Virginia's Ryan Odom After NCAA Tournament Win vs Wright State: "Just really proud of the way that our guys fought"

Survive and advance is the popular mantra in the NCAA Tournament and the Virginia Cavaliers personified that today in their performance against 14th seeded Wright State. UVA had an unexpected back and forth affair with the Raiders, but they came out on top in the end and will advance to the second round matchup against Tennessee on Sunday.

Kept Fighting

Anything can happen in March and it looked like the biggest upset of the Tournament so far was going to happen this afternoon in Philadelphia. Wright State had a great shooting day and had the answers for the tough defense that Virginia has.

After the game, Cavaliers head coach Ryan Odom talked about his team's ability to fight through the adversity and earn the win:

"Can't say enough good things about Wright State. They played lights out. They gave us everything that we could handle throughout the game. It was an excellent and well-played game, a real competitive game. They played a little bit differently than we were expecting going into the game and how we prepared. They did a nice job on picking on our big guys a little bit in terms of popping and shooting some threes, but our guys did a nice job throughout the game of adjusting, and just hanging in there. And that's what you've got to do in this tournament. It's not going to be perfect. It's not meant to be perfect.

Other teams, all of the teams in this tournament, have prepared at a high level and been in tight situations throughout the season, Virginia included in that. Just really proud of the way that our guys fought throughout the game. Certainly, the second half was key for us, locking in on defense and really contesting and making things as hard as we could possibly make them.

We got up 67-61, and they went on a run, 68-67, and we were reeling a little bit. I thought our guys did a nice job in that moment of rallying and finding a way to focus on what the task at hand was. We were in a possession ballgame at that point, and our guys did a great job finding Jacari certainly, but then getting key stops when we needed them."

This is the first tournament victory for Virginia since their win over Texas Tech in the 2019 national championship, but that was something that Odom did not talk about with his team before this game:

"We never talked about it. We only talk about what this team wants to accomplish. We had no thought about the history other than being proud of the history of Virginia basketball. We do talk about that without question and we showed them one shining moment two days ago from the 2019 National Championship and the guys got a since of, okay, I'm wearing that jersey. This is pretty cool! And today we showed them one shining moment of all of them playing over the course of the season.

So it wasn't an actual tournament game. Now we actually have some footage, but it was all these guys. Billy Bales put it together for our guys this morning. I wanted them to see themselves over the course of the season having tremendous joy, both on and off the court. This is the culmination of the season. We're all at the end here. We're all trying to extend it as long as we possibly can.

The more you focus internally on the guys that you're with and trying to play for the guy beside you, the better chance you have of staying in the tournament. You're going to face hard challenges throughout and we certainly faced our fair share today.

At the end of the day, these guys just did their job and enjoyed the moment."

Virginia has survived one round and advanced to the next. The Cavaliers have a very tough test against a Tennessee team that had a great opening round win against Miami (OH) today. Let's see if this team can get to the Sweet 16.