Kevin Willard quote book: Michigan State

On Myles Powell and whether he aches for his inability to close the game:
“He’s the best player in the country, and it’s not even close for what he does. That was a great college basketball game. There’s no aching, you know? We left it all out there, they left it all out there. It was just a great college basketball game, and they just made some plays that we didn’t, and we’ll learn from it and get better from it.”

On the difference in the final two minutes:
“I think the biggest difference was — what did you call it, Jerry, the Mother Seton miracle juice? Yeah, I think that was the biggest difference. We’re up five with 2:41 to go, and with that group on the floor, we should have done much better with time management. That’s where we lost the game. We got up five and we took three quick shots, shots that were not within the offense, and it ended up giving them fast break opportunities, and give Rocket (Watts) credit. He made a big one and the other kid (Cassius Winston) made a big one. But I still like the way we executed down the stretch coming out of the timeout. I thought Sandro got a great look right in front of the rim, and then even after they missed the free throw, I thought Myles definitely got fouled going to the basket, and he did everything you’re supposed to do. But again, give them a lot of credit, they made some big plays.”

On Myles Cale as a complementary scorer alongside Powell:
“I had a great conversation with MC after the game the other night, and sometimes when you go from your sophomore to your junior year, you think you’re just going to start doing things magically, and I told him he’s got to get back to being a little more simpler on the offensive end. He was aggressive, but he was simple, he didn’t try to force things, he took the open shots. He does so many other good things on the defensive end for us. Between him and Jared (Rhoden), as they kind of get a little more confidence, I love that spot.”

On Michigan State’s Malik Hall:
“Oh, man. (Thomas) Kithier made a three in the first half that looked like Larry Bird, and then Malik — if he shoots like that and they’re doing all that role replacing, you’ve got to deal with (Xavier) Tillman down low and he’s coming up high, you’ve got Gabe Brown in the corner or (Aaron) Henry in the corner — you’ve got to start switching pick-and-rolls and now all of a sudden, you’re putting a four man on Cassius Winston, and good luck with that, you’re not winning that battle. That kid played terrific. Obviously, we knew he was a good player — he’s at Michigan State — but 7-for-7 and making the shots he made, that was really a game-changer.”

On when he knew Powell was ready to play Thursday:
“He said when he came back in for film that he was ready to go. We worked out this morning at 10 a.m., he didn’t practice yesterday, he did some dummy offense yesterday when he walked through. He came in, he said he was ready to go and he wants to play. I knew he’d play, I didn’t think he’d be able to do what he did. That just shows you what a special player he is.”

On his takeaway from Thursday night:
“We have to get a little bit better at executing offensively. It’s been my worry because Ike (Obiagu) was hurt, Myles has been hurt, Romaro’s been hurt, Jared’s been hurt. We haven’t had enough practice time to play against very, very good defensive teams. We have to execute better on the offensive end. I know we’ll get better at that, and I like what we did defensively in the first half. In the second half, I thought both teams just made great plays.”

On Sunday's matchup at Saint Louis:
“We don’t have an easy game coming up. We’re going to have to bounce back, and I’ve got a lot of confidence in these guys. We lost a tough one last year to Saint Louis, we lost a tough one to Louisville at home last year, and we got better and better as the year went on. I think that’s what I’m really excited about with this team, that this team’s going to get much better as the year goes on. I don’t think we’re close to where we’re going to be in another month.”

On how much fun this game was:
“It was great. For a November 14 college basketball game, the atmosphere was great — two high-level teams with high-level players going at it — it was a lot of fun. The crowd was phenomenal, our student section was great, I loved the fact that they gave a standing ovation to Cassius when he got announced, it just shows the type of students we have. It was fun. I’m going to go back, and I’m looking forward to watching the tape and I’m looking forward to going back to work with this team. Would we like to have won it? Absolutely, but we’ll get better from it and we’ll improve from it.”

On the last two minutes:
“We took three bad shots. Our emotions were really going well, we got a great stop on that end, MP came down and took a quick one and then Ant came down and tried to get in the lane and just missed a little floater, and both of those led to their threes. So those two possessions really kind of hurt us, and we should have been in this instance where we took 28-29 seconds, take a shot and then sprint back, because I thought we were doing a pretty decent job with that group defensively.”