Sha Sounds Off: UConn

On the biggest difference in the game:

“Did you ask the UConn players what they thought of Seton Hall today? I’m just asking a question. Everybody, fucking relax, everybody relax. I’m just asking a question, I don’t want no problems. What’d you say, Jerry?”

“We got treated like little boys in the first half. They just did whatever they wanted to do to kind of throw us around. They were super physical, we just didn’t match the intensity in the first half. In the second half, we came out and we were just a different team, but we gotta stop spotting teams points. I don’t know why we continue to keep doing that. I think the difference was they did whatever they wanted in the first half, the second half, we kind of stepped up to the challenge and played a little more of our brand of basketball, and got back in the game.”

On Seton Hall’s second-half fight:

“It’s exhausting, to tell you the truth. It’s exhausting for me as a coach. As players, they’re trying to fight back to try to get back in games. It’s disappointing because opportunities like this don’t come around too often at home when you’ve got a really good team in your house and you’ve got some good momentum going. To play like that in the first half was just disappointing. It’s really, really, really disappointing.”

On Dan Hurley’s comment that Seton Hall would be a tough team to beat in the NCAA Tournament:

“Yeah, Adam, I’m just worried about Butler. I ain’t worried about no NCAA Tournament or that type of stuff. Danny’s always been super supportive both ways, I’m supportive of him, he’s supportive of me. Obviously I knew this game was gonna be super physical and I was disappointed in the way they came out, but we continue to keep battling. Like I said, Dan’s always been supportive.”

On keeping Budd Clark out of foul trouble:

“Jerry, I love you, man, but I don’t know what question that is. What do you want me to do? You want me not to play him? I don’t know how to keep him out of foul trouble, he just — you gotta, as a player, it’s a feel, right? It’s a feel for the game, so he’s gotta stop getting these cheap ones early and then it’s tough because I’m watching both teams play, and their guards are playing almost the same exact way, with the same type of physicality, the same thing. So he’s just gotta learn. He’s gotta learn how the referees call it…sometimes they call it, sometimes they don’t call it. It’s just a feel. The more he plays with certain types of officials, he’s just gotta be smarter. I can’t take his aggressiveness from him. That’s who he is, that’s how he plays. If I take that from him, then he’s a 5-foot-10 guard out there. He has to play that way to be successful.”

On his technical foul:

“I don’t know. I’m a very nice guy to the officials, I don’t know. I am, but y’all are laughing. Every coach gets a little fired up. I’m very passionate about this game of basketball and all the officials know it, all of them. I’m disappointed in that tech, to be honest with you, with myself and with the officials, because it wasn’t warranted. I did some other things that would warrant techs, but not that. I said, ‘why was that a foul?’ It happens.”

On chasing UConn’s guards off the perimeter:

“That’s how they play. If you watch them, that’s them. I told our guys, with UConn, you gotta be solid the whole 25 seconds. One little mishap is gonna cost you, and that’s how they play. They run and get you chasing, and make you make a mistake, and the next thing you know, there’s a three, there’s a backdoor cut, there’s a slip. So you’ve gotta be super disciplined, and at times, we weren’t and it cost us.”

On Najai Hines:

“I thought, to be honest with you, before Najai, let’s talk about the kid (Tarris) Reed. He had an unbelievable game, I give credit where credit is due. And what Najai should do is watch that, and watch how an upperclassman plays and screens and hits, and play with that physicality. And once he becomes an upperclassman, it happens. But he battled, he tried his hardest. But like I said, I’m a big proponent of when you play against somebody and you watch, you see what they’re doing and how you could help your game.”

On free throw shooting:

“Yeah, Adam, I don’t know. I don’t know, man. Here’s the craziest thing: In our gym, our new, great, beautiful practice facility, we don’t miss free throws, we don’t miss three-pointers. In games, we can’t seem to make them, so I don’t know how or what. We certainly shoot it really well, we shoot a lot of shots, and we got some good looks today too. I gotta watch film on that last shot, I thought Mike was gonna be open. I hate that the game had to come down to it.”