NCAA Tournament: What Chris Beard had to say about Virginia Tech
Texas men’s basketball head coach Chris Beard was made available to the media on Monday to preview Friday’s NCAA Tournament first round game against the Virginia Tech Hokies.
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Virginia Tech, coached by Mike Young, won the ACC Tournament championship and has taken 13 of their last 15 games.
Beard spoke about preparing for the challenge, and some players even offered thoughts on facing Virginia Tech’s style of play.
Beard on playing Virginia Tech: “Our first opponent… arguably the hottest team in college basketball right now. Coach Young and those guys have won 13 out of the last 15 games. They went to the ACC Tournament really with the fate of having to win it to get in, and that’s exactly what they did. They’re playing great basketball. They’ve got really good players. They’ve got a unique style of play. We’ve played against (Young’s) teams in the past when he was at Wofford. Our respect level is off the charts. We’re friends. I don’t like playing friends in tournament, but if you’re doing that at least you’re in the tournament. We’ll have to play great. We’ll have to play probably our best game of the year to advance, but that’s no different than most teams in tournament. There’s only a few that can slide by with a B-zone game. We’ll have to play our A-zone game. We’ll have to play great in the first round, and that’s what we intend to do.”
Beard on why he thinks Texas can be a factor in the NCAA Tournament: “I think we’re going to be a factor in this because we’ve got good players and they’re playing for each other right now. We’ve got a chemistry amongst those 11 guys. We’ve got a rotation that’s making a lot of sense right now, so I think we have an opportunity. I think the Big 12 prepared us, battle tested us. Now we’ve got to go out, we’ve got to try to beat, basically, another Big 12 team. Virginia Tech’s a team that would win multiple games in our league, could play with anybody in our league, but my confidence comes from our players. My confidence comes from I think they understand the opportunity they have. Last night, guys were in the gym up until 11 o’clock, midnight, and back in here early this morning. My confidence comes from our players.”
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Beard on how the schedule has prepared them for a team like Virginia Tech: “Selection show Sunday, you see your name up there, it’s time to roll. Hopefully we can learn from some of our experiences this year. We’re going to have to guard pick and roll better against Virginia Tech than we did (against) Gonzaga. We’re going to have to rebound better against Virginia Tech better than we did (against) Seton Hall. We’re going to have to guard the three-point line against Virginia Tech better than we did (against) Iowa State. You learn some of those lessons along the way, and that ultimately is what March is about.”
Texas F Christian Bishop on defending a team ranked highly in three-point shooting: “When you play against teams like that, you want to hold them to one shot a possession. If that thing goes up, of course you’ve got to rebound. Rebounding wins games so we’ve just got to take care of every single possession and not let them get open looks. We’ll see how that goes for us.”
Texas G Marcus Carr on defending VT’s three-point shooting: “Just try not to let them do that, obviously. They’re a great shooting team. We’re just going to take this week to go through the scout and figure out how we’re going to take them out of what they want to do.”
