By Sam Federman (@Sam_Federman)
“Yeah, I mean, I thought we did a good job battling and still playing hard while not playing well. And when you have a young team, sometimes that can be a little frustrating when you’re not playing well offensively, it kind of affects your defense. I thought we hung in there as close as we could while not playing overly well offensively. We knew they were very good defensively. Their length, I knew, was gonna bother us. The two times we’ve played against long teams, we’ve struggled a little bit offensively, but again, they didn’t give up. They just stayed with it, made some big plays and again, it was more defensively, I thought, that kept us in the game.”
On switching to a 2-3 zone:
“I think we’ve been really good with pick-and-roll defense. I think, sometimes coming out of Christmas break, you’re just not as sharp, and you gotta give Chris and their staff credit. They kept running the same play, and it was just a matter of just trying to…we had to take that away and just make sure…they were getting too many easy layups, so we switched into a zone and just had the guards take the pick-and-rolls and scrambles from there.”
On Bryce Lindsay’s shooting:
“I feel like I have like, five or six of those guys, to be honest with you. Every time he shoots it, every time Perk shoots it, I think it’s going in. Every time Matt Hodge shoots it, I think it’s going in, the same thing with Dev. Obviously, yeah, he can really shoot it, but I think he’s been doing much more off the ball, making plays for his teammates. I think that’s what I’m more excited about. The more comfortable he gets in making plays for his teammates, I think that’ll open up even more shots.”
On playing physical, grind-it-out games:
“Every time you win in this league, it’s important, no matter how you win. The other night, we got up 20 on the road and tonight, we got down 10, so just finding ways to win, that’s all that really matters.”
On how Villanova has progressed:
“I think the young guys — even Tyler’s young to me because he’s learning a new system — I think these guys embracing the system, learning the system, I think they’ve gotten more comfortable with it. They’ve taken coaching very well. I really enjoy coaching this group because they are young, so you do have to teach them a lot. They don’t know everything, but they listen, they try their best and they’re learning. So from that standpoint, I think that’s been the biggest thing. They’ve been coachable, they’ve learned, they’ve embraced the system, and I think that’s why we’ve won some games.”
On free throw shooting:
“Matty just had a tough night. I think in the first half, we were just a little bit…we still had Christmas cookies in our stomach, it seemed like. We’re working with Duke every day, and Duke’s working hard on it. Duke’s the only one that we’re really working with. Everybody else, they’re good shooters. It’s just sometimes you eat too much Christmas cookies and your free throws go to shit.”
On DePaul’s length affecting second chances:
“I think DePaul did a pretty good job with their length. We also got four or five really good looks in the first half on kickout threes, which we’ve been working on. I think it was four wide-open threes we missed off offensive rebounds, so again, to only be down four not shooting the free throws well and not shooting the ball well in the first half, it just shows this team has a little bit of grit.”
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