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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 16, 2019Jay WrightEric PaschallPhil BoothNew York, New York Villanova - 74, Seton Hall - 72 JAY WRIGHT: A thrill to just be in the final here at the Garden. You guys have heard me say it all week, but we really do genuinely relish this opportunity to play in this environment, this building, in this league. We want to give a lot of credit to Seton Hall. I think Kevin's done as good a job as anybody in this country. This team, this Seton Hall team right now, if you look at their games, losing in double overtime on the road to Georgetown and then beating us, Marquette, all the teams in this tournament, easily could have won this game. They could beat anybody in the NCAA Tournament, and they have; they've beaten Kentucky, Maryland. Just speaks to how good our league is and what a great job Kevin did. We have great respect for them. Lastly, these two seniors, they're going to go down as two of the greatest Villanova basketball players of all time. You've got to thank God you had the opportunity to be a part of our lives. They've meant so much to all of us. Q. Jay, you knew you had some special younger players, but I'm sure you were concerned about how they would handle all the attention and the spotlight of this place these three days. How do you think they did? JAY WRIGHT: Really well. I think this really helped us. We got Cole Swider playing -- you know, coming off with six weeks off with a broken hand and coming back in this environment, did a great job for us. Joe Cremo gave us good minutes. Our sophomore, and Saddiq Bey as a freshman, his first two or three shots were airballs, and then after that, just had great games. Dhamir is a sophomore. Collin is a sophomore. I think they did a really good job. Q. And Jermaine? JAY WRIGHT: And Main-O. I'm even counting Main-O as an upperclassman because he hangs with these two so much. Main-O is inexperienced, but man, he was great in this tournament. Q. Jay, it feels like your team has been battling this season more so this year than in recent years. What does it say about the character of this team to come back from a losing stretch and get three grind-it-out wins for a Big East Tournament title? JAY WRIGHT: It means a lot to our program to get these grind-it-out kind of games. It's really a tribute to Phil and Eric. They really have been like coaches this season. We can do so much on the court, but they've got to take guys in the locker room and teach them how they prepare for practice, how they prepare for games. They've got to teach them how to sleep at night, how to eat the right way. They've been like big brothers, fathers almost to these guys. It's been frustrating for them. There's a lot of times in games when these young guys don't know what they're doing, and these guys are just trying to cover for everybody. It's just been incredible experience of leadership by these two. Q. Jay, over the past six years now, since the league was rebuilt, you and Seton Hall in a million close games, by one or two, overtime, title games both decided by two. What has it been like from your side of the rivalry, and why do you think there's been so many close games with players changing and everything year after year? JAY WRIGHT: First, I think Kevin Willard is one of the best coaches in the country, I really do. Look, we've coached against all of them. I really think he is. X and O-wise, they have great schemes. And then they have that Big East physicality, that toughness that we try to play with. So when we play them, then there's no advantage there. That gets knocked out. So it becomes a rock fight, and that's what's Big East basketball. Kevin played in it. He grew up in it. I grew up in it. We just really respect them. We learn a lot -- I joke with Kevin, but in '16, what they did to us here, I think helped us win a championship because no one had done that to it, and we knew we had to prepare for it in the tournament. There's a lot of similarities in the programs, and we're proud to be associated with them in a similar way. Q. Jay, it's your fourth Big East title in five years. I know you're going to say they're all special. Can you appreciate this one more considering where you were at the start of the season with all you lost and all you had to go through at the beginning of the year to get to this point? JAY WRIGHT: Oh, yeah, definitely. I can appreciate it. I really can. You live in the present, so what you're doing now is most important, and that's really all that matters. What you did in the past doesn't matter. This is thrilling. There's more to this one, just watching these two, what they did. We lost our two top assistants. We had young coaches who did a great job, and these two were like coaches. I would really go to them and have meetings with them. "We've got to do this. We've got to get the guys to do this. You have to teach them this. You have to be patient. Don't strangle Dada." (Laughter). We have to keep teaching them, and they did it. And we have really good guys, really, really good guys that allow us to coach them. So it's really been rewarding. This is a real special one. Q. Jay, I asked Eric this on the court, and it's kind of going along with what you were talking about, the responsibility you put on your seniors in this program. Can you just speak to that and how they have embraced that and taken that and really taken ownership of this program beyond just as you've described little leadership moments? JAY WRIGHT: In our program, the older you get, the more responsibility that's put on you. It's not easier on you. It's actually harder on you. And then you're expected to have the most pride, most understanding in the program, and your senior year is not about you. It's about you giving back and teaching the younger guys because the guys before you did it. Josh Hart was here tonight on the court. He took great pride in these two, right? Because they were the young guys he was teaching when he was a senior. And they all know that, and they pass it down. Now, Josh had -- the young guys he had were these two, who were experienced. It was a little easier. The young guys these two had have no experience, and so what they had to do was off the charts. That's what really made it special this year. Q. Coach, about a year ago, Jermaine was struggling with injuries and maybe a little extra hesitation in his play. Could you speak a little bit how in the past year his development and how he helped you guys fill a hole in your team. JAY WRIGHT: He's grown incredibly. Another coachable guy that comes from an old-school family that teaches him listen to the coach, and then he's their boy. There's a lot of times I would go to these two, "Guys, you got to talk to Main-O. You've got to get Main-O to stop playing video games and how to be serious as a basketball player." And Main-O listens. He tells them -- "Main-O, how are you doing?" "I'm not playing video games. I'm watching basketball games." That's what they teach him. You can tell a lot of kids that, and they won't listen. He listens to everything you tell him, and we're all thrilled. My wife hears me get frustrated with him the most, and that's my wife's favorite player because she hears me get nuts about him. She always tells me, "You should play him more. Don't yell at him so much." He's a real special guy in our program. No one gets more excited when he has success than all of us. Q. Jay, odd game in some ways, 54 combined points first half, 92 second half. It looked like you guys were on the verge of maybe taking control two or three times, and that never happened. Is that your execution, their tenacity, or just this place, this setting? JAY WRIGHT: Well, I hate to say this, but that's why you're a good writer, but it's those three, it really is. This place is crazy. It just doesn't let you get out of a game. The fans stay behind you. Crazy things happen here. If you look at their season, they have been down in a lot of games, even games they lost. Like they lost to Butler, they were down 20. They had a chance to win it. They've been like that all year. They just never go away. And then we did some -- we tried to lose that. We did some crazy things at the end, but that was all our young guys that just weren't experienced in these situations. So it was a combination. Q. Jay, two-parter: Were you surprised after the missed free throw that Kevin called a time-out? And then when he did, was the defensive message to the team about Myles Powell and generally what makes him so tough to guard? JAY WRIGHT: No, I really wasn't surprised. I was saying earlier he's a really good X-and-O guy. He knows what you're doing, and he does a great job of countering that with his players. That's what we talked about. When we prepare for them, we say, look, I show them, look what they do. This guy is a really good coach. So we say to them, we can't just expect them to run a certain play for Powell. They could run action, as use Powell as a decoy, and I just tell these guys, you've got to read it because I can't tell you what they're going to do because he could set it up for what you think they're going to do with Powell, and get someone else a shot. So I really put it on the players. They did a great job of communicating together. Q. Phil, this is for you: I heard Coach talk about how tough it is to be a senior, and Eric mentioned it on the court. When you have a game like this where the young guys actually kind of get it, how satisfying is that for you, and how much does that sort of take a load off you when they're giving you a contribution? PHIL BOOTH: They've had times throughout the year when they've done a lot and won us some games -- Jermaine, Saddiq, Collin, Dada. The list goes on. When they score and make points, that doesn't really surprise me. Us two guys as a team defensively is more important to us. We've got to connect as a group of five on the court. Offensively, they can do a lot of different things today, as you've seen with Saddiq today, what Jermaine did. It's no surprise to any of us. Q. Can each of you guys tell us about what it's like to be Big East Tournament champions three consecutive years, and you guys should know that for the first time in the history of this great event, you guys are the first group that has won three consecutive Big East Tournament championships. JAY WRIGHT: That's pretty cool. ERIC PASCHALL: I mean, it's pretty cool to know that (laughter). We never really talked about it. We just talked about each year, I mean, coming from the first one of this streak, we just talked about being the greatest team we could be, greatest Villanova basketball team we could be. There was nothing really like in our plan. We just tried to be the best Villanova basketball team and see where it takes us. PHIL BOOTH: Just very fortunate. It's nice to be among some great teams. Great teammates, great players. Stuff like that. You can't really talk about it and try to think in your mind, and think we won three straight tournament championships. It doesn't happen like that. Like he said, you have to be focused on being the best team you could be by the end of the season. Each year we try to do that, and I've been blessed with great teammates. Q. Phil, you spoke about your teammates coming through. For you individually, as you were struggling, but they maintained the floor for you. When you got going in the second half, what did you see offensively? PHIL BOOTH: The team kept telling me, "Booth, stay aggressive. When shots fall, keep leading us, do whatever you've got to do." I was just trying to read the defense. If it's a shot, make it, or pass it, pass it then. Just trying to make the right read on the offense and be strong with the ball. Q. Coach, yesterday Xavier had Hankins, who had a good game. Today Seton Hall shot 42 points in the paint. How much of a concern is that? JAY WRIGHT: It's always a balance. The game's changed. It used to be back in the day that would really upset you, but you always have to check on that balance. If you're giving that up and giving up threes, you're in trouble. If you're giving that up and you're taking away threes, it can be okay. So sometimes that gets you, and sometimes you say, you know what, they're just twos. How many -- they had seven threes. They beat us with 13 threes the last time. So it's a trade-off. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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