“I don’t know too much right now. I know they said his ankle kind of swelled up. He tried to come out in the second half and warm up, and he couldn’t do too much, so Tony (Testa) shut him down.”
On his message after Sunday’s loss at Villanova:
“I just told them that wasn’t us, right? Like I said the other day, we kind of got punched in the mouth and ran away. I thought tonight, we came out and we set the tone from a physicality standpoint. Rather than letting the guys play, we just had to come out and establish ourselves early, get Al going. Kooks did a good job of moving the basketball, and it wasn’t just him. I thought the basketball moved. Against Villanova, we just — I’m not sure what team that was, but it wasn’t us. But we came out and we had two good days of practice, two hard days of practice, our guys came out and I thought we were ready to go.”
On Seton Hall’s transition defense:
“I was worried about that. (Xavier’s) a very good team in transition. I thought we did a tremendous job in the first half of getting back. The second half, we didn’t do a good job, I think, that’s why they got a lot of points and the game got a little close. But I thought we did a good job of that. I thought we also did a good job of making sure everybody was in the right position, not spread out and worrying about their man, but playing team defense. For about 32 minutes of the game, I thought we played great defense and eight minutes, I thought we tried to mix and match. Dre went out and we tried to get a couple young guys some minutes, and kind of went from there.”
On Seton Hall’s response after the Villanova loss:
“What I want to say, I can’t say, but that wasn’t us. That’s all I’m gonna say. It wasn’t us, it’s unacceptable. I took that personally on the chin, not having my team ready to go against a good team, and give these guys credit. For two days, we had two hard days of practice and they came out ready to go.”
On sustaining momentum Sunday against St. John’s:
“We just gotta play. We can’t worry about little things, we can’t worry about noise. I thought some of our guys got caught up in a lot of things, just worrying about outside stuff. We’ve got a good St. John’s team coming up and we’ve gotta make sure our guys are healthy. We’ve gotta get Dre, make sure he’s good, Al took a fall in the first half, make sure he’s good and prepare. You win Sunday by preparing tomorrow. You don’t win Sunday on Sunday, you win Sunday the next three days.”
On Seton Hall’s defense:
“I know a lot of you guys are starting to get to know me. You don’t know me if you thought my team was gonna come out and play like they did on Sunday again. That’s never gonna happen. I’m not gonna say we’re gonna make shots all the time, but just as far as having no energy and not playing hard, that’s not happening. That happened once, and once again, we might lose a game and we might lose by X amount of points, but just playing hard and playing with energy, we didn’t do that at all (Sunday). So that was something I preached, that’s something my teams always do, and we came out and did it tonight.”
On Isaiah Coleman:
“I think all the good teams have a good bench, a guy that comes off the bench and plays well. We’re trying to be one of those teams. We’ve gotta get a couple more guys to play like that, but it’s good to have him coming off and playing. I thought when Kooks was out, (Coleman) starting those three games definitely helped his confidence get back up. He played big for us tonight, and we need him to continue that. It can’t just be this game, so the message to him was, ‘why are you taking a step back because Kooks is back?’ He came back and you just kind of said, ‘alright, let me go back.’ No, keep playing that same way you were playing when (Richmond) wasn’t playing.”
On Seton Hall’s ball movement:
“It came from the last two days of practice. We watched — I made sure we made an edit of the game against Villanova just of our offense. We watched it again to make sure they’ve gotta start seeing things and they’ve gotta move the basketball. The more we move the basketball, the easier it’s going to be for guys to have driving lanes. And Al hit some shots early, we’ve got to get Dylan back going, and then hope to God Dre is good, because he’s been our backbone. That’s how I want it to be, and that’s how it should be. I don’t know if this the highest assists we’ve had this year, I’m not sure, but that’s beautiful to see because now everybody’s feeling involved.”
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