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NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FINAL FOURApril 2, 2016Jay WrightKris JenkinsJosh HartRyan ArcidiaconoHouston, Texas Villanova - 95, Oklahoma - 51 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by head coach Jay Wright and student-athletes from Villanova. We'll ask Coach Wright to start with an opening statement, then take questions first for the student-athletes only. COACH WRIGHT: Well, that was just one of those games that could happen to anybody. I feel bad for Oklahoma that it happened to them in the Final Four. I'm happy we had one of those games where we just make every shot. We had end-of-shot-clock shots we just threw up and went in. Kind of similar to our game in Hawaii against Oklahoma. They made everything, we couldn't make anything. It was simply one of those nights. We were very dialed in defensively. We did a great job. But they're a great team. Buddy Hield, and all of their seniors, Spangler, Woodard, those guys represent college basketball extremely well all through the season. We really have great respect for them. We're really continuing to be dialed in and try to get one more on Monday night. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for the student-athletes first. Q. Josh, Coach Wright talks a lot about attitude. How is your state of mind coming into tonight's game compared to other nights in the tournament? JOSH HART: I wouldn't say it was different. We were so locked in defensively, locked into the scouting report. I think that's just the mindset we came in with. Obviously we love when we can hit shots. But this program is really built on just dialing in defensively, being tough. I think there was one play in the first half when Cousins hit a banked three. That's when attitude comes into play. Not being rattled, just when things like that happen, look at your brother in the eye and say, Attitude, continue to be locked in. Q. Arch and Josh, you talked about how you hadn't gotten into a rhythm offensively in quite a while. When did you realize you were in a rhythm today? For Arch, how much did he set the tone early when it was a close game? RYAN ARCIDIACONO: Josh is always aggressive. I didn't even realize he wasn't shooting the ball well because he just defends and rebounds so well. He got out in transition. He stayed aggressive. That's the best thing for us, to stay aggressive even if he's not making shots. JOSH HART: You know, I wouldn't say it's easy. But when you have guys like Kris Jenkins, Ryan Arcidiacono, Daniel Ochefu who can go off any night, even other guys, Jalen Brunson Phil Booth, Mikal Bridges have big nights. When they're aggressive, you know, it helps me, helps in the driving lanes. I was able to get a couple shots to fall. When that happened, I was able to kick out a little bit, get guys shots. So I definitely wanted to come in being aggressive and just try to help them make the right play. Q. Josh and Ryan, talk a little bit about your defense on Buddy. He said you threw a lot of different guys at him, up in him. He's seen tons of different defenses. Do you feel like he was off tonight? Was your offense your best defense? RYAN ARCIDIACONO: We were watching on film how good Buddy is. We knew he would take and make tough shots. We tried to keep fresh bodies on him, tried to make him take tough, contested shots. It just happened he didn't make them tonight. We've seen him when he's knocking them down from everywhere. JOSH HART: Yeah, you know, it wasn't just one guy that was on him. We threw a lot of guys at him. Ryan was on him, Mikal was on him, Booth was on him. We were so dialed into not letting him get threes off. Like Ryan said, he can make tough shots. So it was about the guy on the ball, but also the guys behind him, ready to step up, ready to help him out. I know one play, I was up in him in the first half. He drove. Kris Jenkins stood up and took a charge. Just being ready to step up for your brother up there. That's what we kind of did, being dialed in, ready to step up for each other. Q. Josh, just talk about, if you can, remembering your first game against Oklahoma defensively. What did you all see and correct today? JOSH HART: That was a tough game. Early in the season, we were a young team. Me and Kris were starting for the first time. Guys like Jalen Brunson and Mikal Bridges were playing their first-ever college basketball games. We didn't have our habits as instilled as we do now. Today we were just so dialed in. We saw what they did to us in Pearl Harbor. We were dialed in defensively, ready to step up for each other. That's really what we did. We were just so dialed in defensively. Q. Josh, Jay talked all week about learning the lessons from 2009, making sure you stayed focused. How conscious were you guys and how difficult was it to keep that in mind tonight and you see the vice president here, place is full? JOSH HART: I didn't know he was here (laughter). But, you know, it definitely was difficult. But when you have a coach who's been here, he tells us all the things he remembers going on, things he wish he could have did differently when he got back. When you have a coach that's been through it, it all trickles down from him. We have five great seniors who, you know, the whole week were just focused on Villanova basketball, being dialed in, playing Villanova basketball for 40 minutes. Obviously it was difficult, a lot of distractions. But when you have a head coach, the leadership that this team has, you're able to just keep everybody focused. Q. Could all three of you players, if I can call you players, talk about the length-of-the-court pass you threw, Kris? I'm assuming Jay called it in the huddle. Does the play have a name? Do you call it something, other than length-of-the-court pass? Also your emotional reaction to Mikal catching it and dunking it the way he did. RYAN ARCIDIACONO: That was just a good pass. Mikal was able to finish it. JOSH HART: Yeah, just a great rebound by Mikal. Kris threw a great pass. I didn't even see it. I went out the game, I wasn't going to stretch. I didn't even see it happen. I saw the replay. Those guys just made great plays. KRIS JENKINS: Yeah, Mikal just made a great play. Threw the ball, he went up and got it, was able to finish the play. Q. It wasn't a called play, it was just a read by you guys? RYAN ARCIDIACONO: Yep. Q. Kris, I saw you looking down at the box scores a lot. When you see the numbers you guys put up, what is your reaction to that? KRIS JENKINS: Well, I was looking at what they shot from the field, how dialed in we were defensively. Last time we played them, you know, they were able to score easily. So we made this game real tough on 'em. We executed our game plan. THE MODERATOR: We'd like to thank the student-athletes for joining us. We'll see you tomorrow. We'll continue with questions for Coach Wright. Q. At what point did you feel that the game was yours and that the game plan was working, the guys were focused, everything was kind of coming together? COACH WRIGHT: I think at halftime I felt good, like we were focused in and we were playing good basketball. I didn't think it was ours at that point, but I felt good that what we decided to do was working. I told the team at halftime, All right, they're going to come back and make a run, which they did at the start of the second half. About three minutes to go, Baker Dunleavy said, Do you want to put the walk-ons in? I said, No. I wasn't even sure at that point to be honest. When you're in it, you're not thinking clearly about that, about the game being over. You're thinking about next play, substitutions. Probably everyone else knew earlier than I did. Q. I know you have a lot of pride in the Big East. Conference had to reinvent itself a couple years ago. How important is it for the league and how much pride do you have that a league team is playing for the title on Monday night? COACH WRIGHT: A lot of pride, I really do. You said it in a good way. We reinvented ourselves. That's what we did in a time when college athletics is really being run by football. I'm a huge college football fan. I love it. I met the athletic director from LSU and I said, I can't wait to come down and see a game. I love it. But there's a lot of great basketball schools. We all got together. That's just what we are. We're basketball schools. We make all our decisions athletically about basketball. That's our lead sport. We just wanted to get together and see where we fit in this world of football. We don't have a goal to be the greatest league in the world. We're authentic. We're all basketball schools. We're in metropolitan areas. It's the biggest sport. This event for us is bigger than the four-team football championship to our schools. You can see by our fans out there, it's just what we are. We're just trying to be the best we can be. We know we have to prove ourselves because we're new. Not because we're not good, because we're reinvented as you said. I'm really happy for our league, happy that our league is in the finals, as happy as I am for Villanova. Q. Have you had a chance to talk to Rollie yet? How much would it mean to have her on Sunday night? COACH WRIGHT: My wife and I talked to him today about 10, 15 minutes before we came here on the bus. We would love to have him here, we really would. He's got some health issues, not major, but that he's dealing with with his family. That's why I called him. He had already called me in the morning. I said, Take care of yourself, take care of Mrs. Mass. Don't worry about us, we're good. If there's any way he can be here, he'll be here. Q. There was a play in the second half where you were up at least 30, Phil Booth goes in for a layup, you were very emotional on the sideline about that. Is that simply a reaction to a play that you think should have been called and wasn't, or even at that point are you consciously trying to keep pressure on your guys? COACH WRIGHT: A little bit of both. I just honestly didn't want somebody to get hurt. At that point you got to stay aggressive. If you're not aggressive, you're going to get sloppy. I wanted our guys to stay aggressive. I was really happy Phil Booth stayed aggressive there. I thought he got fouled real hard. It's one of those plays you can get hurt on. I reacted emotionally in the spur of the moment, then kind of caught myself, looked at the score and said, All right, we got to settle down here. One of the officials, I said, I'm sorry, I just don't want someone to get hurt. That was it. Q. Talk about your defense being able to set tempo today when it wasn't the first time y'all played Oklahoma. COACH WRIGHT: This game was similar to our game against Oklahoma in Pearl Harbor. Oklahoma set the tone defensively. Josh explained it perfectly. We had guys starting for the first time, we had guys playing for the first time. Oklahoma started that game defensively, they were smacking the floor. Our guys were just out there playing like, Oh, we're in Hawaii, this is nice. I'm starting finally. I sat for two years, now I'm starting. This is fun. Those guys were dialed in, focused, smacking the floor, denying everything. It became a standard for us throughout the season. Even when we played well within our league, they were up around No. 1, 2, 3 in the country, we kept saying to our guys, Hey, just remember how those teams are playing. If we're going to do anything, we have to face those teams one day. Think about how Oklahoma played us. That I think was a big part of this game. When you're talking about 18-, 22-year-old kids, they beat us by 23, they just did to us what we did today. If we had to play them again tomorrow, it would be a lot different. They would have learned from this one. I think we had an advantage having gotten beaten pretty bad earlier in the year. Q. You shot 71 tonight. Those are like 1985 numbers. How much do you think the practices in this dome prior to the game helped your confidence? COACH WRIGHT: You know, I definitely think it helped. I keep saying, I don't think when we played in '09, which is the first year we played in one of these big stadiums, I don't think we had a closed practice on Thursday. We talked to our guys about that a lot. We actually got four shooting workouts in. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, today, a walk-through, then pregame shooting. We're going to be good. We're going to be good. We kept telling them. I think they believed that. We didn't shoot the ball well in here on Thursday. Friday we did shooting drills. We started shooting pretty well. Our shootaround today, we shot it pretty well. I think that really helped. Q. Could you describe how large 1985 looms at Villanova, Philadelphia basketball. What does it mean to you to have a chance to add to that history? COACH WRIGHT: You know what, I'm not sure anymore about Philadelphia basketball, how '85 looms. It did at the time. I was an assistant in '87, '88. It was big at that time in Philadelphia. I can't really speak for Philadelphia on that. At Villanova, those guys are still legendary, magical guys. Anytime they come around... Last year we did a 30th anniversary. FOX Sports televised it. We played Coach Massimino's Keiser University team. Everybody came back to see those guys. We had an event before the game where people could come and get pictures with them. Those guys are really icons on our campus, they really are. That whole team brings that magical underdog feeling, like anything's possible. That's really strong still at Villanova for all sports, but definitely in our basketball program. Q. (No microphone.) COACH WRIGHT: There's something in me that those guys are so special, I don't want that team to ever lose their magic. I don't think they will. But I'd love our team to do it. I think it would be different if we did it. I want them to still be able to keep their magic on campus. They're a special group of guys, too. They all stay connected to the school, they stay connected to each other. They're a really special group of guys. Q. It's not on one guy to change the game, talking about Buddy. What did you do defensively on him? COACH WRIGHT: He hit that first step-back three on Ryan Arcidiacono, and everybody on our team went crazy on Ryan. I don't think I've ever had more people ask me or send me suggestions on how to stop Buddy Hield going into this game. It's unbelievable (smiling). They either ask me, What are you going to do? Or they said, This is what you should do. One of the things we tried to do was switch onto him not specifically for switching, but get different people playing him because he wears you out. We had everybody from Daniel Ochefu, our five man guarding him, Darryl Reynolds guarded him. We did it so different guys were chasing him, moving off the ball, we were giving him different looks. He's so smart, he can tell who's covering him, how you're guarding him, what you can do to that guy. We were able to stay fresh. I think at some point in the second half, as a matter of fact, like eight minutes he came out of the game. I thought, He's got to be tired. We must be getting to him now. I don't think it was a time Lon wanted him out of the game, but he was probably tired. THE MODERATOR: We'd like to thank Coach Wright for joining us. Congratulations and we'll see you tomorrow. COACH WRIGHT: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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