Everything Eric Musselman said after Arkansas’ upset win over Gonzaga in the Sweet 16
By Keith Farner
Published:
Arkansas pulled off the latest upset in the NCAA Tournament Thursday night when the No. 4 seeded Razorbacks took down No. 1 Gonzaga 74-68.
In one of the more special moments of March Madness, coach Eric Musselman found his mother, Kris, for a celebratory embrace. It was the first time she watched him coach the Razorbacks.
JD Notae finished with 21 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 steals and even a couple blocks for the Razorbacks (28-8). They made the the Elite Eight for a second straight year and will face No. 2 Duke on Saturday trying to stand in the way of coach Mike Krzyzewski making another Final Four in his final season.
Here are all of Musselman’s comments in the post-game press conference, courtesy of ASAP Sports:
ERIC MUSSELMAN: I just thought defensively we played so good. I thought we did a great job of forcing turnovers. 15 turnovers. Gonzaga is a great passing team. They’re extremely unselfish. We held them to nine assists, so that differential of assist to turnovers, we felt like things we wanted to do defensively. I thought Trey Wade did a great job of denying and pressuring their trail man. We eliminated a lot of their high-lows, which was extremely important for us. Au’Diese’s defense just incredible the entire game on their point guard.
Then Trey Wade’s points when we desperately needed them were huge for us as well, and then Jay Will with the double-double played incredible interior. We actually outscored them in the paint, which was one of our goals, although we did not get to the foul line as much as maybe we had hoped to. We have to do a better job of drawing FTAs.
Q. This one is for Coach: Big win for y’all, obviously. How about just the thought on the defensive game plan? Seems like you guys stuck to it for 40 minutes and never let up the whole way through.
ERIC MUSSELMAN: Again, I thought it’s one of the fastest-paced teams that I’ve ever seen with the push of the ball, but even this morning we were still working on our transition defense. We wanted to take away their long outlet passes. That was something that we picked up on film when Nembhard would get a head of steam, and Au’Diese met him really, really early away in the back court, and I thought that really helped, and they did a great job of their pitch-ahead sideline and break. We took that away.
We grinded in our prep. I give these guys a ton of credit. We took a four-hour flight after traveling from Buffalo to Fayetteville for 24 hours to here, and then we went straight to an hour and 45 minute practice.
Can’t compliment these guys and the entire team enough for the way that they buy in to game preparation. It’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever been a part of that they just kind of do what we ask.
Q. For Eric: Andrew has very rarely been locked down like he was tonight. What was the key of what Toney did with him, and as well for the bigs. You did a nice job on their bigs where are?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: We were fortunate. We played Andrew when he was at Florida, and we were at Nevada, and we didn’t do a good enough job of pressuring him and being physical, and then we played him, obviously, my first year at Arkansas, and I thought he did a really good job against us. I went back and watched all of his clips from those two games because, obviously, we have the same system in, but we have different personnel. And certainly the job that Au’Diese did — because we had a really tough decision because J.D. is a really good defender too and a high steal player, but we felt like that cross-match might benefit us. I was a little worried about matching up that way and then the transition game.
And then inside we just wanted to be physical, plain and simple. We wanted them to feel bodies. I played in that league. I know what some of the teams are like in that league, and the physicality and the speed that we can play with is just different, and, obviously, they played a really tough schedule early in the season, but it’s been a long time in conference play since they faced a team like us.
We weren’t going to back down, I can tell you that, inside. We took away their threes. I thought it was as good as we could play against a really, really great team that’s extremely well-coached.
Q. Coach, I thought J.D.’s 9-for-29 was the best offensive performance I’ve ever seen. The way you trusted him, put the ball in his hands, I don’t think they dealt with it the whole game. It was just impressive to see you just attack, attack, attack.
ERIC MUSSELMAN: No thanks. He only took 29 shots. We trust him. I’m going to roll with the guys that have done it all year. He could have missed ten more shots, and I probably would have still called his number because I had that belief that the next one is going in. So do his teammates.
I do think that we did a really good job of finding cutters at really opportunistic times. They really, really loaded up on J.D. Devo had a great pass to a cutter. Au’Diese had a great slash, and then we needed to play through Jay Will when things kind of got discombobulated with J.D. out there handling it and sending an extra defender. And then, obviously, Trey makes those shots in practice. He’s a lethal three-point shooter with his feet set, and they sloughed off and helped and over-helped off of him, and he did a great job of shooting the ball with great confidence.
Q. Coach, have you had a chance to see your mom post-game?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: I went and gave her a hug. She gave me a buckeye from Ohio that my dad used to hold. She gave it to me pregame, so I’m sure she’s going to give the credit to herself for that lucky buckeye she’s held for 60 years or whatever.
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
