Saturday, January 13, 2018

Kevin Willard quote book: Georgetown

On the 1992-93 Seton Hall team and head coach P.J. Carlesimo being honored:
"It's awesome. I think anytime P.J. comes back, he brings such a great energy, great passion. He loves this school so much, and to have him around for both practices yesterday was great. I got to have dinner with him last night, and just to pick his brain and listen to stories he was telling -- I'm still waiting for us to put a statue of him up somewhere, because no one's going to do what he did, ever. What he did here was monumental."

On Seton Hall's performance:
"I was -- to be perfectly honest with you, I was really impressed with the way we played today. We had an absolute horror traveling Tuesday night into Wednesday, we didn't get back from Milwaukee until Wednesday night. We practiced Thursday great and then yesterday, our practice court got flooded, so we couldn't practice yesterday. We've had one practice in five days, and so for the guys to come out -- we walked through in our room and just -- the guys really paid attention to the scouting report. I thought defensively, we picked up our energy, I thought the second group was great early in the mid-first half, and I was impressed with the way they came back after really just -- we've had a really sluggish week."

On being outrebounded for the second game in a row, and whether it is a concern:
"Yeah, we're gonna fix it some way, somehow. We have to. We were always worried about (Marcus) Derrickson, because he does such a good job on the weak side, wedging when Jessie (Govan) goes to his jump hook, and he's gotten -- he gets low and he really wedges out the four man hard, so we knew he was going to get a couple. Really, he's the one that kind of dominated us. He had seven."

On any emotional concerns after Tuesday's loss at Marquette:
"We practiced really good on Thursday and the guys were emotionally into it. We watched the game on Thursday night -- our Marquette game -- and we played hard. We just didn't have it emotionally, and when we got to 42-41 and we turned it over, and then Rowsey got the three free throws, it took a lot of wind out of our sails, and we'd been battling back. We had an emotional win at Butler, but we still played hard, so I wasn't worried. As long as we played hard the whole way, I knew we'd come out today and play hard, and I was really proud of the way the guys played."

On getting more from Myles Powell:
"I'm trying to get Myles -- when Myles plays with this enthusiasm, it's infectious, and he played with great energy. He really ran the floor much better than he had on the road the last two games, and when he plays -- that's the way he's been playing all year -- and when he plays this way, we're just a much better basketball team."

On a connection between the 1992-93 team being honored and Seton Hall taking the game over, and also on Friday's All-Access game on FS1 between Providence and DePaul:
"I missed it. No one gives me a heads-up around here! I think we had cameras in the huddle, so when you have cameras in the huddle, your huddle changes dramatically from one person to -- you'd be very nice the whole time, kind of like last night's game."

On whether he would ever participate in an all-access game:
"Never gonna happen with me."

On Ismael Sanogo:
"I think Ish has gotten back to being -- again, his last nine games last year, he battled a really bad ankle injury -- and I think he is back, extremely focused on trying to be the defensive player that made him so good his sophomore year. And when I watch him play now, it's amazing the impact he has on the game defensively. It's night and day. It really reminds me of what he was doing the whole sophomore year."

On P.J. Carlesimo's message to the team and its effect:
"P.J.'s message was, 'If you want to be good in March, you have to be good now, and you can't wait until you get into late February and say, okay, now we're gonna start fine-tuning for March.' His whole thing was, his 1988-89 team and his 1990-91 team were really good in January and February, and they got really good in January and February, and that was his message. It was a really good message for my guys, especially the younger guys who have been kind of going through some the freshman stuff that freshmen go through this time of year."

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