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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: SAN DIEGO

March 17, 2018

San Diego, California

THE MODERATOR: The Auburn student-athletes are Horace Spencer and Jared Harper. And now we will take questions for the student-athletes.

Q. Horace, could you talk about your performance last night, particularly defensively and how you have coped since Anthony has been out?
HORACE SPENCER: I feel like I took on a different role because Anthony has been out, stayed out of foul trouble yesterday, played smarter. Let the game come to me and see what happened from there.

Q. Could you talk about what you have seen in Clemson so far from your scouting report?
JARED HARPER: They're a good offensive team. They have a lot of good sets and they like to be able to get in the lane and force people to help. So we have to challenge ourselves to keep a man in front of us and be able for them to see bodies so they don't tap.

HORACE SPENCER: I feel like their bigs have a dominant presence in the paint, and I've got to figure out a way to keep that presence as a restraint and keep the paint under control as the dominant big on my team.

Q. When you guys were up at Charleston at the Charleston Classic did you watch them play? Did you see them? They were in the same tournament.
HORACE SPENCER: Honestly, I don't remember.

JARED HARPER: No, I don't think we did.

Q. You were part of Auburn history last night with your first March Madness win in nearly 15 years. You did it with elite defense. How does Coach Pearl prepare you to play such great defense in such a big game?
JARED HARPER: Going into every game we know if we defend and rebound we can play with anybody. So going into the game we knew if we could defend and rebound and we weren't making our shots so something had to happen, and that was our defense.

HORACE SPENCER: I felt like defense is the main part of what you can control. You can't control if your shots fall or not, but defense is mostly effort and energy and we had to bring effort and energy in the first and second half of the game.

Q. Jared, I don't know if you saw the NCAA statement about the free throws yesterday. What happened on that? Were you surprised you were put on the line? Did you know what was going on?
JARED HARPER: No, it was just, the ref, after the foul the ref pointed at me to go to the line. So I stepped up and went to the line. Simple as that.

Q. Did you know that you didn't get fouled?
JARED HARPER: I don't really know. I just know the ref told me to go, so I went.

Q. So you weren't aware that you were a better free throw shooter and you would be better off with you on the line?
JARED HARPER: I know I'm a great free throw shooter and Chuma is a great free throw shooter, but the ref pointed to me so I went to the line.

Q. You guys are a pretty young team. Jared, what you learned from Mustapha Heron as a guard? I know he is only a sophomore, but what are the biggest take aways from his game?
JARED HARPER: He's a hard worker. That's the number one thing. We all spend time in the gym and we all learn from one another being in the gym. He's also a great competitor, which I think comes with a lot of our teammates. A lot of our teammates don't like to lose, we like to win and going along with that we are just a family together.

Q. You guys are involved in the community. What have you learned from him off the court as a leader?
JARED HARPER: He also cares for other people. He doesn't only care for himself. That's another thing I've learned from him.

Q. Horace, talk about how hard it was for you to deal with when Anthony went down and how he's handled it and helped you out some?
HORACE SPENCER: When he hurt his foot it was really emotional, a couple of us cried. I knew that game coming in the second half I had to be even more of a presence and more of a leader for the team. So that even though he's gone, still ain't no drop-off, still ain't no drop-off in the paint, I'm going to have to take on a dominant role like I said earlier and he hasn't come back. I have to pick it up and play smart and even though I'm not an offensive presence shooting threes, I still have to figure out how to be an offensive threat and I can pass the ball more and help my teammates get shots and being more of a threat that way.

Q. Auburn is known as mostly a football school. What was it like going to a school where you knew right off the bat that football was kind of up there on another level and did they kind of use football in recruiting at all with you guys? Dug to football games? Visit with the football coaches? What's the culture like there with that?
JARED HARPER: Personally, both of us have been to football games. But I just think coming to Auburn a lot of, everybody on the team wanted to make history. That was part of one of our goals for coming to Auburn was to start a new tradition, a new winning program. So we have been able to do that for the last couple of years, and we're getting better and better every year.

HORACE SPENCER: With me being the junior of the team I came in when the basketball team was at its lowest peak. So it was a major football school, and I'm not big on football. But I like to watch it, and I like to see that our football team is great and I wanted to use that as motivation for the basketball team to be as great. So it can be not just a great football school but a great basketball team as well.

Q. Did you go to football games as a recruit?
HORACE SPENCER: No, I did not. I was really only on the basketball court.

Q. Most people think Auburn, they think Charles Barkley. Have you ever met him? How much of a factor is that when you go to Auburn to play basketball? Is it in your mind? Has he talked about that?
HORACE SPENCER: We met Charles. Charles is a great guy. He's a big factor. He comes to the locker room to give us inspirational speeches and having Charles be one of the alumni is one of the great attributes to have to Auburn basketball.

JARED HARPER: I agree. He's been successful at every level. For him to come back and encourage us to see where he's been and where we're going is always good.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, gentlemen.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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