West Virginia is a very formidable first-round opponent. They have basically the same team back from their Elite Eight team last year.

I just looked at my opponent and envisioned what I had to do and got it done for the team. I came into the season and trained hard, managed my weight and thought about what I was going to do this season. I was looking forward to having to wrestle him in the county. Luckily, I had the pleasure of wrestling him and I got it done. This is an incredible boost to my confidence.

We can't just be happy about getting in. When you get complacent about getting in, you're done in the first round. Obviously, if we want to validate what our league is, you better have somebody get past the first weekend so we don't have guys on the national news programs saying, 'I told you so.

In the false American imagination, West Virginia is a joke or else it's a charity case; but more than anything it is unseen, an invisible architecture of labor and struggle; and incarceration shares this invisibility, hidden at the center of everything; our slipshod remedy for an abiding fear, danger pinned to human bodies and then slotted into bunk beds you can't see from any highway.

We wanted to see if (Bradley) could fight us back. The first half, we just wanted to grind them down, and then in the second half, we went after them.

Deep down, I'm just a West Virginia hillbilly.