“I’ll answer that. We don’t care about that, Zach. We just care about game for game. Sorry to interrupt that.”
On Seton Hall’s toughness:
“I thought in the first half, we kind of — I’m not sure what was going on. They were scoring off our turnovers, we had like, six turnovers and I think they jumped on us. And then once we settled down and I was able to get their attention with the tech — something I don’t want to do, that’s awful, I don’t like to get techs, but sometimes you’ve gotta get it to show a team that you’re fighting for them. I thought after that, the game turned around for us.”
On Dre Davis:
“I’ll tell you what: The last time Dre was on the court was the first half on Wednesday. He didn’t practice Thursday, Friday or yesterday. I didn’t know what he could do. He came to me before the game and he was like, ‘I want to give it a try.’ I’m a knucklehead. I played him 34 minutes, but we needed this game. We need every game. And I kept asking him if he was good, but to answer your question, shoutout to him. He’s been like that for us the whole year. He’s been our backbone.”
On defending Joel Soriano:
“I thought we had a good game plan. Like I said, earlier in the first half, we were just turning the basketball over and they were scoring. I thought Soriano did a great job in the first half. In the second half, I thought we did a better job of adjusting to the way the game was being played and called, and they were just fighting and battling.”
On Al-Amir Dawes’ defense:
“I don’t want to take nothing away from Al, but it was team defense, right? I think Al, I’m asking him to do a lot for us. I’m asking him to score for us, I’m asking him to play defense, to guard the better guards — and there’s great guards in this league — so for him to go out there and take that challenge, it’s good. But every night, he’s guarding a great guard in this league.”
On what this win tells him about his team:
“We’re just fighting. Like I told you guys the other night, the team that played against Villanova, I don’t know that team. This team, going down early, just clawing and fighting and coming back, we didn’t show that type of heart when we played ’Nova. We showed that type of heart tonight, and I was happy to see it. This is how you’ve gotta play. This league is very good. Every team is very good, every coach is very good, all the players are very good. We’ve gotta come out ready to play early. We didn’t do that and we got in the hole.”
On his experienced roster making a difference in close games:
“You know, Jerry, to be honest, we focused so much on shooting free throws and we missed a lot. I think experience helped, but both teams are experienced. They’ve got a lot of older guys as well. It’s just about making plays and defending. I thought our defense took over the second half, and that was the difference in the game.”
On what surprises him about Seton Hall being 10-5 in Big East play after being picked ninth:
“That, right? I don’t care about getting picked whatever. That doesn’t matter when you’ve got a good group of guys. It started in the summertime. This summer, this team was connected. I’ve been saying that the whole year. We were way more connected with this team than we were last year. I think when you’re connected off the court, I think that brings it on the court, and that’s the difference. I’m not answering the question because I don’t want to get into predictions and people said, ‘you guys can’t do this or do that.’ I just worry about us playing good basketball and playing together, and playing defense. If that happens, you give yourself a good chance to win.”
On Seton Hall’s connection:
“I thought that helped, but at the same time, outside of those three guys, everybody else is new. JB is new, Dylan’s new, Zay is new, Elijah’s new. But like I said in our last press conference after Xavier, those three guys (Kadary Richmond, Dawes and Davis) gotta be those three guys. Period. Those three guys have to bring it every single night for us to compete in this league. If that doesn’t happen, we don’t have a shot. That’s just what it is.”
On his halftime message:
“It was just basically what you guys are fighting for and how hard we’ve played this year. We came out in the first half and I thought we were soft. I’ll be honest with you, I thought we were soft for like, the first 16 minutes, and the last four minutes, I thought we picked it up. The message was just, we gotta go out there and take it. I got mad at my team because they were worried about fouls. They kept crying to the referees. Stop whining, just play basketball and find a way. And we found a way.”
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