Sha Sounds Off: Georgetown

By Jason Guerette (@JPGuerette)

On Seton Hall’s final possession:

“Yeah, we had two options off it. Obviously, neither one of them worked. We had two options off the last play, one was to get to (Isaiah Coleman) and Dylan just had to go…I don’t know, he just ran out of time, I guess.”

On not using a timeout on the last possession:

“I used a timeout right before it, because I saw who was guarding (Coleman). He just came in the game, so we kind of switched the play up for that. It was supposed to be a dribble handoff and cause some confusion, but it’s really tough when—and Isaiah, man, he’s working—but I just realized, Gary (Cohen) on the radio just told me, I didn’t know, we’ve got one game in 16 days coming up, so it’ll give me a chance to like, understand who our go-to guy is. Who’s the guy? We had it last year. We knew we were giving the ball to somebody and he was making a play for us. We don’t have that this year, right? So you kind of go off certain guys, how they got going. I thought we had some great shots today, I mean, great shots to kind of open the game up a little bit, and we just couldn’t make one. We had some great threes. I don’t want to shoot 24 threes, but we had some great ones, we just couldn’t hit them.”

On getting the ball to Isaiah Coleman:

“Jerry, come on. You’ve been around for a while. You gotta go get that ball. If the play is for you, you gotta go get the basketball, you can’t get denied. And I don’t want to blame that, that didn’t lose the game for us, that didn’t lose the game at all. What lost the game for us was we can’t keep spotting teams. We’re spotting teams points in the first half, right? Then we try to come back and we waste a lot of energy coming back, and guys are a little fatigued. But there are good ones, and the great ones, they go get the basketball. Give him credit, I give a lot of credit. He said, ‘Coach, I want the ball.’ That’s why I switched the play up. Alright, go get it, you can’t get denied. He got denied and kind of just stopped. And I told Dylan at the same time, ‘if you can’t give it to him, just go. You go.’ And then he kind of got stuck, and we ran out of time.”

On Seton Hall’s offense implementing his philosophy:

“No, it’s not. Man, there’s a lot of things I want to say, man. I don’t want to say them, but I want to say them. I just gotta get more out of people. We gotta get more. We gotta get more out of our fours and fives, we gotta get some type of presence. I thought it was a great thing that we had 22 offensive rebounds, that’s tremendous, but we gotta get more from those two spots and we gotta get Chaunce back going. I’m not sure—I know he had a little thing with his knee, but he’s back, he’s fine. He’s gotta get himself back going. I think this time that we’ve got off is gonna help us. It’s gonna help me as a coach. They probably won’t like it from a practice standpoint, I’m gonna love it because it gives us a chance to do some things, and we’re not as far (off) as everyone thinks we are. We’re right there. We keep losing these tough games at the end, man. Sometimes it’s demoralizing.”

On Georgetown’s Thomas Sorber:

“He’s good. He played good, he played hard, he’s physical, made some plays. I thought guys came in and late in the second half, did a great job on him. He beat them to his spot, wasn’t giving them his spot, he was bodying them, and I thought he made it hard for them.”

On Seton Hall’s rebounding:

“I think a combination of them playing zone and I really thought our guys hit the glass. But we gotta score off those 22 offensive rebounds and we didn’t score off them. I thought we left a lot of points that we should have scored, and we didn’t. And I want to be very clear: I thought that group that played in the second half came out with tremendous energy and gave us tremendous energy, and that’s something I gotta look at moving forward. I really gotta look at that because Scotty is playing his butt off, but he’s overmatched at the four spot. Someone that’s probably working for us, I’ll look at.”

On Gus Yalden:

“Gus is a good player. Gus is hurting Gus, like, he overthinks everything. Just play basketball. He played tonight, he just played. He’s physical, he set some good screens, got us some second-chance points. There’s a lot of stuff I gotta look at moving forward.”

On Jahseem Felton:

“I thought he came in and played well. I thought he was aggressive, which I want him to be. We gotta get him a little better on defense, but I thought he was aggressive and maybe he’s somebody I gotta look at, too. There’s a lot of things I gotta look at in the next two weeks. These guys have a few days off, then we gotta get back to work. I want him to be aggressive. I think in practice, sometimes he takes a step back to the older guys and he’s not being as aggressive. I tell my guys all the time, I’m different than a lot of coaches. If I can’t trust you in practice, I can’t trust you in the games, and I’ve been telling them that. I gotta see more from you in practice to put you in there. I just want him to be aggressive and play basketball, like, he’s not that quick laterally, but he’s gotta play basketball. I thought today, he was solid, and that’s good. I need him to be solid.”

On a common denominator in last-second losses:

“I gotta get a closer. Period. You need a closer. When you guys—when I say, ‘you guys,’ the media, you’ve been around a long time. I’m gonna say this and I don’t want you guys to take offense to it—at the end of the games, there’s not too much coaches can do. And I’m not throwing my players under the bus, I’m just being totally honest right now. At the end of the game, the players gotta make plays, right? I gotta put them in position to make plays, so that’s on me, but we just need somebody that wants to be a closer and wants the ball. And I tried—in the four games, I tried four different people and we still haven’t.”

On Coleman being a closer:

“Hopefully. I thought he took a good step forward today. I love the fact that he’s hitting the offensive glass. That excites me because I’ve been on him for two years to do that. But at the end of the game, you need somebody that’s making a play, and they gotta score. Make a play, either for yourself or for the team, and that’s what I gotta get for us.”