kind of keep up with the competition that we were seeing in our league.

We still rely heavily on shooting, and we recruit guys with a high skill level. That's really important to us in the recruiting process, guys that can handle it, pass it, shoot it, and have a good basketball IQ.

But the reality of it is sometimes shots go in and sometimes they don't, and fortunately yesterday we made just enough to win the game.

Q. Any update on Mason?

GREG McDERMOTT: No, not really. I don't think he'll practice today, but I still don't have any idea whether he'll be able to go tomorrow.

Q. Thinking back to Ryan Kalkbrenner, I know you've enjoyed him this year as a leader, but he's had some pretty good games of late in this postseason. Have you seen any further growth in his postseason, how he's stepped into that role?

GREG McDERMOTT: I mean, anybody who can do what he did yesterday has obviously made good progress. We really needed him yesterday on both ends of the floor. And while Smith had 32 points, I thought some of the finishes he had through Kalkbrenner were very difficult. Ryan did exactly what he was supposed to do. He just made some great plays.

But he's been a consistent voice for us this year. His voice in practice has improved so much since he was a freshman.

I think sometimes out of a teammate you want to know what you're going to get, and you know what's coming from Ryan Kalkbrenner, not just every game day but every single practice. You know he's going to be ready to practice, you know he's going to communicate and be kind of the traffic cop back there of our defense and bark out instructions.

He's done a great job of that day in and day out, and I think one of the best things you can say about a teammate is I know he's going to be there when we need him, and he's done that throughout the season.

Q. The guys talked a little bit about the altitude piece; did you notice anything? Did they get settled in at all, especially considering it's a pretty short bench with you guys?

GREG McDERMOTT: You know, I thought NC State was tired fast, and I didn't really want any whistles. I wanted it to keep going. We play that style a little bit more. The guys told me after the game that their lungs were burning pretty good the first couple media times outs. I wasn't paying any attention to how tired our guys were, I was just telling them to keep going because I knew they were tired.

I think you adjust to that. You have to stay hydrated, obviously, and our training staff and the strength staff has done a good job with that.

Tomorrow you're planning to go to the Sweet 16, so there's a lot of adrenaline, I think, on both sides, and there's some really good players on the court tomorrow. I think it'll be a fun game to watch.

Q. You touched on it earlier, but any particular memories top of mind when you were going against Baylor when you were coaching in the Big 12?

GREG McDERMOTT: I've tried to erase most of the memories I had from when I was coaching in the Big 12. But I remember the situation when Scott took over, very difficult, and to think that he's taken that program from where they were then to a program that won a National Championship is really remarkable. Credit to him and his coaching staff that they were able to do that.

But having known his dad since I was 18 years old, I'm not surprised. It's a wonderful family, and obviously Bryce had his team here, as well, last night, so there's some good coaches in that family.

Q. Not so serious, who wins a game between a Baptist school and a Jesuit school on Sunday? Second, more serious, you said you tried to forget about your time at Iowa State, but what did you learn from that that made you better?

GREG McDERMOTT: John Beilein told me when I got that job -- I ran into him on the recruiting trail one time, and he told me, you don't have to change anything to be successful at Iowa State. Just be who you are.

I probably got away from that in recruiting and the way we played. Once you get in a cycle where you're struggling, it's very difficult to get out of it in this day and age because we're living in a what have you done for me lately world, where there's not a lot of patience.

I made some mistakes, and I think I grew a lot from those mistakes, so when the opportunity presented itself at Creighton, I think I got back to maybe my roots of how I wanted to coach, how I was going to treat people, what our expectations were for our program.

It's worked out pretty well. I've surrounded myself with the right people, both players and staff, and obviously had some great coaches with me at Iowa State, one of them TJ Otzelberger is doing a great job there now and Daniel Roberts who's coach at Cleveland State.

I don't know if I was 100 percent ready for that job at that time as I look back on it. When I took it, I certainly thought I was. But making that jump from the mid-major level to the high-major level, I think everybody thinks they're ready for it, and I probably wasn't quite as prepared as I thought at the time.

You don't really want me to get into religion, do you? My mother is about as Irish Catholic as it gets, and she won't let me be critical of anyone. I will say the green shoes against Baylor will not make an appearance tomorrow. That was a one-time thing.

Q. You brought up TJ Otzelberger. Iowa State beat Baylor three times in year. Did you reach out for any pointers?

GREG McDERMOTT: Yeah, we talked late last night. Obviously he didn't have a great day yesterday but was gracious enough to spend some time on the phone with me.

You know, their defensive scheme is considerably different than ours, and that's not something you can change in a day. But he gave me a few thoughts. Obviously they're in their league, so he wasn't going to give me everything, but we had a good talk last night.

Q. If you do want to talk about religion, Jesuit schools went 4-0 in the first round, Big East schools went 4-1. What does that say about the conference and the competition?

GREG McDERMOTT: Yeah, we had a text string going the last couple days with the five of us coaches that are in the NCAA Tournament. And we do a great job in our league of supporting each other in the non-conference portion of our schedule, and then you try to beat each other's brains in. And then when you reach postseason, you get back to having each other's back and really pulling for the other teams.

It was good to see yesterday. Providence didn't make many shots, but I thought they got a lot of good shots and had a good chance to win that game, and then Xavier survived and then the other three found a way to win.

Hopefully we can put our best foot forward again tomorrow, but it was a great conference, and it prepares you for almost everything you're going to see in the NCAA Tournament. You play in front of great crowds, you play against really good players and great coaching on a nightly basis. So I think it certainly prepares you for what's to come in March.

Q. Last year at this time you were without both Ryans and had to work through those injuries. How happy are you for both those guys to be in this position and have this opportunity to play tomorrow?

GREG McDERMOTT: Yeah, really happy for R2 that this was his first NCAA Tournament. Kalk at least got to play in a game last year. Knock on wood, they're healthy right now, and we need them to be healthy tomorrow.

But they both do a lot for us. R2 is the engine that kind of fuels our pace, and he did an unbelievable job of taking care of the basketball yesterday against an aggressive defense that prides themselves on forcing turnovers.

It's good to have everybody healthy. Obviously we don't know about Mason for sure yet, but happy that those two guys have got this opportunity.