POSTGAME: C.J. Bryce, Devon Daniels Talk Pitt Win

NC State's C.J. Bryce and Devon Daniels met with the media following the 73-58 win over Pittsburgh in the 2020 ACC Tournament.

C.J., after Duke's success against you guys with zone, did you figure you'd see some more of that today and probably obviously again tomorrow, and did you feel like you guys handled that, some better looks today out of that?
C.J. BRYCE: Yeah, I felt like for a couple minutes we got a little stagnant. We figured that they would play zone coming in after such a quick turnaround. But I feel like we got our shots, we got our open looks and we knocked them down tonight.

For the players, Coach mentioned that you guys struggled on offense late in the first half. Devon, you were out with two fouls at this point, but I'd like to know what you guys thought contributed to the lack of success offensively. For about four or five minutes there you lost your 10-point lead.
DEVON DANIELS: I feel like we got stagnant like on offense. I feel like we started getting really aggressive on defense and were getting a lot of steals, a lot of deflections, not getting easy baskets. At the end of the half I feel like we got a little stagnant when they went in zone, weren't looking for our shots enough, and I feel like we turned it around in the second half.

Devon, I know Coach prefers you to go hard to the rim rather than take the floater, but it was working for you tonight. Was that just a product of the zone and what was available or did you just kind of feel that?
DEVON DANIELS: Yeah, I started off going hard to the right, but when they went in the zone, their big man was down giving me space to operate like in the middle area, so I just read the defense and the floater was open, so the touch was there today.

Do you feel an extra pressure with the NCAA Tournament stuff swirling around or do you just go play?
DEVON DANIELS: Honestly, I don't think our team is really too focused like on the outside talk. Inside the locker room we're just focused on one game at a time. We know we can't go where we want to go, like unless we take care of the game at hand, so we're just taking it one game at a time.

C.J. BRYCE: What Devon said, just taking it one game at a time. We can't control the future. Obviously it's at the back of our heads, and that's obviously the ultimate goal to be playing for, but one game at a time, and we'll get ready for the game tomorrow.

Adding on to that with the NCAA Tournament, do you guys feel your resume has kind of spoken for itself so far leading up to today, and how much does that Duke game tomorrow add on to that?
C.J. BRYCE: I feel like up to this point we have pretty good wins on our resume, but that's something that we're not really focused on right now. We're trying to win the conference championship, and we'll get ready for this game tomorrow.

C.J., you guys have at times had trouble putting two really good games together; what do you do to kind of be a little bit more consistent and try to get this kind of effort here tomorrow?
C.J. BRYCE: Just pay attention to the details. We've obviously played all these teams before in the conference. I think we play Duke tomorrow, so we had that loss to them last time, so go in there with we want to get this win and not just for it being Duke, but like I said, we want to continue to advance, win and advance in the conference.

For both players, you guys have seen Duke twice pretty recently. You played today, you won, you've got some momentum. They were off. Will that maybe help you get to a quicker start against them tomorrow? What do you see in tomorrow's quarterfinals match-up?
DEVON DANIELS: I feel like if we played or we didn't play, we're going to have to come out focused and energized. We're going to have to lock into the game plan and the scouting report we're just going to have to go out there and compete and play with a lot of energy.

C.J. BRYCE: We've just got to play our game, stick to the game plan. We've beat this team before, so we definitely have confidence that we can do it. We've just got to get it done tomorrow.