Sha Sounds Off: Xavier

On what changed in the second half:

“Yeah, just trying to find guys that want to play with energy and defend. Xavier’s a really good team, obviously the No. 1 shooting team in the Big East in three-point percentage, they’re No. 1 in assists, but to give up 41 points at halftime on your home court is unacceptable. We went in, watched a couple film, made some adjustments and kept them out of transition. I thought in the first half, they just were in transition, getting anything they wanted.”

On defending Tre Carroll:

“He’s a very good basketball player, the last couple games, he’s averaging 28 points a game, but he’s a hard drive left and the first couple guys, they didn’t listen to the scouting report. They let him go left and let him get out there and shoot some threes, and he just was too comfortable. I thought in the second half, we made him play a little faster than he wanted to play, and then when you start scoring and you start putting your pressure on him, and then we closed the lanes up. The first half, everything was so wide because they could shoot, guys were too wide, they weren’t in the lanes. The second half, we kept it kind of tight and I think that was the difference.”

On Jacob Dar:

“It was good. It was good for him, it was good for us. He’s a good basketball player, that’s why he’s on the team. He’s just gotta find his way. I keep telling him, just go out there and play with energy. Don’t worry about making mistakes, don’t worry about messing up. Just play with energy, play hard, and hit the offensive glass and slash. Like, you’re a 6’7 slasher. Slash and use your size and length to defend. I thought he did that in the second half for us.”

On Najai Hines battling back from foul trouble:

“That’s why I started him in the second half. He was sitting too long, and I got on him. I’ve been getting on him about him playing with energy and just playing like he used to play for us, hitting the offensive glass, getting rebounds. I thought he did a good job of that. I was worried with him a little bit because their five men pick and pop, and Najai’s not really fast laterally, so I thought that hurt us a little bit in the first half. But I thought overall, he did what I asked him to do: He played, he defended, he rebounded. We tried to get him the ball down low. This is the first game that nobody doubled him. The last five games, I’m throwing the ball to him and people are doubling him, so it’s the first game and it won’t show on the stat sheet, him scoring, but us trying to get a point to throw it down there and him throwing it back out there in shots or out there in drives, that was the case.”

On bright spots in the first half:

“When you keep them out of transition…they were just running the ball, which we knew. When you watch them, that’s how they play. I thought once we settled down, the last 10 minutes of the first half, I thought we settled down, I thought we made them play a little bit in the half-court, made them a little quicker. They played quick, made some guys handle the basketball that normally don’t handle the ball for them, and I thought that’s why we got some steals in the first half.”

On the importance of fan support:

“I can’t, Jerry. It’s important. It’s just really important. Thank you to the people that showed up today, there wasn’t a lot of people, but it got loud, though. So thank you to the people that are truly fans, like, real fans, and I’m not saying nothing bad about nobody, I don’t want nobody to think that. The people that came out tonight came out, and they were true fans, and it made a difference. Now obviously, this is an important stretch. I think if you’re a real Seton Hall fan, you understand that, so I don’t need to say too much about that. That kind of speaks for itself.”

On coaching from behind:

“I don’t like it either. It’s draining, but it is what it is, it’s draining. I think today was good for us, too. Today was the first time in a long time that we got a chance to come down here and get a shootaround in, and for the guys to get used to the rims, I thought we shot a lot of free throws and hit a lot of shots down here, so that was good. Anytime you can get in the building, it helps from a shooting standpoint, and for us to bounce back and shoot the ball from the free throw line the way we did, I thought that was important.”

On potential lineup changes:

“Oh, man! You guys won’t let that go, huh? I’m not really big with that for a lot of reasons, right? Because you’re gonna need everybody, and right now with this generation, everybody, they’re kind of sensitive, right? So if you start doing that, then you start losing people, and our team is not good enough for us to lose anybody. I was just saying on the radio, I know what Twin is gonna give us (TJ). So if I start Twin and we get off to a slow start, who do I go to? You almost gotta play chess and not checkers, and I know all you experts think that I should start lineups and stuff like that, but when you start doing that, you start messing with these young guys’ minds, and like I said, we’re not a team that, like, we don’t have studs. And I’m not disrespecting my team, I’m just…we need everybody. We need a Jacob Dar. We need Josh, who had a good stretch, we need Trey, who had a good stretch. Twin. We need Mike, who was playing well for us. Elijah’s got the most experience on our team. We gotta get him going because we need him, you know what I mean? So I don’t want to take those guys’ confidence away by doing that, but I make adjustments throughout the game, and with me, it’s not about who starts, it’s about who finishes. And if you’re a basketball player, that’s all you care about, finishing the game.”

On his vision with Seton Hall’s rotation:

“I want to play nine, ten guys double-figure minutes. Some nights, it’s gonna be like that, some nights it’s not. It all depends on the way the game is going. I thought Elijah came out trying to be aggressive and missed a couple shots, Steph came out very aggressive, missed some shots and he got messed up because the fans got into that and it kind of messed him up. That’s why I went to Godswill, who’s played here and understood it. Najai got into foul trouble, I wanted to start him in the second half to make sure he had some juice going, so each night is different. Some nights, it might be ten guys, some nights it might be eight. It all depends on…Trey Parker was in foul trouble, so he couldn’t go too much. I like that group that started the second half, so I’m big with staying with a group that’s got it going, right? So I stayed with that group for a while. Maybe too long, but it’s just a feel.”

On making shots making a difference:

“Jerry, you know I’m saying experts, it’s everybody. It’s not geared towards you. I don’t want you to think I’m trying to talk bad about you.”

Jerry Carino: “We’ve been doing this a long time.”

Sha: “Yes sir.”

“It makes a big difference, especially with young guys. Sometimes, that’s all these young guys care about is scoring. I could harp about a lot of things, but they care about scoring. It’s funny, we scored 86 points, and the biggest difference is I’ve been on Budd Clark and Trey about pushing the basketball. Like today, (Clark) pushed the basketball and we got a lot of easy baskets because of that. He has to do that. God gave him a gift to be really quick and really fast. Use that to your ability, because if you don’t, we don’t have Patrick Ewing or somebody…these guys don’t know who Patrick Ewing is. But we don’t have a dominant big man where you just slow the game down and throw the ball down low. We gotta play quick, we gotta play fast. He’s gotta push it, he’s gotta get guys running, he’s gotta get Twin an open shot, an open three in transition. He’s gotta get A.J. one, he’s gotta get some layups. But when we don’t do that, it’s tough for us because we’re not built to really play half-court like that all the time.”