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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: GREENSBOROMarch 18, 2012Dee DavisKenny FreaseTu HollowayChris MackJustin MartinGREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA Xavier – 70 THE MODERATOR: We'll start with an opening statement from coach and then take questions for the student‑athletes. COACH MACK: It was a tail of two halves certainly. I thought on of the things that really helped our team was the final push we made at the end of the first half. We could have gone into the locker room down 15 or 17 points, and we were able to get some stops I think in part because C.J. McCollum was on the bench, but we also made some shots to end the half with a little bit of momentum to go into halftime down four, have the jump ball and in your favor, very, very fortunate. In the second half, I thought our defensive intensity for them to shoot, what, 14 percent in the second half, I don't know if I have ever seen that. Our bench was very, very productive today. I'm happy for those guys. And then the guy next to me had probably his best game in a Xavier uniform and at the right time. THE MODERATOR: Questions? Q. For all the players, after all that you've been through this season and not knowing if you would even make the tournament, can you talk about what it means for you to win this game and go to the Sweet 16? KENNY FREASE: It's really exciting just because we see all the guys in the locker room every day and how hard they're working. And we always knew that we had talent in the locker room and for whatever reason things weren't clicking for us. And we're coming together at the right time. We had a really good weekend in Atlantic city and came here with that momentum, and we have been able to play really well for two games in a row now and it's just really good to get back to the Sweet 16. TU HOLLOWAY: Shows the character of our guts. I remember playing up in ‑‑ going to New York and we just losing and Coach Mack was talking to us about how everyone's taking shots at us around the country and that really ‑‑ I never forgot that day because I know that it was a head coach who was disappointed in the way we were playing. And after going through so much, we're still standing today in the last 16 teams. And it showed‑‑ just shows the character. DEE DAVIS: I'm just happy to be a part of the whole experience. It's my first year. I've had a couple guards in front of me that taught me a lot throughout, and I feel like my learning curve is coming around at the right time and I just appreciate that. JUSTIN MARTIN: I feel the same way pretty much as Dee. We just got a group of resilient guys that never give up. And that's the one thing that coach always tells you is be resilient. I just feel like we still got a long way to go. But at the end of the day, we made it to where we are. Q. For Kenny, do you feel like you just had a size advantage in there tonight and took advantage of that? KENNY FREASE: My guards were really putting me in a lot of good positions. I wouldn't have been able to score a lot of the points that I did if it wasn't for those guys putting me in good positions. They were finding me at the right times and all I had to do ‑‑ they made my job really easy. All I had to do was turn and finish. So that's a credit to them. And things really opened up in the second half for them on the outside, and they were able to convert and that‑‑ I feel like that's the reason we were able to win the game, that and the defensive end. Q. Tu, a two‑part question. One, why did you have to change your jersey? And two, talk about your defense on McCollum who was held to 14 points which is well below what he scored against Duke. TU HOLLOWAY: I had a little blood on my hand, so I didn't know I was bleeding. I guess I was bleeding for a few minutes. And then the referee came to the huddle and said something to me, so I had to switch my shorts and jersey. But like said before, C.J. McCollum is ‑‑ Seth Curry or even Jordan Crawford that played here with us a few years ago, he's a pro, and it really wasn't my defense. A few times I beat him and Dee Davis was in the gap to help me out or they were using a ball screen and Kenny Frease is there to contest it and make it a tough shot for him. But he's a great player. I'm exhausted after the game, and I tried my hardest against him. So I know it was a big stage and he's going to try to go out there and be aggressive and score. So I just tried my hardest to go out there and play as best a defense as I can on him. Q. Dee, could you talk about that too? You took some big charges that really got him into foul trouble early. Can you talk about how important that was for your guys' side? DEE DAVIS: I just wanted to come in and give the team a little bit of energy. I felt like we came out a little slow and I just felt like the charges give us a boost. And I think it did. Q. You guys have obviously been in this stage before, especially recently, when you were down and you were making that run, how much did you use the experiences from being at this stage in prior years to help you guys during that stretch? DEE DAVIS: From my experience we have been down before to a few good‑‑ a few other good teams before, like Purdue, for instance, we fought back from that. We fought back from Vanderbilt. And I think our guys are used to it. We got tough guys that play hard. JUSTIN MARTIN: We just have faith in each other and that's ‑‑ I think that's the biggest thing. Sometimes it's tough to really think about what the outcome could be, but we just stick with it and have faith in coach that he will put us in the right positions to score and we just have faith in our defense and that's the biggest part of us being the comeback kids that we are, I guess. Q. You said comeback kids, is that something that ‑‑ was that a mistake? You said‑‑ is that something you guys identify yourselves with? JUSTIN MARTIN: It's not something we identify ourselves as, but we got Tu Holloway, he's been pretty clutch. Q. Do you guys use that nickname in the locker room or anything? COACH MACK: No. Justin just made that up. (Laughter.) JUSTIN MARTIN: That's what we do, we come back. THE MODERATOR: Okay. Thanks, guys. We'll take questions for coach. Q. What happened to Dez and do you have an update on him? COACH MACK: He got tangled up on a loose ball rebound and I think his foot was planted and the kid from Lehigh accidentally fell on top of him, and he tried to gut it out. I could tell he kept looking at the bench. He was trying to limp through it, but you could tell he lost his effectiveness. In terms of where we go from here, it's way too early to predict, but he'll live in the training room this week and hopefully be able to give it a go next weekend. We've got a great medical team and our trainer will not sleep. He'll stay in the offices and do his best to get Dez back on the floor. Q. You called that a sprained ankle? COACH MACK: At this point I don't‑‑ I don't really know what it is. I think it's more his toe, but that's about all I know. I don't even know which toe. Q. Can you talk about getting back to the Sweet 16 again? COACH MACK: It's an amazing accomplishment, but it's not something that we want to be final for our program. Now we have been to four Sweet 16s in the last five seasons, and it's so doggone awfully difficult to get there, and whether you play your best at the end of the year or whether you have your ups and downs during the middle of the year, you want to be playing as well as you possibly can play down the stretch. And I'm just proud of this group to come together, but we have got more work to do and more basketball to play. We got some seniors in the locker room that don't want their careers to be over and never more evident than the second half of today. Q. A little bit more about Kenny. Last time you guys went to the Sweet 16, he had trouble running up‑and‑down the court. Talk about where he is now and how he's able to have career high points tonight. COACH MACK: He's in much better shape. He also knows that we're really, really relying on him. He was a role player back when he was a sophomore and he was playing behind an all conference player in Jason Love. And Kenny stayed with it. Early on in the year he wasn't playing as well. I think he put himself in that type of position because his conditioning wasn't where it needed to be, but he has really become who we expected him to be over the last four to six weeks. Lehigh's a very good team, but they're also small. And I'm sure they don't face the type of size that Kenny presents. We just wanted to be able to feed it from the top and get the ball into Kenny and fortunately he was able to finish and he was terrific today. Q. You mentioned that the tale of two halves, what did you say to the guys at halftime to really pick up their defensive intensity? COACH MACK: Well, I think it was more what we talked about before the half ended. I just looked at them and I said I think in 16 minutes we had gotten four stops and we're a team that really prides ourself on getting three consecutive stops, which equals a kill. And then we try to get seven of those. We had four stops sporadically through the first 16 minutes. We were doing a terrible job of containing the basketball. We were helping up on penetration. And it didn't matter how effective we were going to be on offensive end, if we weren't going to get stops, we weren't going to have a chance to win. I thought that the last three minutes of the first half put us in a great position. We did hit a couple shots but we got some stops defensively. We went into halftime and I think our kids are smart enough to realize we're only down four, it's our possession, and we really talked about, hey, that first four minutes of the second half cannot be the same as we started off the game. We have to have a different resolve about us. We have to have a different energy. And I thought we really did defensively. And I don't know what the run was, but I know they called timeout and we had the lead. Q. Lehigh shot less than 15 percent in the second half, which is astoundingly low. How much do you attribute defensive adjustments to that? Do you think that maybe they just started having some shots that didn't fall? What was your focus in terms of attacking them defensively in the second half, I guess? COACH MACK:  Well, I think, number one, we want to do a better job in transition. I thought they were playing downhill in the first half, our guards weren't getting back. And in the second half, we put them in the half court a little bit more, which is advantage us. It puts a little bit more pressure on them to score in the half court and execute. I thought Tu Holloway did a tremendous job of chasing C.J. McCollum. I watched that kid on tape coming into the game and he's a pro. I mean, I liken him to a Jordan Crawford that we had a few years ago. He can absolutely take over games and Tu recognized that and did a great job chasing him. And as he mentioned we just wanted to make sure our defense was tight, we didn't get spread out all over the place, we were efficient in our ball screen defense. And I thought that was the difference in the second half. They may have gotten a little bit more fatigued, but I thought we did a really good job of chasing C.J. and really handling Mackey McKnight and pushing him more to do things in the half court rather than the full court. Q. Can you talk a little bit about how it feels to see players like Dee and Justin really step up tonight? COACH MACK: It feels great. We shortened our bench a little bit in the tournament, in the A‑10 tournament. I mean, I went into halftime and I singled those two out in front of the team and said Justin and Dee, absolutely great job. We couldn't ask for more in terms of their effort, the energy they brought, the points they brought. Those two really helped our team and I think there was a big time togetherness in that locker room. It's great to see when your role players who maybe don't get the opportunities as much as the starters can come in. I think we ended up with 12 points off the bench, 18 or 19 rebounds from our bench. That's big time production in a game that matters. THE MODERATOR: All right. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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