“Yeah, I think that’s something that they’ve done really well over their last five games, is continue to put pressure on you in transition, and I thought we did mostly a pretty good job in the first half of trying to stop their runs. But they’ve been doing it the last five games, ever since they’ve put (Dillon) Mitchell in there. He’s kind of really changed their gear. He doesn’t score that much, he just does so much other stuff, but Zuby’s just phenomenal. To only be down one, and we came out in the second half with two quick turnovers. It kind of killed us.”
On Acaden Lewis:
“Acaden, Bryce, Matt…freshman, freshman, sophomore against grown men, that’s something we have to…that’s why Dev and Tyler played well, it’s because they’re grown men and they’re physical to be able to play against a St. John’s where I think Tyler, Bryce and Matt are all still trying to figure out, how do I play when I play against a physically dominant team? And we struggle against physically dominant teams for that reason. He was out there working hard, but sometimes, it’s just not your night.”
On Duke Brennan matching up against Zuby Ejiofor:
“Yeah, I didn’t think Duke had a good game.”
On playing small in the second half:
“They were switching Zuby, so you’ve got Mitchell, who’s big, you’ve got Hopkins, who played power forward and center before, so just to go small and try to space them up and give guys a little bit more driving angles in there to try to get some more shooting out there. I thought the guys did a good job of attacking switches, but again, some of the things that have hurt us in the past hurt us again tonight. We’ve gotta continue to clean that up, which we do on the road. We just don’t seem to do it at home for some reason.”
On what has impressed him most about his team:
“I love the way we’ve played on the road, I really have. These guys have played with real toughness, unselfishness, but we just haven’t done that at home. I don’t think we’ve played selfish, I just don’t think we’ve played with the same toughness and the same togetherness that we have on the road. Some of it’s not really having a ton of home games, and some of it’s having a new group, young guys trying to learn how to play the same way when you don’t have friends and family and girlfriends. It’s one of those things, it’s a little bit of a learning process. This group, they have a great attitude, they work hard. We’re gonna have some bumps in the road, it’s a part of conference play.”
On the atmosphere at Xfinity Mobile Arena:
“It was great. It’s really my first time being on that side of it, so it was great.”
On Villanova’s second-half resolve:
“I love coaching these guys, I do. They’re a great group to coach, they’re a great group to be around. We’re not at the level where we’re gonna pitch a shutout. We can’t give up 50 points in the second half, we can’t give up nine offensive rebounds in the second half, we can’t come out and turn the ball over three times. And that’s all part of the learning curve a little bit. That’s me, and you’ve gotta sit back as a coach every once in a while and realize that there is a process to this, and sometimes you gotta play bad, go back and watch film and pick it up. We did some things in the second half late defensively that just made no sense.”
On St. John’s size under the rim:
“Yeah, they had nine offensive rebounds. It made a big difference.”
On what he can take away from this game:
“I think St. John’s is good. I think Michigan might be a little bit better, but I don’t think St. John’s is too far behind them, to be honest with you. And they played preseason, I think it was a pretty good matchup. I think with Hopkins and Mitchell out there, and Zuby, that front line is — there’s ladies here — that front line is a MFer. It really is. It’s something that, you’ve got (Ian) Jackson, you’ve got (Oziyah) Sellers out there, you’ve got two really good guards, but a front line like that is different. It’s something that, again, I have to adjust to a little bit better. I gotta make better adjustments. We were getting killed on the glass, we kind of kept it close at Michigan until they just played volleyball with us, and that’s kind of what (St. John’s) did in the second half with us.”
On struggling with physicality:
“It’s like when you open up a bottle of wine, if you open up a bottle of wine that was just bottled, it sucks. But if you wait three years and you let it age, you let it mature, it’s usually really, really good. And that’s what I’m about ready to go do right now.”
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