NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - ABILENE CHRISTIAN VS TEXAS

March 20, 2021

Joe Golding

Lucas Oil Stadium - Unity Court (South)

Abilene Christian Wildcats

Postgame Media Conference

Abilene Christian - 53, Texas - 52.

THE MODERATOR: We'll start with an opening statement from coach.

JOE GOLDING: First of all, ultimate respect to the University of Texas and Coach Smart. Just had an incredible year this year. Very, very talented team and we just have the utmost respect for them. Just want to say that. Then I just wanted to obviously stating the obvious here, man, just really, really proud of my guys. We showed tremendous heart tonight, a ton of adversity all night long, couldn't get the ball to go in the basket, couldn't find a way to score, but just continued to guard and found a way to get on the offensive glass. I think we had 18 offensive rebounds to their five and when you're not making shots and you can't get anything to go, you got to find a different way to win. So just an incredible win for our university and for our basketball team, just extremely proud.

THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions.

Q. We've talked a couple times this year about what this year kind of means for the path of ACU basketball, joining the WAC, having this great regular season, doing this tonight against the flagship school in this state. What does this mean for this team and kind of the future of this program?

JOE GOLDING: I have no idea. I'm sure there's a lot of positives that are going to come out of that. We just beat the University of Texas. Little old Abilene Christian out in West Texas built a program that went toe-to-toe with the University of Texas and it's an incredible story. It's what March is about. I said this a couple days ago on a radio show, it's been a tough year for all of us. We have had, obviously the COVID is a real thing. We have had a lot of social justice issues. We have had a presidential election that divided our country. We needed March Madness, man, we needed some type of normalcy to our country. We needed people to fill out brackets. We needed people to cheer for the underdog. This is what March is about in our country, man, we celebrate this and to be a part of it, Texas has had a great couple days, man. North Texas, credit to Grant and those guys and a huge win over Purdue, and then one of our former assistants at Oral Roberts had a big win the other night. So it's just been great for our little tree and family. And then obviously, it's been well documented, my relationship with Chris Beard and just proud of those guys. So it's what March is about, man. It's magical.

Q. I'm curious, just, you go to those free throws. Joe's obviously, he's a 58 percent free throw shooter. What's going through your mind? Do you say anything to him? I know you guys had a timeout right before him.

JOE GOLDING: We talked about what we were going to do when he made them both. At that point it was done. I knew he was making them. He works harder than anybody in our program. He lives in the gym. He's there every day working on his game. And even this week while we have been quarantined in our hotel we have a workout during the afternoon and then he goes back at night with Coach Bostic and he gets work in. I think they have 30-minute windows where you can do individuals. Things happen to guys that work hard. That kid works extremely hard. He's a winner. He's been a winner his whole life. He comes from a great family. His dad was a professional football player. His mother is an incredible woman that has kept that family together. He's just a great kid, hard working kid. I knew they were getting in. All we talked about was make Texas throw the ball in front of us and if they threw the lob go get it.

Q. Just kind of rewinding back 10 years, a decade, since you started at this job. We talked about it earlier, but can you put into some more context just about starting at a DII program that wasn't doing too well and then turning it into this?

JOE GOLDING: Yeah, I mean, I don't have thoughts on that right now. It's a heck of a story. I told you that. Somebody's going to write about it one day. We were the worst Division I team in the country and now we just beat the University of Texas. So there's been a lot of great players that have come in our program. Some that haven't won as many games early on when we were building this program, and then we continued to recruit the right kids and continued to work and build on the identity of our program and it just continued to get blessed with it, man, so it's a credit to our players that have been a part of this process and not just this team, every team that's helped us build the foundation. And we have had a great staff. We have had this staff together for a long time. Coach Crass left us to go to Otero Junior College to be a head coach. We brought Coach Trilli back. But this group's been together a long time and it's a special deal. It's becoming a family-type atmosphere. When you get former players to call you before the game, it's what it's about.

Q. We spoke down in Katy, Texas, after you won the tournament. You said this was going to be a different trip than two years ago when you played Kentucky. You said we were going to win a game this time. What was the necessary preparation you and your team and the coaching staff had to do before this game tonight?

JOE GOLDING: First of all, as a leader, you got to get your guys to believe in something. You have to believe first. If you don't believe it's not going to happen. Our guys believed. I didn't have to say much. It's completely different than the Kentucky game two years ago. We weren't in awe of the charter plane, we weren't in awe of the police motorcade, we didn't celebrate like crazy when our name came up against Texas. It's been all work this week. We got to work. We had really good practices. We were locked into the scouting report. Coach Tanner did a tremendous job on the defensive end with those guys, getting them ready. We knew it was going to be a struggle to score. We knew points were going to be hard. We had to turn them over. We had to guard the three-point line, and we had to rebound the basketball. We hold them to 7 threes. That was our goal. We out-rebounded Texas 36-31. We had 18 offensive rebounds, and we only had 11 turnovers. We wanted 10. So we executed the game plan perfectly and then we had a chance. Credit them. It was a bad, it was a bad rotation on us defensively. We're not supposed to leave shooters there. We were switching everything. But our guys just react, we fly around, it's hard to get them to change and do something on the fly. We left Andrew Jones. He hit a big-time shot and then our guys came back and never quit and handled that adversity and obviously big-time offensive rebound. Reggie gets it up on the glass and Joe goes and gets it.

Q. What is your approach to the players after that big win to kind of keep them even-keeled and focused on the goal ahead?

JOE GOLDING: We're going to have to get them focused. Obviously our guys, they're excited right now, but we have to get back to the hotel. It's almost 1 o'clock in the morning. We got a long night ahead of us as a coaching staff. I don't know who we're playing, so we're going to have to get ready for the next opponent and then wake up tomorrow and get ready. It's a quick turnaround and we're going to have to get our team ready. There's two ways you can go. You can stay up all night and read your phone and everything that's good that everybody's talking about you or you can put that phone away and you can get some rest, you can hydrate, and get off your feet and have a great workout tomorrow and get ready to beat our next opponent. Those are the two choices we have and we'll talk to our guys about it when we get back. I think that phone, whatever's written about us tonight and tomorrow, that's going to be there for the rest of their life to read about, so hopefully we can get them focused back on our next opponent.

Q. It seemed like there were several shots you guys drove in, very contested bank-in shots where if I was a UT fan I would say, how are they making these shots? Any explanation for those difficult shots?

JOE GOLDING: They're winners. We wanted to drive and get some shots up on the rim and shots will go in. The more you get up there, the more, the better chance we have to go in. So it's tough to score against Texas. I don't know if you saw the game out there, but they're long, they're athletic, they're big, they're tough. We got two little five-eight, five-nine guards out there, so it's not as easy as it looks, man. So we were just battling, man. We knew if we could get it on the rim we could have one chance to go in or we could get the offensive rebound. So we missed some good looks. I thought we had some good opportunities that we missed. And we obviously wish we could have made those, but we didn't. And we knew it was going to be a struggle to score. Texas is, for as good as they are offensively, they're really good defensively, they're long, they're athletic, and they don't give you anything easy.

Q. Can you describe what your thought process was when Joe went to the line? I mean, you know what his numbers are. What are your thoughts at that point?

JOE GOLDING: Again, I thought they were going in. I had zero doubt that they were going in. The kid works hard. He deserves good things. He's a good free throw shooter, he really is. He hasn't shot the free throws well this year, but he works on them all the time and I knew they were going in. Good things happen to good people. It was part of the story. The story was written, Joe was going to make those free throws, I had no doubt.

Q. You talked about the family atmosphere earlier on, and throughout the TV broadcast they kept showing shots of your wife and how nervous, it seemed like, she was. How much did it mean to be able to have your family in attendance tonight for this big moment?

JOE GOLDING: It meant a ton. We've got a close-knit family, really close, and it meant a ton for them to be here. I haven't seen my wife or my kids in over a week now, so I've obviously miss them terribly. I wave at my wife out of the hotel window every day since she got here. This is, that's the tough part about being here. I wish I could celebrate with them because she's the rock of the family. When you're a college basketball coach at this level you're gone away from home. A lot of times you spend time with other people's kids instead of your kids, and moments like this I wish I had my wife and my kids with me to celebrate it. But I'm sure they're going to be celebrating and when we get back to Abilene we'll have time for that. But that's probably the only negative to this is not having them with me. But my mom and my dad were here and my brother. My brother's got a heck of a story, a great journey, and he's been with us all year and it's been a lot of fun to have him with me.

Q. Great win tonight. So now you move on. What, you play UCLA next. What is the attitude? What do you tell your guys as you go on? You beat Texas already. Now you can try to make a run in this tournament. What's the message now?

JOE GOLDING: I don't know. We're going to have to get back and figure it out, but I think it's what I said earlier. I think it's just we got two choices. You can read on your phone everything about the Texas win or you can get focused on UCLA. I mean, it's a PAC-12 team that's really, really, really good. They're going to have length, size, athleticism, just like this, and you're going to have to be locked in to play. If we don't come ready to play and we're still thinking about Texas we'll get blitzed on Monday night. So we got to get our team focused. I don't know how we do that, but we'll figure it out. Here's the thing about our team, we have shown up every night. Every night this team has showed up and I know our guys will be ready to go.

Q. Let's talk about something that was actually very vivid on social media, and that was the bench for Abilene Christian and how rowdy it was throughout the entire game. How much of an impact does the bench bring the necessary energy for a game like this?

JOE GOLDING: It's about family. It's not fake. It's not fake at all. We have been doing that all year and we have been doing that the last two or three years here. We have a saying in our program from October to March, we play for what's on the front of our chest. From March to October we develop our players and we get better and we work on their game. But from October to March it's about what's on the front of your chest. And it's been that way around here for awhile. We really believe in that. We build real relationships with our players. We coach our players really, really hard, but we love them harder off the floor. And I think you see that. It's true love. There's nothing fake about it. It's not just because it's the University of Texas. Go watch us play Howard Payne in December. It was the same way. It's just who we are.