Sha Sounds Off: Rutgers

On how Seton Hall played:

“I thought we played hard and well for 33 minutes. For seven minutes, we kind of lost our mind, but I thought it was a good game. A lot of things I want to talk about, I can’t talk about because I’ve just never been a part of a game when one team shoots 13 free throws and the other team shoots 28, especially when both teams are playing hard, but it is what it is.”

On Dylan Harper’s buzzer-beater:

“I mean, what you gonna do? It’s a tough shot. We never should have been in that position, to tell you the truth. He hit a tough shot.”

On what Rutgers did defensively in the second half:

“Nothing, it’s us. We just kind of self-destruct, we stop running offense. We stopped doing what we were doing to give us the lead, which was sharing the basketball and making plays. Everybody just started going 1-on-1, which I’m not sure why. And I knew it was gonna be a game of runs, I knew they were gonna make their run, but we fought to the end. I’m proud of our guys. Isaiah going in there and getting that offensive rebound, getting fouled and hitting two free throws, it shows a lot. I know there are some things you can build on, but I thought we played—the last seven minutes of the second half, I’m not sure what was going on.”

On defending Harper and Ace Bailey:

“I thought we did a good job in the first half. I thought Ace played extremely well in the first half, he carried them. The second half, I thought they got away from ball screens and just let Dylan go 1-on-1, I thought that was the difference. The first half, he was coming off ball screens and we were throwing different stuff at him. The second half, he just kind of put his head down and was driving to the basket. He’s a good player. Good players make big shots, he made the big shot.”

On Seton Hall’s physical edge:

“You trying to get me in trouble, man? I mean, yeah, right? We’re supposed to (have an edge). We’ve got a couple of older guys. I don’t know. We just didn’t execute down the stretch like we should’ve.”

On Seton Hall’s offense:

“Yeah, I think it’s coming along, Adam. I knew—like I told you guys early on—it was gonna take some time, especially for a lot of guys, a guy like Manny who—like I said—hadn’t done nothing in a month and a half, so he’s getting his rhythm back a little bit. We gotta get Chaunce going again, he’s a big part of our offense. But I thought we played well enough to win, I’ll be honest with you. I thought our game plan was really good, our defense was solid. We just made some plays down the stretch that weren’t good for us.”

On Seton Hall’s first-half game plan:

“I just thought we switched it up. We kind of junked it up a little bit. I thought Scotty’s hands were tremendous in the first half, he got a lot of deflections, a lot of steals. Like I said, they were running ball screen action (that) they didn’t run that much in the second half, and we were able to do some stuff with the ball screen. It just came down to guys making plays, and they had a guy that made some plays. We didn’t, and to tell you the truth, that’s what it came down to. It was nothing that they did or nothing that we did, it came down to, ‘okay, nothing’s working offensively for them, let me see who can make a play.’ And (Harper) made plays. That seemed to be the difference in the game.”

On his memories of the Rutgers rivalry:

“I’ll be honest with you, big dog: I’m not in a good headspace right now. We lost this game, I’m a sore loser, I hate to lose. It drives me nuts, I can’t function when we lose. I don’t even know, that was like, 20 years ago, man. Obviously, these are great rivalry games, that’s why we play them. I thought I’ve been a part of a few that were really good and really impactful, maybe my freshman year or my senior year, those two games kind of stick out because we won. That always helps, but I don’t know, this was a good game, man. I thought it was good for the fans, Rutgers came out…obviously, this is a tough place to play, these guys were loud, the fans were into it. We just gotta regroup quick because we’ve got Villanova on Tuesday.”

On going into Big East play:

“We gotta let this game sting today, we gotta let it sting. Everybody’s gotta feel it, everybody that’s part of the program should feel this sting today, then tomorrow, we gotta get back to work. Plain and simple. We gotta grow quickly. Yeah, we’ve got a lot of older guys, but we’ve got a lot of guys that didn’t really play that much, even on teams they were on last year. So we’re asking those guys to step up, and I’m proud of my guys. Our guys played hard, they played hard today. This is how I want us to play. This is how I thought we were gonna play, and this is how we have to play for the rest of the year. You play like this, you give yourself a chance and you’ve just gotta make some plays down the stretch.”