Kevin Willard quote book: Georgetown

On what went wrong for Villanova:

“I thought a little bit of our offense late in the second half, late in the first half, dictated a little bit of our defense, and that was probably the first time all year that our offense kind of shifted to our defense instead of the other way around.”

On Madison Square Garden and its atmosphere playing a factor:

“I think when you have a young basketball team that has played really well all year long and has had some struggles in big games, that’s part of the growing process and the learning process. That doesn’t stop you from boxing out, though. I mean, I think, again, they had more offensive rebounds than we did defensive rebounds, so I don’t think it was so much the setting this time. I just think Ed’s done a great job all year with his team. They have eight losses of four points or less. They beat Clemson at home, they went to Maryland and won. Before the big guy (Vincent Iwuchukwu) got hurt, they were really playing well. So this is a good basketball team. And Jeremiah Williams, I’m happy for him, because he's back playing like he did when he was at Rutgers. When he’s aggressive and getting in the lane, they’re tough to stop.”

On Malachi Palmer at the four spot:

“I think Malachi’s done a really good job stepping in for Matt. Where we struggle is when Malachi comes out of the game, so that’s something that I have a couple days where I gotta try to figure out what we're doing when Perk’s at the four. We haven’t had much practice time because since Matty’s gone down, we’ve been very delicate in practice. So I think that was one of the issues we had with the offensive end, we just haven’t been able to practice as good as we’ve been able to practice all year.”

On adjustments before the NCAA Tournament:

“I’ve gotta help the young guys out a little bit in these games. We struggled a little bit to run offense when Malachi wasn’t in there and we kind of got stuck going a little bit one-on-one. That’s kind of what I mean. I gotta help them a little bit with not being able to put them in that situation so much. And it was just unfortunate, with Malachi going out and Perk in there, we just kind of get stuck with a very simplistic offense, where with Malachi and Matt, we were able to do a lot more.”

On shooting 7-for-29 from three-point range:

“I thought we got a lot of really good looks throughout the game. They’re playing big drop coverage. They were in huge drop, so you’ve gotta take advantage of that and be able to do it. And unfortunately, Dev had a tough night, but Dev’s been great all year. So again, you’ve gotta take the shots that they give you, and I thought they did a good job in drop. It’s just, you’ve gotta make some of those shots.”

On the NCAA Tournament serving as a clean slate:

“No, again, part of my message to these guys a little bit is just enjoying this a little bit. We’ll let this one sting, we’ll go back and watch film on Sunday. They’re going to get a couple days off, which I think is well-deserved. We’ll come back Sunday and practice and watch film, and after Selection Sunday, it’s a whole new season. You’ve gotta give Georgetown credit, they played really good tonight.”