What a night for Matas Vokietaitis. With 23 points and 16 rebounds, the Texas center quite literally pushed the Longhorns to victory over the BYU Cougars in the First Round of the NCAA Tournament. Afterwards, he said what every coach would want to hear.
"I love to play physical, with a lot of contact, that's what I like to do," Vokietaitis said about BYU playing aggressively throughout the first-round matchup.
Vokietaitis racked up his double-double while keeping his body in the paint as much as possible, and despite being fouled repeatedly throughout the night, he was only called for two fouls himself.
In other words, he played physically, but he didn't overdo it, which is exactly what coaches like Sean Miller want out of their star players, especially when they're facing a win-or-go-home game.
"I thought Matas set the tone," Miller said in the postgame press conference. "Matas played potentially the best game he's played at Texas today. A big reason we won was because of what he did."
Matas Vokietaitis knows where to improve even after career night
Throughout the game, he was dominant on both ends of the court, but the one aspect he could have improved was at the charity stripe, shooting just 27.3 percent on his free-throw attempts.
"I don't know what to say, I just need to work more on that and improve, that's on me... I'm usually making free throws; I never miss that much," Vokietaitis said. "Maybe today was a bad day, and I didn't do good. I just need to work more on that, that's it."
Despite his jaw-dropping, round of applause-worthy performance against the higher-seeded Cougars, Vokietaitis knows that his game wasn't perfect and that there is still room for him to improve to be the player his team needs moving forward.
Vokietaitis and the Longhorns will move on to the Round of 32, where they will face the winner of Gonzaga versus Kennesaw State.