Everything Illinois’ Brad Underwood, Marcus Domask said about facing UConn in the Elite 8
Coleman Hawkins, Ty Rodgers, and Quincy Guerrier also spoke at Friday’s press conference
Illinois men’s basketball head coach Brad Underwood and Illini players Marcus Domask, Coleman Hawkins, Ty Rodgers, and Quincy Guerrier spoke to the media on Friday, March 29 ahead of facing UConn in the Elite Eight on Saturday.
Saturday’s game will take place at TD Garden in Boston. The game is scheduled to start at 6:09 p.m. ET/5:09 p.m. CT.
No. 3-seeded Illinois comes into the game 29-8 overall, and No. 1 seed UConn enters the contest 34-3 overall.
Here is everything that the Illinois contingent said at Friday’s press conference.
Elite 8: Illinois basketball Friday press conference
THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us. Coach, if you’d like to give a quick opening statement, we’ll open it to questions after that.
BRAD UNDERWOOD: Well, obviously, very excited to be in the Elite Eight. Hard-fought game last night against a great Iowa State team. I thought we persevered and found a way to get here.
Excited about the opportunity to play the defending national champions. Obviously, a very, very good basketball team. Danny’s done a terrific job. But right where we want to be. Excited for the challenge. Got a great group of guys. To my right and to my left that have performed all season. We’re a team that has experienced many challenges, done a lot of really positive things. Won a Big Ten championship tournament. We feel like we’re playing our best and excited for the opportunity.
Q. Coleman and Ty, you guys haven’t been an underdog all that often. How do you feel about that, going up against the defending national champion, going for a Final Four?
COLEMAN HAWKINS: I feel like there’s, like, no pressure on us. I feel like it’s another game. We’re going to prepare the same way. We’re going to practice the same way. We’re going to go about film the same way.
So it’s no pressure for us. I feel confident. I feel comfortable. Yeah, just feels like we got another game and we’re grateful to be here.
TY RODGERS: I agree with Coleman. I think it’s another game and at the end of the day, we have to be ourselves and come to play and step up to that table and just accept the challenge.
Q. For Coleman and Marcus, this team appears to be having a lot of fun playing basketball right now. Has it been an enjoyable ride going back to day 1, last summer, or were there things the team had to fight through to get to this point?
COLEMAN HAWKINS: Yeah. I mean, right now I think we’re having a lot of fun. I think it’s been really fun just enjoying winning, the winning feeling, the attention that’s been brought to us, and then the connection that we have.
And then just being able to wake up and play basketball another day. So I definitely think it’s been a lot of fun. We have a fun group. We continue to have a lot of fun.
MARCUS DOMASK: I agree with Coleman. It’s been a lot of fun. This ride has been a lot of fun, just hanging out with our teammates on and off the court. Everything that’s a part of this, I think we just are enjoying being here. When the time’s to lock in, we lock in. I think it’s been a special ride and it’s been a lot of fun so far. And we’re not ready for it to end yet.
Q. Coleman and Marcus, maybe Coach, it’s been about 25 years since the Big Ten has won a championship. Coach Izzo said a couple times it’s important for the league to get another one.
Do you think there’s anything stylistically or strategically about Big Ten play that puts the teams in trouble in the tournament and what would it mean to get one or two teams in the Final Four from the league this year?
COLEMAN HAWKINS: I don’t think it’s necessarily anything play style-wise. I haven’t been in the league for 25 years, but I’ve been here for three or four. I don’t know. I just feel like the years I’ve been here, we’ve had some really good teams. For, like, the years I’ve been here, we’ve probably been the best conference in the country.
At the end of the day, we talked about the seedings don’t matter. It’s whoever the best team is that night, and I guess the Big Ten just hasn’t had a team that has been able to go out and win six games in a row.
MARCUS DOMASK: Yeah. As far as the 20, 25 years, that’s more a question for him. I’ve only been here one year. So, yeah, I don’t know why they haven’t. I think we have a really good team and so we’re just looking to change that ourselves.
BRAD UNDERWOOD: I think we had — the year we were 1 seed, I thought we were really good and had a bad day. I can’t speak to anybody else’s successes or disappointments in the tournament, but I felt like that team had as good an opportunity as anybody.
It’s what makes this event so special is it’s not a series. It’s one game. If you don’t play well, you go home. And that day Loyola was better than us. Prior to that, there’s been a lot of good teams. It’s been the best league in the country for a long time. Very passionate, great coaches.
But, yeah, it would be nice. I think everything is cyclical a little bit, and I hope we’ve got multiple teams in it this year.
MARCUS DOMASK: UConn is a really good team so our size and versatility help us. They beat a lot of teams on the boards. They get a lot of second-chance points. So our size, we’ve got to play really physical and keep them off the boards to give ourselves a chance.
QUINCY GUERRIER: Like Marcus just said, we have to be physical, use our size, especially on the rebounding aspect of the game. They’re really good offensive rebound team so we’ll have to really match their physicality and be more physical than them.
Q. Brad, what has your prep looked like in anticipation of playing UConn? Now that you know you have them, how has it changed?
BRAD UNDERWOOD: Well, it was early morning and it’s not overly complicated. They are who they are, we are who we are. It’s a quick turn. Danny and those guys do an — and his staff do an incredible job offensively. They run a lot of sets, nothing that we haven’t seen throughout the course of Big Ten play and postseason.
We’ve got to guard it. We can’t get too in-depth, but we’ve got to hammer home some of the important aspects we want to try to do on both end of the court. So we’ll go to the practice court here. We’ll be active in terms of covering some of those things, and it ultimately comes down to good players making plays in a game like this and then handling all the intangible things.
Q. A quick follow-up for the guys. Knowing you would have to go through UConn, how much have you watched their tournament run so far?
MARCUS DOMASK: I haven’t watched their tournament run very much. I’ve watched a lot of games. Honestly, I watched the exciting games but they’ve been blowing out teams, so I haven’t really followed much attention to them.
We’ll be watching a lot of film. We have watched a lot of film. So we’ll have a good understanding for what they do.
Q. This is for any of the players. Marcus, you said the other day that Coach, his approach is so professional. He treats you guys like a pro team. The video of Coach last night, the aggressiveness, the agility, the mobility —
BRAD UNDERWOOD: I appreciate that.
Q. Coach, I envy you, I couldn’t run that fast if I was chasing a burger. When you think about the way he approaches that with a water gun, did you ever think you would be seeing these images when you were being recruited by him?
MARCUS DOMASK: I don’t know if I thought I’d see the shirt off with the water gun. I don’t think that was part of the recruiting process. But, yeah, I mean, you know, he gets the rep of being the hard-nosed guy. But on the inside, he’s really kind of soft.
COLEMAN HAWKINS: Soft.
MARCUS DOMASK: He’s kind of soft on the inside.
BRAD UNDERWOOD: I’ve never been called that in my life, Marcus.
MARCUS DOMASK: But, yeah, part of this run is enjoying the moment. You’ve got to have fun. We play basketball to have fun. We love the game. So enjoy the moments and be locked in when we’ve got to be locked in.
Q. Coach, can you reflect on where this is originating from? Did you ever think you would be doing this?
BRAD UNDERWOOD: If you knew the grief I caught from my two daughters last night. And Adam Fletcher, our strength coach, has been told he has to get busy with my ab workouts.
I truly just wanted to be dry and have something to wear when I had to come meet with you all. But, no, we celebrate winning. We talk about winning a lot. And winning’s really hard. We ask these guys to work their tail off every day. It’s our moniker. Every day, guys.
that. I want them to enjoy that moment. For whatever it is, 30 minutes, whatever it is.
Our strength coach, our staff have kind of come up with some different ideas. It’s fun. They’re dragging me along for an unbelievable ride. I mean, this makes you never want to quit coaching. It’s not the winning. It’s who they are. Every one of these guys is a comedian in their own right. Yet, we know when to flip the switch.
Yeah, they’ve got a 60-year-old man taking his shirt off and doing his best dad bod. So probably not very good, not very easy to look at.
Q. When you guys left the press conference the other night, you did something with the chairs. What was that? Is that a superstition or is there a metaphor for it or something like that? Marcus?
BRAD UNDERWOOD: It’s these two guys. These two guys got the chair game going.
Q. What’s that all about?
MARCUS DOMASK: We just want to be respectful human beings and push in our chairs.
BRAD UNDERWOOD: It’s a great answer.
COLEMAN HAWKINS: You see something? We just pushed in our chairs, right?
MARCUS DOMASK: We just want to be respectful.
Q. Coach, you talked about the challenges you guys have faced this season. Obviously, the one with Terrence is a unique one. How much has having such a veteran group helped everyone navigate the path this season to get to this point?
BRAD UNDERWOOD: Yeah, the season’s a roller coaster. And it’s obviously Terrence’s situation, we’ve had injuries. We’ve played start of the year where Coleman missed three or four games. You deal with illness. It’s a roller coaster that covers many, many months. This group’s maturity, their connectivity, I use that word a lot, has allowed us to be strong, grow stronger, persevere, come together more, enjoy the challenges through all of that, whether it was Nico breaking his foot or Amani’s back injury, Coleman’s knee, the sicknesses we’ve had.
It just brings you all together. And through that is tremendous growth and connectivity that’s developed here.
Q. Coleman and Brad, you had a daunting nonconference schedule. Played Purdue a couple times, Tennessee.
Is there anything about those games that prepare you for a team like UConn?
COLEMAN HAWKINS: Yeah, I think those are two teams that we lost to, and I feel like all three of those games that we played, they were really good teams but I feel like we could have won. So I feel like we were able to learn from our mistakes, and I feel like it definitely gave us a sense of what a feel for the NCAA Tournament would be like. Really high level, competitive games. Great defensive teams.
With Purdue, getting out in transition, scoring the ball, guarding their actions. Those are two teams that are really good teams. So I definitely think it was just a learning experience for us, and we were able to learn from mistakes and definitely did prepare us for these moments for sure.
BRAD UNDERWOOD: You play the best to get ready to play the best. Again, we’ve never run away from scheduling at Illinois. We’re always going to play really, really good people. We’re going to challenge ourselves on the road, as we did with Tennessee. Game that could have gone either way. Again, I think this team is has grown a great deal since those games. We’re a rebound away against Purdue in a hard-fought game, which was our last lot.
UConn is terrific, and they’re right up there with the best teams we’ve played. But we’ve seen them all in the Big Ten as well, and we’re excited for the opportunity.
Q. Quincy, you played against UConn last year, if I’m not mistaken, out in Portland. You were on a different team, they have a lot of different guys. Anything you can take from that game going into tomorrow night as far as what you know about UConn?
QUINCY GUERRIER: They were a really good team. I think we lost that game by 20 or 30. But they’re a great team. Their offense is really good. They play good defensively too. Like Coach said, we’ve got to be focused on our game, how we’ve been defending. We’re going to have to be really physical with them defensively and take care of defensive rebounds so we can push in transition.
It’s all about us.
