NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: REGIONAL FINAL - FLORIDA ATLANTIC VS KANSAS STATE

March 25, 2023

Jerome Tang

Markquis Nowell

Nae'Qwan Tomlin

Madison Square Garden

Kansas State Wildcats

Elite 8 Postgame Media Conference

Florida Atlantic 79, Kansas State 76

JEROME TANG: First of all, I just want to thank my Lord and savior Jesus Christ. In the midst of probably one of the toughest things that I experience with these guys, if we can't be grateful in these times, then all the love and joy that we talk about is fraud, and we're not frauds.

I want to give FAU and Coach a lot of credit. They did a great job. They were tough. They were together. They made big shots. They won the game. Okay, they won the game.

This hurts right now, but I wouldn't trade these guys for 10 players, 10 others or 20 others. I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world. So very thankful for the fun and the ride that we've had this year.

Q. Markquis, Coach was just talking about being grateful. I'm curious how grateful you are for this ride that you were on.

MARKQUIS NOWELL: I'm very grateful. I had a tremendous year with my teammates and my coaching staff. Had a lot of fun. Just looking back at how hard we worked to get to this point, man, I'm just thankful for the journey. I'm thankful for my teammates and everybody behind the scenes. I wouldn't want it any other way.

Q. Markquis and Nae'Qwan, I wonder if you can describe how the play was unfolding on the last sequence and that feeling when you heard the buzzer and you just knew you weren't going to be able to get the shot.

MARKQUIS NOWELL: I was trying to get Ish a shot. Coach wanted Ish to set the screen, and I waved it off because I felt like on the right side of the court, that's where Ish hits most of his shots. And they closed out hard to him, and he didn't get off his shot.

When that final buzzer hit, it was a little tough because I love these guys so much that I want to continue to keep playing for the rest of my life with them.

It was tough, but I'm truly honored. I'm truly blessed and grateful to have a family.

NAE'QWAN TOMLIN: I'm thankful, as well. We had a hell of a season. I'm just glad that we made it this far. Even though this is not what we wanted to stop at, but I'm just grateful that I'm here with my teammates.

Q. Markquis, just as a New Yorker who never got a chance to play in this building in the past, what's it mean to you to finish with two dominant performances in the Garden?

MARKQUIS NOWELL: I'm happy and grateful that I got the opportunity to play in Madison Square. I always dreamed of something like this, just playing here, being here, playing my heart out. I feel like I gave my heart and soul to this game for these past couple games because I wanted to see these guys win and smile and know what the standard is for winning.

We have a younger group of guys that we have in our locker room, and the standard is hard to win. Winning isn't easy. To see that we made a deep tournament run with that young core group, I'm just excited to see where they'll come in years ahead.

It's just a blessing, man. I gave my heart and soul to this university, to this team. I maximized everything I had inside of me to see these guys happy.

Q. Markquis, when you hit that three, you banked it in to make it 63-57. Did you have some sense like okay, things are just going to fall for us? Obviously it wasn't like you thought that was it; I don't mean that. But did you have some sense like we're rolling the way we want to roll into the last eight, nine minutes?

MARKQUIS NOWELL: Yeah, I feel like that shot gave us a little momentum, but I don't feel like we got the defensive stops that we really needed. I don't feel like we got key rebounds that we really needed.

And give a lot of credit to FAU for getting every single 50/50 ball. There was guys diving on the floor, jumping out of bounds, crashing on the free throw. Give a lot of credit to them. I'm sure they're happy, and I wish them much success.

Q. When a guy like Keyontae Johnson has to sit out the final 12 minutes of the half, it usually could spell doom for a team, but you kept things very manageable. From a player's perspective, what worked for you guys during that period and what allowed you to keep pace with the Owls during that time?

NAE'QWAN TOMLIN: I feel like we tried to stay together and just tried to keep trying to get stops, and for me trying to make the right plays. Really just trying to stay together and stay positive.

MARKQUIS NOWELL: It's always tough when your leading scorer is out with foul trouble. But like Nae'Qwan said, we tried to stay together, we tried to get easy buckets. And I feel like in the first half, we wasn't playing our game like we usually play our game. And I kind of think that's where they got out in transition and got some easy buckets because we was a little flustered on the offensive end.

They got every 50/50 ball. It didn't come down to anything else but them playing harder, them wanting it more. So you've got to give a lot of credit to them.

Q. For the players, can you express the disappointment of coming so close to the Final Four but not getting there? Start with Nae'Qwan.

MARKQUIS NOWELL: He can't express it. It's a tough feeling. Our guys gave it all. The coaching staff came up with a tremendous game plan. We fell short. I mean, it happens in basketball. These guys are going to work hard this off-season, and I'm pretty sure they're going to come out with a chip on their shoulder next year. But we couldn't explain it.

Q. Did you feel like FAU did anything specific to kind of neutralize Keyontae or was it just luck of the draw with those fouls?

JEROME TANG: (Laughing) Keyontae played 18 minutes, and that's why he was neutralized.

Q. What was your plan for dealing with Vlad Goldin, especially limiting their offensive rebounds and second-chance points?

JEROME TANG: You know, rebounding has been an issue for us all year, and we tried to make it tough for them. We tried to front them. They did a great job of lobbing it over to him. So they would play behind. He did a good job of scoring some buckets. I didn't think he was the difference. I didn't think he could score 20, so I wasn't concerned with it. I was more concerned with the other guys.

But the other guys delivered, too.

Q. What makes them tough? They don't really have a so-called star, but what is it about them that's tough to deal with?

JEROME TANG: Well, when you draw up plays with X's and O's, on some teams, all the O's don't have to be guarded so you can put your X's in the right spot to make it hard for the team to score on offense. Every one of his O's can score the ball, and that's what makes it hard to guard. It doesn't matter if they can score 30; they can all shoot, they can all dribble, they can all pass, and that puts your defense in a bind.

Q. From what you said to us, you thought it was pretty important to have perspective on the meaning of the season and this game. How did you get that across to the players in the locker room? Did you try to focus on that right away or on the feeling of the loss and the season ending? How did you try to treat that?

JEROME TANG: Yeah, you know, when this happens -- this is the third time I've lost in the Elite 8, and you can sit around and mope and cry about it, or you can really think about the love and the joy that you've had through the season. And winners keep their heads up. They don't drop their heads. So our guys were not going to walk off the floor with their heads down.

We're going to approach -- tough things are going to happen in our life, and we don't get to wallow in it. We've got to keep moving forward.

This is more of a lesson for them of becoming men than it is about basketball.

Q. This was a team of transfers built by so many assets from the transfer portal, including yourself from Baylor as a matter of fact. What was the key to creating such a cohesive, strong unit through so many different backgrounds, and how did this team kind of emulate some of the teams, some of the winning teams you had over at Baylor?

JEROME TANG: That's a really good question. I'm going to say that like what we looked for was winners, and we wanted to find guys who had won in their past, whether it's high school state championships or in college. Because whenever anybody wins the last game, at some point in time to win the last game of the year, you've got to go through some adversity and you're going to be down in a game in a huddle and you know what it takes to come back and win that game.

So having a group of guys -- I think I have more than eight state championships on the team from high school players, and then college guys who have won in the NCAA. I wasn't just looking for talent. I was looking for DNA.

All these dudes, they're incredible human beings, and they learned each other's stories. And because they learned each other's stories, they could empathize with them, they could understand, and when things didn't go well, they were there for each other.

Markquis Nowell really spearheaded the whole thing in building the team chemistry by having bowling nights and movie nights and all the different things that they did together to build a chemistry that we needed.

Q. In the changing landscape of college basketball, it seems like many of the strongest teams have a big component of players who have transferred in, yours included. FAU isn't really like that. The nucleus of their team is like guys who have been playing together for three years. Do you believe there is still a place in the upper echelons of college basketball for teams that exist like that?

JEROME TANG: I definitely do. My good friend Paul Mills who just took the Wichita State job was at Oral Roberts and his team won 30 games this year with guys who stayed. You've got to have the right environment.

When we was at Baylor, the national average in college was 43 percent. I think it's higher than that now. At Baylor our average was 16 percent, and the reason it was so low was because, one, we told the truth in recruiting, and two, we loved the guys when they were on campus.

We showed them that we cared about what was important to them and then how what was important to them, if they were willing to sacrifice a little bit, it would allow us to achieve our goal as a team and them as individuals to achieve their goals.

I think you see that with Markquis Nowell this year and Keyontae Johnson. I think Quis is the best point guard in America and should win the Naismith. I think Keyontae when he's allowed to play more than 18 minutes is the best wing in the country and should win the Naismith.

But what Coach May, Dusty, is doing is being able to get guys to redshirt and then come along and see how they're going to fit in and he's telling them their plan. I hope to do that, too. I've got a group of guys that we redshirted this year and so next year will be their second year in the program. And then the third year in the program, they're going to be able to help us win.

My job next year is to make sure in the second year of the program that I help them see the big picture and that they're willing to come back and be there in the third year.

Q. Coach Tang, your team has great team chemistry both on and off the court. Win or lose, do you attribute that team chemistry to your leadership and coaching style?

JEROME TANG: I attribute it to our staff and the environment that we have, the culture that we have up and down the office. If you walked up and down the hallways of our office, you would think we're having a party every day. There's a lot of laughing, just a great time together. I think our guys see that.

They learn more from what they see than what we say, and then they learn to emulate that.

I believe I have the best staff in America, and the culture that we have up and down our office is a place that anybody would want to work at.