Kevin Willard quote book: Iona

On scheduling Rick Pitino and seeing him again:

“It came together so quick, I really didn’t have a whole lot of time to like, really think about it. The emotions hit me when I walked on the floor and I saw him, I was just — more than anything — ecstatic to see a Hall of Fame basketball coach back to where he belongs, on the sideline. It’s amazing just hearing him coach. I felt like I was an assistant coach again, he just taught me so many things. The emotion was just, as someone that loves him and cares for him, knowing what he’s gone through over the last four, five years, to see him back on the sidelines — seeing him back at a place I love — it was joyful.”

On being down nine to Iona in the first half:

“Joy turned to anger, but not anger towards him. We talked about this: We knew they were going to come out and play really, really well the first half. I knew (in) the second half — we went through it at Louisville — I just knew they wouldn’t have any gas because it was their first game coming out, they were just going to run out of gas. And I’m trying to get my guys to get their legs under them, but you’re talking about a Hall of Fame coach. To be very honest with you, I wasn’t shocked that we were down nine, I just knew that we had to get to halftime and (we) better cut it close.”

On Iona:

“They’re exactly what I thought they were going to be: They’re extremely well-coached, they play hard, and they’re going to win a lot of games. In my opinion, there’s not a better college basketball coach ever.”

On what his objective is from Seton Hall’s upcoming stretch of six games in 12 days, and his return game with Iona:

“I’ve been very, very conscious about our budget during this time, knowing that we’re not going to have fans in the game, and when I texted him (Pitino), I said, ‘Hey, do you have any interest in playing?’ And he said, ‘yeah,’ and I said, ‘well, I can’t give you any guarantee money,’ so he said, ‘How about you return next year?’ And I said I’d love to return next year, I’d love to go back and play. So from that standpoint, it’s pretty simple. I think I was going to try to play him anyway at Madison Square Garden or the new Belmont arena on Long Island, so to be honest with you, I’m looking forward to it.”

“We need to play against competition. The problem now, especially with Bryce hurt, my second unit guys in practice aren’t in good enough shape and aren’t good enough to push my top six. And so we’re not getting better in practice right now, we’re not able to kind of — we don’t have practice anyway — but my guys need game reps, and my goal by the end of this week is to make sure by the time we’re done playing Wagner is that we’re ready for the first five games of the Big East. I don’t think we would have been able to be ready for the first five games of the Big East if I’d only played two more games. We need to play against competition, we need to see what we need to get better at — even just watching film after the first half, it was like, ‘This is what we’re talking about, this is what we gotta do.’ Obviously, there’s a lot this week, but I think it’s a great opportunity for us to get ready for the Big East.”

On Jared Rhoden:

“That’s more what I was expecting at Louisville, to be perfectly honest with you. Jared went back to being what makes him special. He didn’t just try to score, he rebounded, he got on the break. That’s what makes Jared really tough to scout, is that he’s not just a shooter, he’s not just a guy that does one thing. He rebounded great, his energy and emotion were phenomenal, we really fed off that. That’s really what I expected out of Myles, Jared and Sandro. Any one night, I think one of those guys could be big scorers.”

On his postgame exchange with Pitino:

“I told him, ‘I love you, I’m so glad to see you back,’ and he said he loved me too. It’s a weird emotion seeing someone that you worked with for so long and you have so much — you’ve been through a lot of things in your life personally with and professionally — I know with the inside knowledge of what he’s gone through the last three or four years, it’s a joy. When I saw him on the sideline, I said, ‘that’s where Rick Pitino belongs,’ and I think he landed at a phenomenal spot. It’s a tremendous college, and I think the two of them combined, I’m not going to be playing them in three or four years, I’ll tell you that much.”

On Seton Hall’s non-conference schedule:

“I think everyone’s kind of going through this, to be honest with you. With all the cancellations — I talked to a couple of guys —I maybe should have scheduled 35 games and just played as many games as possible early on to try to just back-to-back-to-back, you can get as many games as possible. I really believe that the only way we’re going to get better is by playing really good competition, and this team is nowhere near where we’re going to be in a month. I think Rhode Island, Oregon, Penn State and Wagner, it gives us more opportunities that are a similar style to teams we’re playing early in Big East play. It gives us a chance to kind of really learn and get better. Unfortunately, we just don’t have the numbers to practice for long periods of time, so it’s going to be a little bit like the NBA, you’re going to use games to get better.”

On Shavar Reynolds:

“I agree 100 percent, I think you’re going to see him get a little bit more comfortable, you’re going to see him get a little bit more in the flow. He’s the guy that really needs to be in great shape, and he’s a guy that as he gets more reps, as he gets more comfortable, as he gets more confidence — I have extreme confidence in him because he can be really simple on offense and effective — he had three turnovers tonight, but at the same time, he really changes the game defensively for us. So I’m asking him to do a lot right now, but I have confidence he can do it.”

On second half defense:

“We watched film at halftime, kind of just reinforcing things that we haven’t gotten to work on. It was almost kind of like, what I talked about was using the second half as practice, working on their closeouts, working on our rotations, being a little bit more aggressive with our pick-and-roll defense, being a little bit smarter with our personnel — getting on 20 (Isaiah Ross) and making sure Ross didn’t get looks like he did in the first half. I really wanted to see the emphasis on the defensive end. I said, ‘Let’s lock down a little bit and use it as practice, more or less.’ I knew they were going to struggle in the second half because again, we struggled in the second half at Louisville and I saw what it did. Sitting down for 15 minutes and trying to restart your engine when you haven’t done that, it’s hard.”

On his battle with COVID-19:

“I got COVID the same time the rest of us got it. It kind of went right through the program three weeks ago when we got shut down. I didn’t have any symptoms, I lost my sense of smell, and that was kind of the worst thing that happened. I don’t want to make any jokes about this, but I was having a glass of wine with my wife and we were already in shutdown, and I smelled it the first sip and I was like, ‘you know, this is a beautiful glass of wine, obviously I'm going to have a second glass of wine.’ And when I had the second glass of wine, I went to go smell it again and I couldn’t smell it, and I was like, ‘it just happened.’ That was my only symptom. Luckily, it came back about five days later. I didn’t have a cough, and again, I studied the s*** out of this thing and I’ve been taking so much vitamin D and I’ve been taking a ton of zinc and stuff like that, so I felt like I was in pretty good shape when I got it, not that I was looking to get it. I tell everybody I felt like I just didn’t have my fastball, if that makes sense.”