Saturday, January 7, 2023

Sha Sounds Off: Butler

On playing his starters through the first 12-plus minutes:
“I just thought they came out with a lot of energy. My thing was, if it was working, why change it? No one looked tired, no one looked fatigued, no one was out of it, we had a good groove going. I just went with the flow.”

On his halftime message:
“I just told them, ‘you gotta go out and play.’ We can’t get happy, we can’t get stagnant. I thought (Butler) was going to come out the first four minutes and kind of establish themselves back. I wanted to establish us the first four minutes, I wanted to get a good warmup, so I let them go out early and told them, ‘let’s go make sure we have a good second half.’”

On Kadary Richmond’s near-triple-double:
“I didn’t even know. I think that’s on me. I’m into individual stuff like that, it’s big for him, but at the same time, I’m not going to have him in the game at the end of the game like that, something could happen. But I didn’t know he was that close, I gotta do a better job of understanding that. That’s on me. I should blame my assistant coaches, but that’s on me. I should pay attention to it.”

Adam Zagoria: “No Seton Hall player has ever had a triple-double in a league game.”
Sha: “I thought I had one, but I guess I didn’t.”
Jerry Carino: “Eddie Griffin had one against Norfolk State 23 years ago, just for the record.”
Sha: “In Walsh Gym. I was there.”

On Seton Hall’s defense:
“It was a conscious effort. (Manny) Bates, the big kid for them, is pretty good, I watched a lot of film on him. He likes to get his touches really low in the paint, so I told our guys to do our work early, and we wanted to dig. I didn’t want to trap early, I’m not really a big trap guy, but I wanted to dig and kind of be there, and I thought Tyrese did a great job of pushing him away from the basket to kind of make it hard for him, but that’s about it.”

On Tyrese Samuel opening up the paint:
“We tried to do it, I think I did it early at Creighton, but then we kind of got away from it. Give those guys credit down there, but it means a lot. We’ve gotta establish it down low. Once you establish that, then everything else opens up. I thought Al came out and hit some shots, I was happy that Tray came out, he’s been working hard on his shots. I’ve been trying to make room to kind of get him some minutes out there because he’s a good piece for us that could shoot the basketball, but I challenged him and a couple of other guys the last couple days because he had to battle on the defensive end. And he went out there and battled, and you get rewarded when you battle, you play hard. Shots start going.”

On emphasis of this game being the first of three winnable games coming up:
“We just take it one game at a time. I’m not even thinking about Georgetown or DePaul. I was worried about this game. This game was the most important game. Every game we play, that game is the most important game. We gotta get better, us. We can’t really focus on the other team that much, we’ve gotta focus on us because I think when we’re good and we’re right, everything goes right. We worried about defense, we got back to playing defense, and when your play defense, your shots fall.”

On leaning on veteran leadership:
“I lean on it a lot. I’ve been harping on leadership and someone stepping up, being a leader. We’ve got a bunch of older guys that it should be automatic, but it’s really not. We’re really inconsistent with it. We’ve gotta get more consistent with it, and I think once we do that, things will start going our way. This is a good step for us. We’ve just gotta keep working at it. Everything with me goes back to practice. Once you do it in practice, it’s natural and it happens in games.”

On Jamir Harris in practice vs. games:
“I don’t know. I’m trying to get him going. To his credit, he’s still working hard, he’s not down. We still believe in him, he’s gotta get one to go down. I think once he sees the ball go in the basket, I think a lot of things will change for him. Like I said, he’s working hard, he’s not down, the team is still encouraging him to shoot every time he’s open, I’m encouraging him to shoot every time he’s open. Like I said, he’s just gotta get one to fall in.”

On ball movement:
“That’s what we’ve been harping on. I’ve been harping on that all week that we have to (move the ball). The fact that we got 17 assists — I’m not sure how many turnovers we had — that’s gotta be who we are, because we have a lot of good playmakers and a lot of good ball handlers. There’s no reason for us not to have that.”

On Dre and Tae Davis:
“Dre’s a very important part to our team. He’s an older guy, he’s been through it, but he’s coming back from his knees being a little sore and he’s getting back into the swing of things, but we’ve gotta get Dre back going. Dre’s a big part of our team.”

“I gotta get Tae playing back how he was playing in preseason and in the summer, and it’s hard to say in the summer because we didn’t have 10 guys in practice. But his energy is always good, I think he hit the wall a little bit as a freshman, which most freshmen do, so it’s good to see him get his energy back and his confidence back. I’ve gotta get him driving the basketball, being a slasher, because I think once he starts doing that, everything else will fall into place for him.”

On difference tonight vs. Tuesday at Creighton:
“I thought we started the game off good against Creighton. We had a team meeting, some things were said, that stays in house, I challenged a couple of guys. Like I said, a couple of guys stepped up, the guys I challenged, I thought they played well tonight. So it was a little bit of both, a little bit of me and a lot of them. It’s an older group, man. I don’t need to be getting on them as much as if they were a younger group, but we needed to have a meeting. We had it, and now we’re kind of moving forward.”

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