What Mark Few said prior to Gonzaga Bulldogs' Sweet 16 matchup vs. UCLA
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LAS VEGAS - The Gonzaga Bulldogs are in Las Vegas preparing for their NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 matchup with UCLA on Thursday. The team had a shootaround inside T-Mobile Arena on Wednesday and afterwards head coach Mark Few addressed the media.
Here's some of what the Bulldogs coach had to say.
On the UCLA matchup:
"I'm excited as heck to have another week with the guys and to be involved in another Sweet 16. We've had a lot of experience here at T-Mobile, even against UCLA. It's going to be a great environment tomorrow night and we know we're in for a huge, huge challenge with their experience, their toughness and their general will to win. I'm looking forward to it."
On the significance of Gonzaga making eight straight Sweet 16's:
"It's probably 1A and 1B, the Sweet 16 run of eight years and making [the NCAA Tournament] 24 years straight is probably the thing I'm most proud of, in terms of our team accomplishments. It means we've stayed relevant. We haven't dropped off...We haven't lost in the first round. Again, our guys deserve all of the credit for just maintaining that winning DNA and just figuring it out...This probably wasn't looking realistic there way back in November, early December."
On if he buys into Gonzaga and UCLA being a rivalry:
"The interesting thing about this is Mick [Cronin] and I worked really, really hard all offseason a year ago to try and put that game together here. I thought it ended up being a fabulous environment. It was No. 1 vs. No. 2 right after Jalen's [Suggs] shot. There's a familiarity with our teams obviously back to the 2021 Final Four...There are a lot of the same characters in this game compared to last year. This is kinda the Act 3 here in a small time frame."
On Drew Timme:
"Drew just delivers. This year, our first ten of 15 games we leaned on him harder than we've leaned on anybody even in guarantee games when we were in trouble we'd throw him the ball 12 straight times and eke out a seven point win. As fun, charismatic and goofy as he is off the floor, he is an elite level competitor when the ball goes up."
You can watch Few's full press conference video above.
