Q. You won ACC Coach of the Year. Take us through your thoughts on that. Afterwards, there was a lot of comments back and forth about maybe other people should have won it. Do you pay attention to that kind of stuff or what’s your thoughts on it?
PAT KELSEY: No. I don’t pay any attention. Obviously, there’s a bunch of coaches in this league, several that could have very, very, very easily won that award. My mom did send me the one little graphic that, I think it was Duke sent out, but I read all the stuff that they had on there, and I was like, holy crap, that’s pretty impressive, maybe he should have won it.
I don’t know. Those don’t matter. All that matters is fighting with this team to try to win a championship. We’re very fortunate to advance, survive and advance is what they say in tournament play, and we’re fortunate to do it.
Excited to find out who we’re playing. It’ll be a sleepless night, but it’ll be complete adrenaline.
This is the most fun time of the year. March is college basketball time. College basketball lovers all over America saw a thriller tonight, and again, we’re fortunate to advance.
Q. We got the players’ thoughts on the final few seconds, but I wanted to get your thoughts and what was going through your mind as the clock started to tick down to zero.
PAT KELSEY: Well, like the guys said, they ran two guys at Chucky, right, so we had, like, a play designed to Chucky lead the play and try to get him — they’re no dummies. They know Chucky is our go-to guy, so they trapped him, got it out of his hands, threw it back to Chucky. They ran at him get. So got the ball to Fat, Terrence. We call him Fat. He’s been one of the best guards in the league over the last six, eight games. He’s averaging like a million points, and he was a huge catalyst tonight.
I feel just as comfortable having the ball in Terrence’s hand, and then he shot a tough contested shot. To be honest with you, I agree with Noah. It looked good when it left his hands, and I’m thinking no way we’re going to win on a double clutch, top of the key hot contested shot, and sure enough, we didn’t.
But then the ball pops around and — the other thing that went through my mind when there was that little scrum is oh, my gosh, we cannot foul. We foul 90,000 feet from the basket, they go down there with .4 seconds on the clock, make two free throws and it’s over. The ball kind of squirted out and landed in Chucky’s hands, and there wasn’t anybody within four feet of them. Literally, it was just like pop-a-shot, I don’t even think he jumped. It was just like a little push shot. It left his hands, and I knew it was going in. It was a little bit surreal. The guys start running all over the place.
I just kept my composure. I didn’t know they were going to check the clock, whether it went in or not, whether there was going to be more time on the clock. And they looked at it and said, bucket good, game over, and it was crazy.
But those are tough, man. Thinking about those kids in that locker room at Stanford and Kyle, who’s a class act, that’s a tough way to end your season. I’ve been on the other end of it, like I said. But we’re very fortunate and lucky and excited to advance.
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