Kevin Willard quote book: Penn

On coaching in his first Big 5 Classic:

“Yeah, it was great.”

On a line change substitution in the first half:

“It was just, we had gone five-and-a-half straight minutes and those guys were gassed. I mean, Fran (McCaffery)’s teams, the first five minutes of the first half, first five minutes of the second half, they’re gone, and so we had two freshmen and a sophomore out there that just aren’t used to that. If they were three juniors and a senior, they probably would have understood it. But the first time you go up against it, the same thing happened to us with Duquesne, they did the same thing.”

On what flipped in transition:

“The nice thing about having a guy like Dev come off the bench, Malachi, they’re older, they’re more physical, they’re a different look than Acaden and Bryce. So when they come on, we always get better defensively. And I think as that unit has been able to practice together, they’ve gotten better offensively. The biggest issue we have with those guys is Dev was out for two months, Malcolm was out, Zion was out for a month and a half, so those guys didn’t even practice that much together. I think defensively, I always had a lot of confidence, but I think they’re getting good confidence now offensively.”

On what he may be looking at with his team:

“Yeah, I’m looking at Michigan. I don’t think anybody wants to look at Michigan right now, to be perfectly honest with you. We’ll definitely set the schedule up a little bit differently next year, balance it out a little differently to just have a little bit more balance on it, but I think being at home has been good for this team because we’ve been able to get a little bit of rhythm practice-wise. Being at home has been nice, even though we played at La Salle and this isn’t technically a home game. Not traveling gives you some extra time. We have a big test Tuesday against a team that’s playing, by far, the best basketball in the country.”

On scouting Michigan:

“I’ll start doing that tonight.”

On Devin Askew:

“Before Dev got hurt, I was really excited about him and how he was playing. And I think there’s nights like now, where he’s just — and he would say it — he’s still not, in my opinion, full, 100 percent back to the player he was before he got hurt. But he brings a mental toughness, he brings experience, he’s a great teammate, and now that he’s kind of getting his groove back a little bit, I expect to see more nights like this.”

On Fran McCaffery:

“Yeah, I was hoping to get away from Fran, to be honest with you. I love him. I had nightmares of Fran because his Siena team — my three years at Iona, his Siena team was as good of a mid-major team…if that Siena team was in college basketball now, and how much notoriety mid-majors get? Like, that team was ridiculous. I don’t think I ever beat Fran those three years, and then we’ve had some good battles, I think we played six times in the Big Ten. I like the fact that I don’t have to travel to Iowa to see Fran, I can go right down the street. But I have so much respect, in fact, I think he’s gonna turn Penn into a sleeping giant, in my opinion.”

On his message before Villanova’s 17-2 run at the end of the first half:

“I told them that the next guy who gives up a three is never playing again.”