BY RODERICK BOONE
RALEIGH, N.C. -- I'm waiting on the coaches and players from North Carolina and Indiana to be made available. Still got another hour or so until that happens. But as I wait on that, here's a few thoughts from those players and coaches who've already had their say before taking the court for 40 minutes to practice.
Gonzaga coach Mark Few on playing Davidson, whose campus is about 2 1/2 hours from here: "Obviously, you can't deny we are disappointed we got sent across the country to play in their backyard. But that's just the way it goes. Butler is going through the same thing. But we have to deal with, you know, seeds and this and that. And we tell our guys, 'Control what you can control.' You can't control that. We knew were were going to play a really, really good team because we are not going to be, you know, a No. 1 seed or anything and a prohibitive favorite."
UMBC coach Randy Monroe on guarding Georgetown's 7-foot center Roy Hibbert: "I plan on having all five players cover Hibbert and come off the bench and bite him in the kneecaps. Obviously, he poses a problem to us but we'll come up with a couple of defensive schemes to try to negate him, but I don't think you can stop him from scoring. He's done a tremendous job of conditioning his body and improving his offensive skills. We are going to try to negate him as best we can to negate probably his touches and hopefully he can pass the ball back out to someone else who can make something happen."
Georgetown's Patrick Ewing Jr. on how last year's Final Four run helped the Hoyas prepare for this year: "It let us know the things that we have to do and focus and mindset that we have to have to get to where we want to be. We hopefully will have that throughout this run right here."
Davidson's Jason Richards on playing on one of the most culturally diverse teams in the NCAA: "It's fun, but it's diifferent at times because they will be speaking different languages and we don't know what they are saying. They will say something in French and us Americans don't know what they are saying. It just says a lot about Davidson as a team and as a college that we really are diverse. And I think it helps us out."