Locker Room Chat: Tonny Trocha-Morelos on Texas A&M's 1-0 start

On the first win of the season...

"It feels great. You know, the first game is always the most important game. You don't know what the other team has, but they don't know what you have. You just need to go out there, stick with the gameplan, execute and listen to the coaches. Because of that, we got this win."

On the dominant performance in the paint...

"The gameplan was to stop No. 23 from the other team. He was the leading scorer last season – in the country. We knew if we played good defense, we were going to get whatever we wanted. The defensive side was huge. We just needed to make a stop. There's this thing that we call a 'kill.' If you have three stops, that's a kill. We were just focusing on defense. We knew we could get whatever we wanted on offense, so we just focused on defense."

On the depth in the post...

"It will definitely help. People are getting rest. Whenever you get rest and get back into the game, you can go 100-percent again. That's what the coaches are asking you to do. Whenever you're in the game, go 120-percent. We have someone that will come and give you sit. That's what we do. When I'm in the game, I try to run as much as possible because I know someone will have my back."

On necessary improvements moving forward...

"(Coach Kennedy) said – well, the other team played a different kind of defense. They went from man to zone to a mix. We haven't practiced that, so he said we need to practice in that situation. We don't know what to do because we probably think they're in zone. On offense, we're running something that's not what the defense is giving. So that's something that, like I said, we need to work on in practice this week."

On being a team leader...

"I have to be a leader by example. I want to go hard in practice, so the youngest guys will go hard all the time. That's how you prepare for a game. That's what I'm trying to do. That's my role. Go hard. Go hard every practice. Show them that if you don't go hard, you don't get playing time. They just need to follow my lead by me doing it because they won't do it if I don't do it."