“To be totally honest, Jerry, I don’t want to come off sounding crazy, but I don’t think we played that well. I think that we had some spurts where we played really good and I think some other times, we’ve got stuff we’ve got to work on. Like I said before, this is going to be a work in progress throughout the whole year, and we’re pretty much going to get a lot of stuff done during the game because we didn’t have a lot of time to practice more. But I’m proud of the guys, they came out and executed. Offensively, we’ve still got work to do, but I thought our defense and our intensity was great tonight, a lot better than Wednesday.”
On Al-Amir Dawes:
“He’s getting better, he’s getting there. Like I said, he was out for a while and he’s starting to get his rhythm back. Al is somebody we’re going to depend on to do some things for us. I’m happy that he got near the rebounds, because the last game, he only had one or two, right? But I still gotta get our guys to rebound. That’s the part today I didn’t like. I didn’t like them rebounding, I don’t know if they outrebounded us or not — no, we outrebounded them by 10 — but they had 15 offensive rebounds. That’s unacceptable.”
On his message to Tyrese Samuel:
“I just told him to relax. I think he was trying to get it too fast. I told him to go up and relax, I didn’t think — no disrespect to Saint Peter’s, I’ve got a lot of love and respect for those guys — I didn’t think they had any shot blockers, so why are you rushing? Just take your time and go up and finish, and once he did that, I thought he settled down. Once he settled down, I thought he played good.”
On his emotion playing Saint Peter’s:
“No, to be honest with you, it wasn’t. I had no emotion, I went about like I was going about playing another team. I don’t get into that, that’s not my thing. That was last year, we did what we did, and now I’m here, I do like I do here. I don’t really care about that. Last year was last year, this year is this year. I’m glad the game is over, to be honest with you. I wish them well, I hope they do really well this year, and I’m just worried about us.”
On pushing the tempo in the first half:
“That’s how I want to play. I don’t know, but something’s going on with our lineups. I’ve gotta tweak some things. I don’t like starting off the way we started off, we started off too slow. Our pace is not good, our intensity is not good. We chart deflections, and I think the first four minutes of the game, we had two. That’s not one of my teams, right? And I think once we start getting deflections, the game starts turning around for us, the guys start getting fired up, and we kind of went from there.”
On Seton Hall’s first two games providing a foundation:
“You tell me. How did we look? I just — and I have high expectations for my team — I just think that we’re not there where I want to be, and that’s a good thing. It’s not a bad thing, right? You want to start gelling when Big East play comes, but our non-conference is very hard. We've got to start getting to work, and I just want guys to learn to start playing with each other. I don’t want to keep saying the same thing like, ‘we haven’t practiced,’ but it’s the truth. We haven’t practiced that much together, so guys are learning each other on the fly in the games, and I think for the most part, we started off a little sloppy on Wednesday. Today was a little better, I don’t think we had that many turnovers. Still, 16 turnovers. Wow.”
On challenge of facing Iowa Wednesday:
“Jeez. What do you think? I haven’t watched them, to be honest. I was focused on Saint Peter’s. Last week, I was focused on Monmouth, this week I was focused on Saint Peter’s, now tonight, I’m going to be focused on Iowa. Fran (McCaffery)’s a good coach. He plays a funky style, the guys get up and down, they shoot a lot of threes. I played against him when I was at Iona, and obviously the first time I was here, we played at Iowa, so I know him a little bit. I don’t know them that much, to tell you the truth, because I haven’t watched them that much. I just know that he’s got a lot of guys that could shoot the basketball and average 100 points. That’s a lot.”
On non-conference resume opportunities:
“Some games. I think this schedule is very hard because the Big East is a great conference. So I think you kind of stack it when the Big East is not great, but adding UConn back — a very good team and you play them twice — I’m not sure I’m going to stack it like this. Coaches do what coaches do, and I’ve got a lot of respect for Coach Willard, so I’m not saying nothing bad about him. I just, for my first year of being here, it’s a very hard non-conference.”
On his defense adapting to a higher level:
“You know what? I just feel like if you’re not scoring the basketball, which at times, we’re going to struggle just because we’re still getting to know each other; if you defend, you give yourself a chance to be in the game. So that’s kind of been my thing, and that’s going to be my thing here. I love our size and length. We’re not very tall, I don’t have a lot of 6’10” guys, but my guards are big and they get after it. And I think once we keep learning how to play with each other, I think we’ve got a chance to be pretty good. We’ve just got to stay healthy.”
On taking charges:
“Well, I would tell you this: Kadary, I’m really mad at him. Three times, he should have got on the floor for a loose ball, he didn’t. That’s how you get hurt. But we work on it, we work on taking charges. I think Dre Davis is really good at that, Femi’s really good at that, and once a couple of guys start doing it, it’s contagious. Yeah, we work on it, but not as much. Those guys just have a gift for it.”
On adjustments on Saint Peter’s Jaylen Murray:
“You know what? To be totally honest with you, he came out of the gate pretty hot, Jaylen Murray. We just called a timeout and said, ‘we’ve got to understand their personnel.’ The kid who started, he’s not much of a shooter, he’s a driver, and Jaylen is a shooter. I think our guys didn’t pay attention and they had their hands down, and (Murray) buried it.”
On resuming the series with Saint Peter’s:
“Jerry, man! Jeez! The game just got done, big dog! It’s not going to be on me. I would love to play them, I would love to play a lot of the local teams. It’s up to the local teams to want to play us. If we won’t play, it won’t be on me. I’ll play them, I’ll play any local team. I don’t have no problem with that.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.