NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - TCU VS OHIO STATE

March 19, 2026

Jamie Dixon

Xavier Edmonds

Micah Robinson

David Punch

Bon Secours Wellness Arena

TCU Horned Frogs

Media Conference

TCU - 66, Ohio State - 64

THE MODERATOR: At this time we're going to start the press conference. We're going to have an opening statement from Coach Dixon.

JAMIE DIXON: I'm very happy for our guys. They earned it. They've earned it all year long. It's been quite a journey for this team. Obviously a young group.

But responded, and what a test of character to have the lead and it go away from us. I didn't think we played that poorly. We missed some shots. The shots are never something that we don't want to do. We want to make shots. We had them around the rim. We just didn't finish.

They responded. They came back. Their comeback is a testament to their team as well. It's a really good team that's been playing really well, Ohio State.

But what a character check for us down the stretch and just going and executing on every play in the last, what, two-minute game like we do, right? Like we do. It was multiple guys in a variety of ways and changed up our defenses. That helped us.

Guys convinced me to change on the last play, the one before. You know they got 3 on that one, by the way? But we guarded it well. We guarded it well, so I'll let you get away with that one. It was a tough 3 that they hit.

They're a great opponent, great team, and I'm proud of our guys.

Q. Question for Xavier. We know how excited you were yesterday just being here in this moment. How crazy is it to hit a game-winner your first game of the tournament?

XAVIER EDMONDS: It's real crazy. I don't know, again, I still haven't processed all of it. It didn't really like hit me until I went to the locker room and checked my phone and everybody was hitting me and stuff like that.

I don't want to get too ahead of myself. I know we've got a big one tomorrow. So we are just going to prep for that.

MICAH ROBINSON: Saturday.

DAVID PUNCH: Saturday.

Q. Your boy Punch kind of generated some buzz on social media yesterday. I'm curious did you guys see, I guess, how that blew up? Did that kind of add some energy to like rally around to make sure his prediction came up true?

XAVIER EDMONDS: Yeah, I felt like it kind of put a little more pressure on us, but at the same time, I know his words were just a little bit misconstrued and a little twisted. That's not 100 percent how he meant it.

Still we seen it, and we felt like we had to stand on it. So we wanted to go out there and make sure we won 9 out of 10 times.

Q. Xavier, can you explain how you were able to get to where you were on the final play, how you were able to get to that spot and be so firm?

XAVIER EDMONDS: Coach drew up a ran five play, just like a regular pick-and-roll, and I just rolled deep. I feel like the first look initially wasn't there, and we got it to Punch, and he created some space. He didn't have a shot he wanted, so he kicked it out to me, and I had a good seal and I just went up with it. Credit to him for making a better pass, and I just made a good play.

Q. Punch, I know you were dealing with foul trouble in the first half, but what was your mentality, what was working for you in the second half as you kind of sparked the team to kind of hold the line as they made that comeback?

DAVID PUNCH: It's hard, but for sure I believe in my team the whole time. I just try to stay as active as I can on the bench, as loud as I can, be in that huddle, because I know they're going to take care of the game out there without me. Whether I'm out there or not, they're basketball players too, and they want to win as much as I do.

I trusted them, and I just made sure when I came out in the second half, that I had all that energy out on the court.

Q. Micah, your March Madness debut as well too, 18 points, thought you almost hit the game-winning 3, I guess. How do you feel about your performance today?

MICAH ROBINSON: I feel good. I feel like obviously there's things I can improve on. I feel like there were some defensive rotations that I missed, but obviously it feels good to come away with the win and just excited to prepare for Saturday. Saturday, right?

DAVID PUNCH: Yeah, Saturday.

XAVIER EDMONDS: Oh, it's Saturday? I'm sorry, Saturday. Prepare for Saturday.

JAMIE DIXON: Better show up, Micah.

XAVIER EDMONDS: We're excited to play.

Q. Xavier, Bruce Thornton came in here averaging 20, shooting 56 percent from the field. What can you say about defensively the job guys like Jayden and Tanner did on him today?

XAVIER EDMONDS: It's something that Coach instilled in us since summertime, just having a lot of ball pressure on good guards. It's worked for us down the line in the season, especially in close games.

We just felt like them as a Big Ten team, they just haven't felt or seen a defense like ours, just being in the Big 12 and the different level of physicality and intensity. So we just wanted to go out there and show them what Big 12 basketball is about really and just do our job, everything we were taught, and it worked out.

Q. This is for all three of you guys. Being in the Big 12, I know Coach Dixon has prepared you guys for all types of situations, the highs and the lows, which happened in that game today, the highs and the lows. What was the thing that got you, each one of you all, through it to help endure that 15-point lead and to survive coming from behind again?

DAVID PUNCH: Stay together. Our thing in the media and the timeouts was sticking together. We tried to get into a huddle after every dead ball and talk to each other, just talk through it. Once you get away from that, that's when the lead starts to grow for the other team. We just wanted to make sure we stuck together and did just that. We won the game.

MICAH ROBINSON: Just to add on that, I really feel like every game we played down this last stretch has kind of been like that because we've been trying to play our way into the Tournament, I guess, and we've had to play some teams that are also on the bubble.

I really feel like just us being battle tested has kind of allowed us to do what he said and kind of stick together and come out with the win.

THE MODERATOR: Open it up for questions for Coach.

Q. Jamie, can you explain what your priorities were defensively with Thornton and what approach you were taking and how you were able to hold him, not so much to so few points, but to so few attempts?

JAMIE DIXON: Yeah, first of all, that's the guys that scored 50 points, those three guys. Our thing, we see good guards, and it's always in our mentality, wherever I've been in the Big East, ACC, but we're going to see the best guards in the country. He's certainly the best.

The troubling thing was I was watching film, and I go, well, he's better than I thought. Then I started to watch more, and I thought he's better than I thought, Thornton. Then I looked at his stats, and I thought the 56 percent from the field was wrong. There's no way a guard is shooting 56 percent, but it's accurate.

So to hold him, what we did, I think he went to even nine shots, and 3-of-9 is remarkable. He had four assists. He was making other plays. I think we bothered them early as a team with our pressure, forced some turnovers, but they stayed with it and they battled.

We wanted to get the ball out of the ball guard's hands, and we tried to do that, and we made him work on that every play. With that, we switched up our defense at the end, that's five, six possessions, to give us a different look because they were scoring on us. It wasn't really him, which kind of surprised us, but it was some passing between big, big, and some strange plays, I thought. That was it.

It's team defense. It's not one guy, everybody asking, who is guarding him? He was getting all kinds of ball screens. We wanted to take away the curls in the lane that he's good at. We wanted to blow up the ball screens and make him give it up. If it's 20 points a game, he's not scoring one way. He's scoring in multiple ways. Not letting him get going in transition. He hit the 3, the 3 hit, and we guarded him as good as we could. With that said, he's still going to make plays.

But I've never seen a guard shoot 56 percent. So I'm glad we're done and don't have to play him again.

Q. What do you think the key was for you guys to kind of just hold the line? I think you just kind of executed really well in those final five minutes.

JAMIE DIXON: The timeout, the execution, we wanted to get the last shot on the last play, and you couldn't have done any better. I looked at it, and he shot it with 1.8 on the clock. Obviously we got a couple seconds to get a rebound and put it in if we miss, which is obviously a strength of ours. Then obviously with the make, they've got a little time.

What I really liked -- and it's funny. It's one of my pet peeves, we call it funnel, but the end-of-the-game situation or end of clock, when guys have time in, and we work on it endlessly. It's taken us forever to get it right, but we did it perfectly and made them put him in position, and we never got through half-court, Thornton on that one. We guarded as well as we possibly could. It was 4.1 -- I guess they gave them another couple extra tenths. It's remarkable we were able to keep a guy that quick, that strong shooting from half-court.

Great execution on the timeout. Out of the timeout, all the plays -- Brock made the right pass. Jayden was the first option. Punch was the second option. But ultimately, it was get the ball inside at the end of it, and then we did.

Yeah, we do two-minute games. That's what we said in the huddle, two-minute game, and that's what we did down the final stretch, which them hitting a remarkable 3-point shot on us, by the way.

Q. Coach, I know every game, every possession, every half is different. What is something that you can take out of this game that you can take into your next game?

JAMIE DIXON: I think the biggest thing, looking for improvements, right? I thought we took good shots, and that started that second half. We just missed a bunch of bunnies, they call it, around the rim. We've seen where we let down defensively and it's unnatural. It's how you handle some missed shots. You're frustrated, you're mad.

Everybody likes to put the ball in the basket, and no one wants to let the team down. I thought that's where we kind of let up defensively because we just -- it's so many missed shots around the rim. I couldn't believe the ones we missed to start the second half.

Really I think that's how they were able to come back because we got the shots we wanted, we just weren't able to put it in the basket.

So we responded late. We had X -- and then of course, we had Punch and X in foul trouble once again. We fought through that.