Sha Sounds Off: Villanova

On Seton Hall’s toughness:

“It’s how we prepare. I’m not one of those coaches that takes it light the day before a game. I practice hard the day before a game just to get us ready, and I thought we did that the last two days getting ready for a game like this.”

On Kadary Richmond:

“It’s just something he’s been doing the whole year. I’ve been preaching the whole year — since the beginning of the year — that I thought I had the best backcourt in the Big East, one of the best backcourts  in the country. He’s playing like a Big East-caliber player of the year. This is what he’s supposed to do, he’s supposed to carry us when we need to be carried.”

On Dre Davis:

“Dre’s been doing that the whole year for us. He’s kind of been our backbone anytime I need a big bucket, anytime we need some toughness. He’s playing out of position and I’ve asked a lot of him. He’s just going out there and playing. He’s been doing that for us and we need it.”

On Seton Hall’s pregame practice:

“It was chippy for a reason. I’m gonna leave it like that. It needed to be chippy. I knew we were gonna come out and play hard. You can’t come out and say, ‘okay, we’ll come out and win.’ Obviously, you prepare to win. Villanova’s a good team, they’re playing very well right now, they’ve got a winning pedigree, they’ve got a couple of guys that played in a Final Four. But the last two days was how it’s been before the last two road trips. Probably a little bit extra sauce was added to it, and that starts at the top. These guys have to understand, and they understood. Now we’ve just gotta make sure we come back the next two days and prepare for a good team and try to get my guys to go out high on senior day, not have a letdown because in this league, anybody can beat anybody. You can’t come out and look at records.”

On making a statement with Wednesday’s win:

“I look at every game as a must-win game this time of year. I don’t look at it and say, ‘okay, we need to win this game more than that game.’ Obviously, we want to come back and play better than we played the last two games on the road, right? It’s good to be back home. I thought we had a good crowd, I was happy that the crowd came out, especially some of the students because it’s spring break right now. I thought they made the difference, and anytime we get a good crowd, it’s always great for us.”

On Seton Hall’s defense:

“We wanted to make a big thing of taking away the three. I thought the first five minutes of the game, they came out and hit a couple threes. We called a timeout, we kind of adjusted. In the first half, they had five threes, and at halftime, we talked about it. We made some adjustments, I don’t want to give the game plan away, but anytime you could stop a team like that, I thought for the most part, we chased them off the line a little bit and made them take some tough twos.”

On Jaden Bediako:

“I’ve been saying this from day one: Our big guys were going to be okay. Jaden just plays hard, understands who he is. He’s not trying to do things he can’t do. He sets screens, gets offensive rebounds, rolls to the basket when we get him some shots, plays hard defensively. He’s embraced his role, and when you have a guy who embraces his role, that’s what happens.”

On what made the pregame practice chippy:

“It was a combination (of him and the players).”

On Elijah Hutchins-Everett:

“Elijah can shoot the basketball. He’s still trying to get his rhythm. I told him, ‘if you’re open, shoot it!’ So that was a big shot he made, but we’ve gotta get him to start playing better because he’s better than what he’s showing. I think it’s all about rhythm and timing with him. It’s how you prepare, and each night, someone else is gonna be different, right? Hopefully he can continue to keep working hard, which I know he is, and if his number’s called like that, then so be it.”

On winning 20 games this season:

“For me, to tell you the truth, I don’t really care about all those accolades. They don’t mean anything. It’s just super important that our guys — the young guys — understand that the next two days are all about making sure the seniors go out right, period. That’s my mindset, that’s gonna be their mindset. And as far as 20 wins and all that, game by game, step by step. The goal was to try to be in the best position we could be in this year. Guys fought hard to get us in this position, we’ve still got a lot of basketball to be played, so that’s it.”

On senior day:

Jerry Carino: “I have a senior day question so I don’t have to call you tomorrow.”

Sha: “I’m not gonna answer your call!”

Jerry: “I’m gonna ask it now!”

“It’s super important, right? We’ve got an older team, an experienced team, and that’s why I knew the last couple days were going to be the way they were going to be. When you’ve got super-competitive people, as myself as a coach and as those guys, when you’re taking over a program, especially right now in this crazy time with the portal and everything else, you want to try to get guys in that kind of fit what you’re trying to do. You never really know if they’re going to fit that way because they were somewhere else for three years, so they’ve gotta try to get that out of them. They helped because they came in and understood my vision, they understood me and they put up with a lot of my stuff. I’m demanding when it comes to defense and practice and stuff like that, so I don’t really look at — when I took over the program, everybody was saying it was a rebuild and everybody wanted to win right away. I never talked about a rebuild, I never talked about any of that. I go out there and just coach. But for us to be in the position we’re in right now, it’s a credit to those young men in the locker room.”

On Richmond, Davis and Al-Amir Dawes’ continuity:

“It’s funny because everybody in the preseason was worried about all these new guys that everybody else was getting, and they never talked about trying to keep guys on their own team. And now because a team had a little bit of success, now everybody’s, ‘oh, they got three guys that were here.’ No one cared about that in August or July, but now that’s a story because guys are playing well. I think it’s super important. Look at all the teams that kept guys and didn’t have to bring in six, seven, eight new guys. Look at Marquette, that’s why they’re like that, UConn and Creighton. Obviously you’ve gotta try to work hard, you’ve gotta re-recruit your guys. Those three guys believed in my vision and believed in what I was selling and talking about, and they came back. And we’ve got work to do.”