On any team with a positive COVID-19 test being eliminate from the NCAA Tournament:
“It’s probably the hardest thing that we’ve had to deal with all year because we got tested today and we’ll wait for the results tomorrow morning. I don’t think there’s any question that it’s one of the most stressful things that we’ve gone through all year. Knowing that every time you go in, even before the NCAA protocol started, we were down to 10 people getting tested, now everybody in our travel party is getting tested. Everybody. With that said, every time you do that, you’re waiting until the morning until it pops up on your phone. You hope and pray for a negative test. For everybody, you really do. We’ve now had seven straight (days with testing). I don’t think that any of us understand what the testing procedure is going to be like there. We don’t know.”
On Davonte Gaines having confidence after his playing time against Alabama:
“People on this team and in this program love Ticket. They love him. He has such a big heart. And there was no doubt, we knew they were going to run the same play and we saw who they had out there and we said ‘who can go in and guard what they’re doing at the time.’ We knew Ticket would do it. The fact that he made that play against the Player of the Year in the league. He guarded him four times in one possession in terms of the banging and shoving, then he come upon with the rebound. There was no doubt that if there was a rebound in there, he would give us as good of a chance as anyone, and he did. But to answer your question, if you knew how much he’s loved and how much it hurt him, there’s no doubt. If you’re an athlete, you compete. But the fact is, he wasn’t afraid to go in the arena, get dirty and play, and he won’t be afraid the next time. If you know him and you know where he’s from, believe me, he’s not going to (back down). Will it affect him? I don’t think so. I have no reservations whatsoever that if we need him in a situation and we think he’s going to help us win, we will put him in the game.”
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