Kevin Willard quote book: Xavier

On Quincy McKnight’s status and his initial report on his radio postgame interview:
“I’m not doing this with injuries. I have no idea. Until I get an MRI, there’ll be no update on Q. I didn’t say it didn’t seem that bad, that’s not what I said. I said the preliminary was that it looked — most of the structural stuff was good, but they had no idea until he got an MRI. That’s exactly what I said on the radio. I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.”

“Enough. I’m not giving updates. Don’t text me. He (sports information director Tom Chen) will put out an update when we get an update on Q. He could be back tomorrow, he could be out for the rest of the season. I have no idea. I’m not worried about something I have no idea about, so don’t text me, I’m not answering it. We will put out a statement when we have — when I get the MRI results, I will put that out, and he will put it out right away.”

“He’s very critical, but someone else is going to have to step up. That’s why you have 13 guys on scholarship. I have a lot of confidence in Ant, when Myles went down, Ant stepped in and played great. Shavar’s been playing great. Are they Q? No, because Q’s a senior, he’s been through the wars with us. But the next guy’s going to have to step up, and I’ve got a lot of confidence that they’re going to do it.”

On being outrebounded by a 51-22 margin:
“We got taken to the woodshed. We got down early, we started scrambling a little bit, and when you scramble against good, big, physical teams, you’re going to give up offensive rebounds, and I just thought Tyrique Jones did a great job of just being on the baseline, and when we came over to try to get some blocks, just cleaning up the weak side. I thought he did a great job, that’s the best I’ve seen Tyrique play.”

On what went wrong during Xavier’s 30-6 start:
“I don’t think you have enough time. We’ve been a little shaky on offense for the last three games, I would say, especially at home. We haven’t played overly well offensively at home, and I thought we settled early on for too many jump shots. We settled for jump shots, got them in transition, and then in the second half, I thought we did a pretty good job, but (Paul) Scruggs hits a tough one at the buzzer in the corner and then Naji (Marshall) hits a tough one at the top of the key at the buzzer — both at the end of the shot clock — that I thought really took a lot of momentum, but we were still able to cut it to seven. We played hard and just missed a couple of free throws, and when you’re giving up that many offensive rebounds in this league, you’re gonna get your butt kicked. We played terrible.”

On Myles Powell’s shooting slump:
“I think there’s a long list of why he’s doing it. I think teams are doing a really good job of throwing two or three guys at him off screens, they’re doing a really good job of putting a little bit bigger, taller guys on him. I think he’s gotten some good looks, it’s just every once in a while, you go through a stretch where you’re not shooting the basketball so well. He’s still working at it, he’s still putting the same time in the gym. He’s just struggling a little bit right now.”

On Jared Rhoden and Sandro Mamukelashvili:
“I was excited about Sandro. He played about four more minutes than I was planning on, but I thought he gave us good energy. We just didn’t have good energy out there today. That first unit, I thought they had bad body language and just didn’t have good energy, and that’s why I went with Jared and Sandro, I felt good energy towards the end of that first half to get us back in striking distance.”

“Just his (Sandro’s) stamina, he did get gassed both times when he was in there. You could tell he just doesn’t have that extra oomph when it starts getting down past three minutes when he’s been playing, but I thought he was aggressive. He showed me that he’s coming along, so I think he looked pretty good.”

On first halves:
“We’ve got to get off to better starts. I thought we were ready to play, again, I thought we settled for jump shots a little too much. We missed them and they didn’t. I thought DePaul and Xavier, they really went underneath Q’s pick-and-rolls — they went almost to the free throw line, and he’d been making that shot — and you’ve got to take a shot when a team goes that far underneath it, but I think teams’ pick-and-roll defense has gotten a little bit better on us, and our five men need to adjust a little bit quicker to how teams are playing them on pick-and-rolls. Again, that’s the evolution of Ro and Ikey kind of understanding when you get 17 and 9 in a game and you have six dunks, teams are going to try to take that away. That takes a little time for big guys to try to figure out and get, and what I love about Ro and Ikey is that they’re both — we’ll go back and we’ll watch film with them, and they’ll see where they need to go and what they’re going wrong — I think that’s why they’ve both taken big jumps, and I think that’s the biggest thing we’ve got to do.”

On Saturday's loss being an anomaly:
“It was more, I thought Xavier came out and played terrific, I think it was more them. I think you have to give them credit, they have an older group, a veteran group, I thought they played really well against Marquette. I think you really have to give credit to Xavier because I thought they came out and just played more physical and played better, and sometimes — to me — that’s what happens. We weren’t going undefeated. I said at the beginning of the year when we lost a couple of games: We weren’t going undefeated in conference play. It’s great that we started off 8-0, but you’re going to have — if you don’t play well in this league, you’re going to take a loss. It’s one loss. It’s conference play, it’s going to happen.”