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Athens, GA (Mar 28, 2009) - In Sweet Sixteen action from the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball tournament on Friday, Gonzaga had their hopes slashed by North Carolina, losing 98-77. This is the transcript of the Gonzaga University post-game press conference as provided by the NCAA and ASAP Sports.

THE MODERATOR: At this time we'll get started with Gonzaga post game
news conference. As you see, we have head coach Mark Few along with
student athletes Josh Heytvelt and Jeremy Pargo. We'll start with a
few comments from Coach Few, and then we'll take questions first for
the student athletes. Coach?

COACH MARK FEW: Well, we ran into a great basketball team tonight.
They played great. When they are shooting the ball like that,
especially from the three point line, I think it's going to be tough
for anybody to beat them.

You know, you just tip your hat to them. They played a great game.
My guys battled. We had our chances. We got it back to 11, and then
Bobby Frasor hit back to back threes and kind of drove that thing up.

We knew it was going to be a high possession game, and we even felt
good at the half when we got in there, I think, down 11.

But just could never quite get a handle on stopping them. I think we
had some turnovers and some poor shots on offense, which that just
fuels their fire. We pride ourselves on being a great transition team,
but they were much better than we were tonight.

THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for Josh and Jeremy.

Q. Josh, do you ever recall playing a basketball game that you
started in which you didn't get a rebound? And the second part of this
question is can you just evaluate the way Tyler Hansbrough played
tonight?

JOSH HEYTVELT: Off the top of my head, I don't know if I had one
before this or not.

Tyler's a really good basketball player. And I don't think he played
out of his mind. I think he had just a good game. Their entire team
just played great.

THE MODERATOR: No questions for Josh and Jeremy. We'll open it up
for questions for coach Mark Few. Are there any questions?

Q. Mark, I was going to ask you a little bit about their play in the
first half and how well they took care of the basketball almost the
entire half.

COACH MARK FEW: Yeah, you know, in some instances I think the toe
injury might have helped Ty Lawson. I mean, he's playing at a great
pace right now.

He's not forcing anything. He got in the lane a couple times where
he was closely guarded and we shut down option one, option two, option
three, and he was under control and found option four wide open out
there on the back side of our defense.

You know, when they're when he's distributing like that, I mean, he
had nine assists, one turnover. He shot the heck out of it from three.
And they took great care of the ball.

We had a very poor deflection half. We charted our deflections. We
had less than five at the half, which was our lowest total of the
year, and we were able to get 20 in the second half, which is where we
usually are.

Again, most of that was just due to Carolina. They were pushing it,
sharing it, and getting themselves great looks. But they knocked them
down. It's one thing to get them, but it's another to knock them down.


So they were they definitely had their A game tonight.

Q. It's one thing when Hansbrough does what he's doing but when
Danny Green steps up and shoots like he hasn't been the last couple of
weeks, how much more difficult are they?

COACH MARK FEW: It's just and I've said all along, if all 16 of us,
if we all play at the top of our game, North Carolina wins the
national championship. I just feel like, when they're playing at their
highest end, they're better than the rest of us.

And they played that way tonight. I mean, Danny Green was supposedly
struggling tonight, and he's making threes. Bobby Frasor, we had the
game to 11 and forced a time out. I mean, he's shooting 20 something
percent from three, and he comes in and bangs two threes off down
screens double screens up at the top of the key to get it back to 17.

And Larry Drew even hit a three. I mean, they were when they're
shooting it like that, you know, it makes it very difficult to help on
Tyler or Deon or Ed Davis down there. It was impressive, impressive
performance.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach.