Scott Cross took a Waffle House question at Troy's NCAA practice

Scott Cross couldn’t escape his first NCAA Tournament press conference without a question about his Waffle House comments to KSR+ earlier this week. In case you missed it, Cross told KSR+ that Troy prefers to sign players who like Waffle House and that the two Waffle Houses in town are a big part of the Troy community.

“The people at Waffle House are my kind of people,” he said to Jacob Polacheck. “I absolutely love them there. They’ve been so good to us – Miss Mary, Miss Jennifer. A lot of the time, after we win, it’s one of the few places that’s open. I’ll go there with my family. We’ll eat there and soak it in before we put the win to bed. Every time we celebrate a birthday, we celebrate it there. We take our team there.”

On Thursday in Milwaukee, Waffle House came up again in Cross’s preview of Troy’s tournament game against Kentucky. A reporter asked about his most recent trip to Waffle House and what it was like seeing the story blow up online leading up to the tournament.

Cross replied, “All that is true stories. None of it is lies. I was asking my wife yesterday about it. I was, like, how many times do you think we’ve went to Waffle House in the six years. She’s like at least a hundred. That’s with my wife. So you can multiply that by two or three because, like, even our team meetings last year, when we were putting the team together and trying to convince everybody to stay, I was meeting individually with each guy, and I would ask them where they want to go. Probably out of the 11 guys that were returning, probably 9 of them said Waffle House.

“I definitely had to watch what I ate the rest of the day because I definitely ate a lot during those Waffle House runs. And then a lot of times after we win, it’s the only place open, and we love it there. They’re family. So, yeah, the stories are all true, though. None of it is made up.”

Unfortunately for Troy, the nearest Waffle House to Milwaukee is in Illinois, over five hours away.