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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: LEXINGTONMarch 20, 2013Cy AlexanderBruce BeckfordAdrian PowellAustin WitterLEXINGTON, KENTUCKY THE MODERATOR: All right. We'll get ready and start now with the student-athlete press conference for North Carolina A&T here at the Lexington, Kentucky site. Q. Question for all three of you. Lot of times newly weds the morning after their wedding will be asked, do you feel different, you're married now. Ask you guys, first win, first tournament win in school history. Do you guys feel like a different team now than you did this time yesterday? ADRIAN POWELL: Yes, we do feel different. Like I said, we made history last night being the first team in A&T history to win a tournament game, and hopefully we can carry over some of the momentum into the game tomorrow night. AUSTIN WITTER: I'm just proud of my team. We worked hard for that game, that whole game yesterday and we showed a lot of patience and resilience in order to win the game, and like he said, we hope we can carry the momentum into tomorrow's game. BRUCE BECKFORD: We played hard as a team. It feels good to make history, get the first round win. Q. Gentlemen, if this were Louisville going through the same circumstances of winning their conference tournament in thrilling fashion, winning a first around game in thrilling fashion, having to travel. I want to ask you how mentally fresh are you guys, ready to at that time next task at hand or are you just enjoying the ride? ADRIAN POWELL: Mentally we're fine. Physically we have to get rest since we played last night. Hopefully playing the first game yesterday we can go into the game tomorrow and all the nerves have gotten out from yesterday's game, so hopefully that can help us out a little bit by playing yesterday. AUSTIN WITTER: Like you said, I don't think nervousness is going to be a factor. We got the nervousness out last game. After awhile, it all came out. A couple players were nervous. We got the play hard and play our game tomorrow and try to get the win. BRUCE BECKFORD: I think we started to find our rhythm there last game, so we should be fine on that part. We got to be focused tomorrow, be ready to play. Q. Coach Alexander yesterday said that he was going to give y'all the night off last night and y'all were -- and the coaches would study film but y'all would get back the work today. What did you do last night after win and how have you prepared for Louisville, be it last night or today? ADRIAN POWELL: We just went back to the room and kicked around and talked a little bit, watched some of the games on TV, and this morning we got up, ate a little breakfast and watched film on Louisville. They played Syracuse in the Big East tournament. We watched the first half and seen some of the things they like to do and main thing I think we got to contain their guards. Got really good guards. Q. At a school that is all about history, winning your first game last night, what would it mean to North Carolina A&T and to the city of Greensboro if were you the first 16 to knock off a 1? AUSTIN WITTER: That would mean everything. We're on a five game winning streak right now. Our goal is to keep winning until the season is over. That definitely is history to be made, beating a 1 seed as a 16th seed. That's our goal. Q. I'm sure each of you has received a ton of tweets and texts and all sorts of messages ever since last night. We love for each you to answer the question, what has the support for the Aggies who traveled to Dayton last night meant from those you heard from in Greensboro, what does Aggie pride mean to each of you today after last night's big win? ADRIAN POWELL: It means a lot. Some of the friends traveled to the game, family and stuff. It feels good knowing that they support us. Like I said, it's been a long time since they had a winning season in general. So just showing their love for us, come and support us in a game like this yesterday and us winning made it even better. Like I said, alumni has been waiting for this for a long time. AUSTIN WITTER: Everybody back at school has been showing love, tweets, phone calls. My phone has been blown the last two, three days. Our school, they throwing parties, throwing pep rallies, throwing watch parties for the game. The love is just unbelievable, and we want to thank everybody at A&T for showing us love and support. BRUCE BECKFORD: It feels good to just have the support, have them at your games and everything especially miles away from the campus. Feels good to see them in Dayton. We're in Greensboro. I definitely had a lot of phone calls from family, friends. It's just been fun. Q. Adrian, you mentioned you guys watched the first half of the Louisville/Syracuse game. Did you see the second half when they went on the 44-10 run? Is it intimidating going up against a team that has the capability of doing that? ADRIAN POWELL: No, we didn't watch the second half. We'll probably watch it tonight. The main thing is to tell the teammates don't worry about the name on the jerseys. They put them on just like we do. So go out and play confident like we've been doing all year and play defense. Q. Just want to get your thoughts. Other than seeing that tape, how much do you follow Louisville during the course of the year? Do you watch any of -- they're on TV a fair amount. What do you know about them? AUSTIN WITTER: We have a grueling schedule just as well as almost any other college basketball player. When we're able to catch games on TV, we can, but I've seen them maybe once on TV and just we have such a grueling schedule, just like every other college basketball player. We barely catch that many games on TV. ADRIAN POWELL: I know they have great guards, Russ Smith, and they got a great shot blocker down low. I noticed a little bit about them. But, like I said, we get back in the room watching film tonight and see what they like to do. BRUCE BECKFORD: I've seen them play a few times. Got to contain their guards. Play defense like we've been playing the last couples games. Q. I'm curious, from the film that you've seen on Louisville, have you played against a team with the type of defense that they have and how confident are you that you can beat their press? And you've also mentioned your defense going up against their press, is that going to affect your ability on defense when you get at the other end? ADRIAN POWELL: As far as press-wise, we've had a couple teams in our conference that showed press. As long as we run our press offense, we should be able to handle the pressure. AUSTIN WITTER: As long as we stay patient, don't let them rattle us, run our offense, run it confidently, play with confidence, I believe we'll be fine. BRUCE BECKFORD: Just like he just said, don't get rattled, be confident. Q. Bruce, they got a couple players on the inside, Banin and Jang that are -- they get to the offensive forwards, they're big, obviously. How do you guys plan on kind of trying to combat that? BRUCE BECKFORD: We've been told as a unit that we have to box out and crash the boards hard because we know like they like to hit the offensive glass. We got to put it on the line tomorrow. Q. For some conferences more than others this time of year, a lot of it becomes a conference pride thing, conference solidarity thing. Last year we saw Norfork State take down number 2, Missouri. Do you feel like you guys are not only carrying the banner for A&T but also for the MEAC or not really thinking about that much? AUSTIN WITTER: We represent the MEAC as well. We definitely take pride in our conference and school. I mean, Norfork do it last year. Why can't we do it? ADRIAN POWELL: Watching Norfork last year it shows anything can happen. Once you go out there and play, you never know what can happen. BRUCE BECKFORD: Yeah, just feels good, pretty much. Anybody can lose, so we're just going to play hard. THE MODERATOR: Any further questions for the student-athletes? Q. Of course you guys know you're the underdogs, but you were the underdogs in the MEAC Tournament, you were the underdogs the whole tail end of the season. What is it like being in that position now? AUSTIN WITTER: I feel like we don't really of have any pressure on our back, we're underdogs. In everybody's mind, we're expected to lose. There's really no pressure on us. We have no reason to come out nervous. All the pressure is on Louisville. We're going to come out and play them hard and tough and going to try and go out and get the win. ADRIAN POWELL: For me, I like being the underdog. Like I said during the MEAC, they predicted us to finish 9th. We finished 7th. We gave a couple games away we should have won. Everybody has been counting us out in the tournament. Nobody expected us to make it that far. We end up putting a good winning streak together and win the MEAC Championship. Hopefully tomorrow we can build off that and keep it going. BRUCE BECKFORD: Yeah. We've been the underdog all year. We're used to being in this position. We've got to get it done. Q. Austin, not only is this a bigger arena than you guys are used to playing in, it's pretty close to Louisville, probably going to be a lot of Louisville fans here. Do you think that's going to have any sort of effect on you guys tomorrow? How is that going to be? AUSTIN WITTER: Personally, once I get on court, I barely even recognize the people around. I might look up in the stands before the game and maybe at halftime. Other than that, I barely ever notice most of the fans in there. THE MODERATOR: Any other questions? All right. Thank you gentlemen. We appreciate it. All right. We'll get started here with the press conference with the head coach of North Carolina A&T, Cy Alexander. We'll start off. Who has questions? Q. Coach, last night you told us that you and the coaching staff would revel in the victory for a little bit and get back to work. What did you see in that Louisville team and just tell me about your night. COACH ALEXANDER: Well, we had a really nice dinner, steak and shrimp and that good stuff, and about 11:00 we started watching Louisville. We watched the entire Louisville/Syracuse Big East championship game. It showed me just how potent Louisville can be, get down, 16, 17 points and you're thinking wow, this is going to be a blowout on the other end, and before you know it, they're down 2, 3 points. Their speed of their guards has been really impressive to me. I've watched a couple games today and Smith, Siva, really get -- really quick with the basketball. They're going to get after you with their pressure, and they do a lot of offensive action from the elbow to the post area, hit and dive the opposite post. We've got to make sure we work on that today and night and make our guys see that and how our defense can hopefully take some of that action away and, you know, they're well coached, they play -- they got high major size and athletes. So we've got to -- we've got to just maintain our poise. We've got to play, do what we do from a defensive standpoint, and we've got to let our press offensive system hopefully not let their pressure take us out of our rhythm. And so we want to try to play the game in four ten-minute segments. I might have mentioned this last night, try to play the game in four, from media timeout to media timeout, see what happens. Q. Coach, congratulations on the first NCAA Tournament win in your career and in A&T's school history? COACH ALEXANDER: Thank you. Q. Do you feel as though you are now a different coach and this is now a different team? And second part to the question: At a school that is certainly deservedly proud of its history going way back to the A&T 4, what would it mean to this school to be the first one ever, the first 16 ever, to take to take down a 1? COACH ALEXANDER: I don't feel any different as far as having won. I think I was a pretty good coach prior to. From the university standpoint, the chancellor came up to me last night and said, you made history and we're so very, very proud. In fact, I just got a call from Reverend Jesse Jackson, Senior, about five minutes ago, actually as I was coming into the arena. Obviously this is pretty big deal for making history. But it would be huge. We know it's a challenge. It's one of those David and Goliath stories. We realize that. I heard our players mention that we have been underdogs. We were leading Texas Tech by ten points at halftime this year. We lose to Seton Hall by 6, 7. I don't think our young people will be intimidated. The thing that probably scares me as much as anything is them keeping their poise with the number of people that will be in the facility all with wearing red and white in a sea of red as far as Louisville. But if we execute our system and not let -- I think it's very, very important that the first ten minutes, we still are right there, maybe 6, 7, 8, 9 points down, but we don't need to get off to Louisville 10, NA&T 0. Now, all of a sudden, you're fighting. I've been in NCAA Tournament games where we get down say 10, 12 to nothing and after that the game is even. But you never make up those 12 points that you -- that was nerves, that was nerves, and we've got to make sure we try to do everything we can to eliminate that. And if we can do that and if we can continue -- what we've done in this run, we've always played fairly decent defense, but we shot the ball a lot better since the latter part of February and we even shot, I think we shot 50 some percent last night from the field. If we can shoot the ball with Louisme, with Powell, with Underwood and Middleton -- Underwood had a heck of a game last night. He's a young man with a lot of moxie. And so the key is whether we can handle their pressure and execute against a great defensive team. Q. You mentioned watching tape of the Syracuse/Louisville game. I know it was the same night as the Morgan State game. Did you watch any of it live that Saturday night? COACH ALEXANDER: No. No. Q. That was your first time seeing it? COACH ALEXANDER: Yeah. I saw the score at the end but, I did not watch it. I'm busy focusing on trying to get ready for Morgan State that day. Q. Coach, I was wondering if Siva and Smith, if that backcourt was comparable to -- or who you would equate them to anybody that you played or just seen? COACH ALEXANDER: I can't say off the top of my head. I can say that they are excellent speed. As I watched film, I've just been impressed with their speed and both -- it reminds me of -- tell what it reminded me of as I was watching when I was in South Carolina State and we had to play Kansas and Jacque Vaughn was the point guard. Just the ability, how quick they get the ball up and down the floor and we eventually lost to Kansas the first round, had Paul Pierce on that team. Pretty good Kansas team. But their speed and the ability that they both have to score the ball. Smith can really shoot it. Siva can score off the bounce. And then you've got couple big guys that are really good. Those two guards make the team go. Q. This is a little bit offbeat. You'll be getting a bunch of face time tomorrow. Will you be wearing a particular special suit like when you're picking out what you're going to be wearing tomorrow, are you going to take any special preparation, things you're going to do? COACH ALEXANDER: I brought three changes of clothes and I brought clothes that we never lost in, you know, so whatever I wear tomorrow I hadn't lost in that particular -- I didn't bring anything that I lost games in, trust me. I'm not going to wear the one I wore last night. So it would be another of the two. We won in both of those. Jinx -- Louisville may beat the jinx, I don't know. Q. Coach, last night on the podium you mentioned the fact that back when were you hired, you made it very clear to your team, and particularly your upper classmen, that you believe this was a championship caliber group but they had to work a heck of a lot harder than they have been. Having already won the first game, did you realistically expect this would happen with this team this soon and does this team sort of feel like it's playing with the house's money at this point? COACH ALEXANDER: Exactly. We feel like that. To be quite honest, I wasn't quite sure. There were days -- we had a great breakthrough win -- Eastern Kentucky is a very good upper mid major team in Ohio Valley. They came into Greensboro 10-2, 10-1, something like that. We got down 17 points in the first half against Eastern Kentucky. And we eventually won the game by 15 points, so that was a major turnaround. And I honestly thought that that was the breakthrough win, but what happened was, we have never been very consistent on offense all year. That's why we couldn't win more than two games out of town. We would play well offensively for two games, and then the third game, we couldn't throw it in the ocean. Again, defensively we've been pretty good all year, but when we finally hit our offensive stride in I guess the middle of February to the latter part of February, I thought that maybe we might have a shot to do this. And then the strange thing that happened, we're playing North Carolina Central at 8:00 and in the MEAC Tournament and Norfork State loses in the 6:00 game. So in one night the 1 and 2 seed teams that went 31-1 in conference play lose. And now you're saying whoa, man, what's happening here. Now we've got a chance to play against Delaware State on Friday, and we felt like we could beat Delaware State and had a great offensive game that night. And then the next thing you know, we're in the championship game. And Morgan was big and talented, but at that point in time, our guys were believing. And that's the way they played last night. I wasn't -- I had no -- I wasn't -- any fear when we got down 9-2 last night and we got a young freshman, Bruce Beckford, who had a tremendous game. Had 16 points and 9 rebounds. He's going to be an All Conference caliber player, a mid major player. He got going, and then Underwood got going. We felt all along that we could play with Liberty and eventually beat Liberty. Q. You mentioned Reverend Jackson called you. What do you think this run is doing for both the team and the program and the school just on a national level? COACH ALEXANDER: It's huge. I got this from the chancellor, I got this from Mr. Hilton, our athletics director. They say -- I've been on the radio all day today back in North Carolina and to get a call from Reverend Jackson and him saying just how historic this is for North Carolina A&T University as well as the basketball -- it should help us in our recruiting efforts. It should help us in our applications, student application efforts, and it should hopefully help us with the corporate community in North Carolina seeing that, you know, you coming in your first year and these sort of things have happened. You can look at enough things we've done in our very first year. Win 20 games. They hadn't won 20 games since '87, '88. Have a winning season, win the MEAC Tournament. Win a game in the NCAA Tournament. Everything we've done like Mr. Hilton said, Cy, I felt like you were going to do these things, I didn't feel you were going to do them this soon. But, the key was the seven seniors. They bought into what I was selling when I got the job. I told them I was going to push them harder than they ever been pushed before. I just felt like - the previous coach did a good job. I didn't think they played hard enough. That was my observation of watching tape. So we were very hard on them. We pushed them extremely hard in individual workouts, in lifting weights and conditioning, because I needed them to understand that they needed to work. If they worked only as hard as they been working, the results were going to be the same. So, we had to try to change the mindset and the work ethic, and they'll tell you they thought I was a crazy man, you know, how hard I pushed them. But, you know, they begin to understand and begin to buy in. And, again, couldn't have done it without our seniors buying in, because I said, hey, guys, it's got to be us eight people sitting down, meeting once a week, talking, trying to figure this thing out. If you don't like what I'm doing, I'm sorry, you know, this is the way we're going to do it. They bought in and we turned it around, and consequently these guys are going out now as being the first North Carolina A&T men's basketball team that won a game in the NCAA Tournament. They can always share that with their grandkids. THE MODERATOR: Any other questions for Coach? Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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