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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 10, 2017

New York, New York

Villanova - 55, Seton Hall - 53

COACH WRIGHT: A lot of credit to Seton Hall. I think we got outplayed tonight. And we just found ways at the end. Great players make great plays. Jalen and Josh just individually made incredible plays. It's just a great Big East basketball game, great defense, physicality.

I think Kevin did a great job preparing the team and he always does. I think they're playing -- I told them last night I thought they played their best game of the year.

And tonight probably not as well as they did last night but they're playing good basketball. They're going to get some people in the tournament.

So I just give them a lot of credit, and as a coach I've got to say our players just made great individual plays.

Q. Could you talk about how the grind-out this win tonight?
COACH WRIGHT: Like I said, the things they did, their game plan was better than ours. That's on me. But our players just made plays down the stretch. The plays Jalen made, we ran plays. They didn't work. Seton Hall defended them and then Jay just went and made a individual play.

At the end there, the Chris shot took was not the shot we wanted to take and Josh went and offensive rebounds.

So we just had players that gutted it out. And defensively we had some great stops. Eric Paschall on that last play did a great job on Delgado. That's not easy.

Q. Jay, a lot of similarities with last year's Seton Hall game here in the final as far as getting down double digits early, fighting back, taking the lead and then they take the lead. Did that -- was there a point where you were, like, here we go again early when things weren't going well?
COACH WRIGHT: Well, they've played us so well so many times. It's not just last year's game to me. It's going into the game I know, I just know what a Seton Hall-Villanova game is going to be like. Sometimes we have gotten them big scores and they're more anomalies.

We've got a lot of games like this. Not just in the Big East Tournament, at their place.

So I really expect this coming into the game. Maybe it's self fulfilling prophesy, maybe that's why it happens so much.

Q. Jay, you only shot 7-of-26 in the first half. Did you almost feel fortunate to only be down seven at the half at that point?
COACH WRIGHT: Definitely. We were poor in the first half. And we weren't that bad defensively. Offensively we were just terrible, and just not playing the way we like to play.

But guys definitely don't come into a game thinking I'm going to play poorly. It's the defense that does it. They do a great job. They can switch every position. Delgado does a good job playing ball screens. And they stay on the guys on the perimeter. They're a really good defensive team. I really did feel pretty good we were only down seven.

Q. Erik came out the second half wearing No. 44 rather than his normal 4. What happened there?
COACH WRIGHT: Blood, right?

JOSH HART: It got ripped.

COACH WRIGHT: Jersey got ripped.

Q. Jay, you said earlier that you know what a Seton Hall-Villanova game is going to look like. Why do you struggle so much against them?
COACH WRIGHT: I think they're just really good defensively and it just seems when we get them in the tournament we're coming off a win and we expect things to be easy, and when they're not we just, you know, lose our personality.

But I think they do a great job of it. Their athleticism and their physicality, they're more physical than any team in the league. And they just, they do a great job guarding us. The things that we do they match up with really well.

Q. Coach, just a little residue of the last game you played a couple weeks ago, you shot 67 percent. Today was a different game. What did you tell your team to prepare for this game, because you knew you played them before?
COACH WRIGHT: Yeah, when you're making shots, everything looks great. And in that game we made -- they played pretty well defensively. We made some ridiculous shots. Ridiculous. So everything looks good.

Tonight, those same shots we took early, we showed the guys showed them on film, we're making a lot of the shots Chris hit against them last game, they were in their face. We said this isn't going to happen. We've got to get better shots than this. We took the same shots. They didn't go in, same defense.

Q. Josh, could you go through the sequence that led to your game-winning basket?
JOSH HART: Yeah. I think it was a -- I think we got a turnover, I'm not sure what happened but somehow we got the ball in transition, I kicked it to Chris. I think he was kind of surprised he was so open. And I just saw him shoot it. Right when I saw him shoot it I knew when he shot he put a little too muster on it, and I was, like, you know what, just go get it.

And luckily it bounced in the perfect spot, and I was able to just get and it go up with it. And then the last play Eric Paschall played, he played Delgado as best as anyone could. And we were fortunate enough to come out with the win.

Q. Can you guys talk about what changed at halftime, what you talked about. You went in trailing and, Josh, you in particular get seven second-half points. Strong comeback perhaps to get revenge in this tournament against the team that beat you last year?
JOSH HART: Yeah, you know, Coach, he challenged us. We know we didn't play Villanova basketball for the first 20 minutes. But, like he said, at the beginning we had some shots we forced, especially myself. And we didn't get in the lane, get other guys shots. We didn't turn down, okay, good shots, great shots, we didn't do that. So we challenged ourselves. Coach challenged us to play Villanova basketball for 20 minutes.

And we knew it was going to be a tough game. We knew we weren't going to go out and just blow them out by 20 in the second half. It was a grind. We just challenged each other.

Q. Josh and Jay, after the final buzzer you went over to Angel Delgado who was on the ground and you said something to him. What did you say to him and why did you do that? And Jay what did you make of that scene?
JOSH HART: Yeah, I have so much respect for that program. We've had some battles over the last four years. Got all the respect for Coach Willard. He gets the most out of his guys.

And they're tough, physical and very well-coached and I told Angel you're a heck of a player and just keep going, you've got a bright future.

And we felt this feeling last year. And I said you have this feeling right now. NCAA Tournament time, don't have this feeling again.

Q. Jay, what's it say about your guys, I mean the offense was bogged down, you weren't shooting well, and final minutes you still make tough shots. What's it say about the mentality of your guys?
COACH WRIGHT: Yeah, we got -- first of all we've got talented players. And that was, that was the point I was trying to make earlier, it's purely talented players making plays at the end of the game. It wasn't really great execution or game plan.

And they got guts. They have no fear of failure. And I think that's what you saw at the end. Some of those defensive stops were big time at the end because Seton Hall is good at that. They play in a lot of close games and they isolate you at the end. They're very good at that not just finishing the play but getting the rebound, the offensive rebound, which they got a couple.

But not only do we make big shots but guys came out with big-time defensive time games. Josh, as big as his offensive rebound was, he got a deflection-steal right at the end that was big.

Q. Which is more difficult, playing for the buzzer beater or defending against the buzzer beater?
JOSH HART: That's a good question.

COACH WRIGHT: I'll tell you what, it's more nerve-racking playing against the buzzer beater. When they're bringing the ball up -- is that what you're talking about -- when you're on defense? Yeah, it is, because offensively you feel like we'll make a play. If we miss it, we'll foul, get another shot maybe, or someone will get an offensive rebound. Defensively you don't know what they're going to do. At least offensively you know what you're going to do.

Q. Josh, in your fourth year at the school, just such a tough grind it out league, grind it out Big East Tournament. What's it mean to be in the third final tournament of a row?
JOSH HART: It's amazing. You grow up watching the Big East Tournament in Madison Square Garden, all the battles. There's so much history in this league, this tournament and to be in three straight it's amazing.

And I guarantee in 20 or 30 years I'm going to be one guy that brags a lot, but right now we won't think about that at all. We will only think about who we have tomorrow.

We know we're going to have a tough opponent tomorrow. And we can't celebrate being in our third straight. We've got to come focused and ready.

Q. Jay, 10 less 3-pointers tonight. Against Creighton couple of weeks ago you had to grind it out to win. Is that what's been impressive about this bunch is that this kind of game is one of the ways how you've had to win this year?
COACH WRIGHT: Proud of those guys, very proud of them. That's what good teams do. If you win 30 games, there's five or six of those that it was not pretty. And it was against a good team. You can't just beat the team you're supposed to. You've got to beat some good teams. And some of those games are not going to be pretty and you've got to find a way to gut it out. I'm proud.

It's the leadership. It's Josh and Kris Jenkins and Darryl Reynolds. We have just incredible leaders.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT

March 10, 2017

Jay Wright

Jalen Brunson

Josh Hart