Kevin Willard quote book: Marquette

On Shavar Reynolds and Seton Hall’s point guard situation:

“I didn’t really have much choice but to put him back in at that time. I was so proud of the way Jahari played, he played 18 minutes as a freshman not playing very much, and for him to come out and give us some minutes — defensively, he was really solid, he did a great job for us defensively, and offensively, he hasn’t played with those guys very much — so we weren’t very smooth with him out there, but defensively, he was great. And Shavar, he knows I have total confidence in him, so I just told him to keep being aggressive. We needed someone to kind of get in the lane and try to create, and he was great.”

“Bryce, we just don’t know right now. It really hurts us because when he’s out there, we’re such a better basketball team. Going forward, I’m not sure how long it’s going to be, I just don’t know, to be perfectly honest with you. It’s his knee. His ankles are great, it’s his knee. We looked at it and going forward, if we can get him back, great, because he makes a huge difference for us, but if not, we’ve just got to find a way to keep building Jahari up. He’s getting an MRI Monday, he saw the doctors all week, he didn’t practice all week, so I’m trying to get some rest. He’s got some really good tendinitis in there. He’s giving everything he can possibly give to be on the court, he’s rehabbing, he’s working, but it’s one of those things unfortunately that it’s really tough. It’s frustrating for him, it’s frustrating for me, but this time of year, he’s gotta try to figure it out.”

“Right now, it’s tendinitis until we get the MRI. We’ve got to check and make sure that he didn’t re-injure what we got fixed last year. We don’t think it’s anything new, we actually think it could be something that affected his knees — he might be having some scar tissue — but we’ve just got to make sure we do the right thing. He’s been battling this since the Providence game. One of the reasons he hasn’t been getting as many minutes is because we’ve been so limited in practice and I’ve been so limited with getting him the amount of minutes that I want him to get, so it’s a combination of him starting to battle it before the Providence game, he played really well at UConn and this week, we just really had to shut him down.”

On Jared Rhoden:

“Yeah, J was great. I knew he was going to come out jacking it because he practiced so well yesterday, he shot the ball great. I really thought he settled us down in the second half and showed a lot of confidence shooting the basketball, which we knew he could do. We need him taking seven, eight threes a game, and I thought that was the best — he had two huge plays defensively, Jerry, he had a big steal late and he had a huge deflection on the next play, so he had two huge plays — I was really happy with the way he played offensively, but more importantly, I thought he played great defensively.”

On significance of today’s game:

“We knew it was going to be a tough game. Our game there went down to the wire, they turned it over late to tie it, we made our free throws to ice it, and again, they’ve been playing good. You could look at the Villanova game and say they lost by 30, but it happens in this league every once in a while against the best teams. They lost at the buzzer against Creighton, won at the buzzer against Butler, lost at the buzzer at Providence, so they’ve been playing really physical, really good basketball, they just haven’t been winning games. We knew it was going to be a close game and we were ready for a close game, and this time of year, it doesn’t matter whether it’s pretty or a 15-point game. A win’s a win.”

On schedule updates:

“That’s it, there’s nothing new. The schedule is the schedule. There’ll be no more games added, and obviously, we can lose games, there’s always unfortunately that. I think I talked about this last time: When you lose games late, unfortunately all the makeup games are already done. So we’re stuck with hopefully 19, I think. I think we’ll only lose the Xavier home game.”

On Reynolds mentoring Jahari Long:

“He’s been doing great, and we practiced with Jahari the last few days on the first team to try to get him a little confidence playing with those guys, because it’s different than playing with the other guys, and Shavar’s been great for the second unit just trying to guide him. Shavar’s been through it all, so he’s been great just kind of trying to keep his confidence, and Jahari’s a very confident kid. He’s confident, he has a lot of confidence in his game and I have a lot of confidence in him. When you have a kid like Bryce Aiken, it’s tough to play over him.”

On Seton Hall’s interior defense:

“I thought Ikey set a great tone early, J.P. He had two big blocks against (Dawson) Garcia at the rim, two really good weak-side, help-side blocks, and I thought he was big in the first half at really challenging everything, coming over late and really making guys take tough shots — I don’t know what they shot from the floor, but to hold a good team to 30 percent field goal percentage is really good — and again, Sandro’s one of the better post defenders we have. Everyone forgets he spent two years battling Angel Delgado, so Garcia’s a little bit — his post-ups don’t bother us as much because we don’t have to double — Sandro’s size and strength really help kind of negate who I think is one of the best freshmen in the country.”

On Sandro Mamukelashvili:

“This time of year, I’m just glad I have that dude. He’s a monster for us, and they did a great job on him today. You’ve got to give credit every once in a while when they shut down your team’s best player, and I thought they did a really good job and I thought he did a great job of staying with it all game. I think earlier in the year, he would have gotten frustrated at times with double-teams, but I thought he did a great job of being aggressive and putting pressure on. That kid’s a monster, man. He’s a phenomenal player.”

On Reynolds playing with four fouls:

“He’s a smart kid, Zach, and I think he realized — by sitting over there and watching him — we were struggling downhill and being aggressive getting into the lane. Everything’s on the perimeter, they were doing a good job with our post-ups, pushing us off the lane, so to his credit, I think he realized he’s got to come in and he’s got to really change the pace of the game. From being around him, he’s just a smart young man who’s getting a much better feel of when he needs to be aggressive and when he needs to be passive.”