NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: SECOND ROUND - LOYOLA CHICAGO VS ILLINOIS

March 21, 2021

Cameron Krutwig

Bankers Life Fieldhouse

Loyola Chicago Ramblers

Postgame Media Conference

Loyola Chicago 71, Illinois 58

THE MODERATOR: We're now joined by Loyola senior center Cameron Krutwig.

Q. As the time was ticking away and you guys started to celebrate and it sunk in, what were you guys feeling?

CAMERON KRUTWIG: Just relief. You know, we worked so hard all year to get to this point, to make the tournament, to compete against the best. If you want to be the best, you've got to beat the best. They're a really, really good team, and we came out and we just executed and played our game and kind of controlled the game from the start.

We just stuck to the game plan, really. No one was doing anything out of their body, out of their mind. We just stuck to the game plan, what Coach drew up in the huddle and stuff. Just a great sense of relief, and to do it with these guys, especially throughout this whole year, just with COVID and everything, no fans and everything like that, just a special moment.

Q. You've obviously been to the Final Four; where does this win rank in your career so far?

CAMERON KRUTWIG: I mean, it's special because it's the next one. It's super special, especially with like I said before, with the COVID and everything. This year has been a roller coaster, from cancelling games to no fans to not even knowing if we're going to have a season. Last May it was pretty dark, pretty bleak. We didn't know if we were going to have a season or anything.

That Final Four run and everything will hold a special place in my heart, obviously, but this one feels special-er and sweeter in the moment because I'm here, because I'm in the present right now. But when I look back on it, they'll all be great memories, and celebrating on the floor with the team out there, you can't beat that. I'm excited.

Like we said last round, we've got more work to do, so we're going to go ahead, get back to the drawing board. We're going to enjoy it for sure, but at some point it's going to end and we've got to focus on the next team.

Q. Obviously the hallmark of this team has been its defense. Can you give me a sense or maybe a moment of when you knew you had them frustrated? They started complaining to the refs, they looked a little bit rattled, and the way you guys played with the deliberate offense and the way you come back and guard, could you give me a sense of when that culminated today and when you knew you had them a little bit?

CAMERON KRUTWIG: Yeah, we knew they wanted to push the pace. They're one of the best teams in transition in the whole country. It wasn't that the game plan was, hey we want to slow it down as much as we can. We wanted to be opportunistic and stuff with running like we always are, but when they couldn't get out and run and couldn't find the gaps in transition, maybe that frustrated them a little bit.

You're not going to take everything away from them. They're one of the best teams in the country, so you're going to have to just pick and choose what you want to take away, and we did a good job in the ball screen defense. They caught us a couple times, but just got to stay strong and stay with it, and if they score, they score. At the end of the game, we just executed our plays and things like that, and we got the win.

Q. Describe what that matchup was like between you and Kofi underneath, and I know you were trying to bring him out a little bit. Was that part of the game plan?

CAMERON KRUTWIG: Yeah, a lot of respect to him. He's super physical, super big. I mean, it's tough to get around him. Yeah, I don't know if that -- we just ran our stuff and he was kind of letting me get catches. He wasn't really guarding me outside of three, so I just kind of took up the slack to him and made some moves, some moves that I want back. I missed a couple easy ones that I thought should have went in.

But just a lot of respect. He works so hard to seal you in there, seal you deep. He finishes everything around the rim, lobs, dunks, stuff like that. It tested me on defense, tested me on offense. Going through -- he's like a brick wall, going through him and scoring was a tough task.

Just a lot of respect to him and his game, and their game plan was to sag off and kind of let me kind of play at my own pace, so I took it and did what I wanted with it, so that was kind of what I was seeing out there.

Q. Last time it was considered kind of a Cinderella story, but now I think people are starting to believe in you a little bit more and you see all these upsets in the tournament. Do you guys feel like it's a different story now and that you actually can win this whole thing?

CAMERON KRUTWIG: I mean, yeah, it's definitely a different story. We came into this tournament ranked like 17th in the country in the AP poll. We got an 8 seed. That's just the hand we were dealt. We feel like we're one of the best teams in the country, and I think we showed that these last two games, definitely with the contrasting styles. Georgia Tech pretty much played all zone, tried to force us to make outside shots, whereas Illinois was physical, making us run our man sets and stuff.

That's the great thing about us, we can adapt to any style of play really, and you can't not think that you're one of the best teams in the country. You've got to think that and you've got to play like that, and we're excited to get to the next one. I've been here before, Lucas has been here before, Aher was a redshirt when we went to the Final Four. So we've got some experienced guys, and in times of the NCAA Tournament, it's all about runs. The game of basketball is a game of runs, and I thought that we answered a lot of their runs. Georgia Tech came out and put it on us in the first couple minutes of the game. We came out, settled in, and the same thing today. Illinois was trying to scrap and claw and fight back into the game, and we answered that, too.

We definitely think we're one of the best teams in the country, but you've got to back it up with your play.

Q. Kind of following up on that last question, you have a couple guys who are left over from 2018, but the majority of your team, this is all new to them. How have you and Lucas in particular kind of managed to educate or get guys in the right frame of mind for the tournament, and do you think that that's been accomplished now or are you still going to have to be talking them through that over the next week?

CAMERON KRUTWIG: Yeah, as you go on and as you get deeper and deeper, the media, your friends, your family, it's going to get all up another level. A lot of people are going to be hitting you up saying, hey, congrats, all this stuff. You've just got to try to find that balance between having the confidence in yourself, a respectful confidence for your opponent that you're playing, and just knowing that, hey, we're here, we're ready to go this.

I think that's one thing Coach has really done well with us in giving us that confidence to go out and play and beat anybody, and that's just -- it starts with me and Lucas and the seniors, just telling these young guys, like hey, we can do this. You've got to believe in it.

Another big thing is knowing -- picking your battles, and I've said this before. NCAA Tournament you want to enjoy it, man. You really want to enjoy it and be hype and enjoy the time off the floor with the teammates and everything and be loose and be fun and everything, but when it's time to lock in, when it's time to get on the court, we only have an hour and a half, hour and 50 minutes on the court each day. When it's time to watch film or anything like that, you've got to lock in and be ready because you don't get a lot of that time, especially now with everything being so scheduled and the cleaning and everything that needs to go on, you've really got a limited window to get work done. So you've got to lock in, and I think we've really struck that balance really well.

Q. Cameron, just wanted to ask you about the defensive game plan, trying to kind of squeeze Ayo when he had the ball and swarming Kofi when the ball went in to him. How did you get that implemented in two days?

CAMERON KRUTWIG: Yeah, it's been a whole season of that. That's our defense. Coach said that today, it's not just a 48-hour scout we've been working our whole season on our defense. I guess people kind of forgot or something but we were the No. 1 defense in the country this year. I guess people chalk it up to maybe being a mid-major or something, but we play hard, play the right way, and we follow the scout and follow the scheme.

And yeah, like you said, we were icing Ayo and some of the other guys and they faced Drexel the other day and they were in the low ice, which is not as much pressure. We kind of put the high ice on them and forced them to throw that skip, and when Kofi got it down there, you're not going to hold him catchless. He's going to catch a bunch of lob passes and stuff, so when he got it we just tried to swarm him, and the game plan worked out, and credit to the coaches, man. Those guys stay up late night, 3:00, 4:00 a.m. working on stuff, and we follow it.

It's not been a 48-hour thing, it's been a whole year.