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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: HARTFORD

March 20, 2019

Jay Wright

Hartford, Connecticut

JAY WRIGHT: Good afternoon, everybody. Great to be here in Harvard -- Hartford -- Harvard. Yeah. Great Big East -- old Big East town, man. Brings me -- I was shuddering walking into this building. We've had some battles in here. But we're psyched about being here and know that we have a great challenge here with St. Mary's. Just watching film, it's so eerily similar to the 2010 team they had with Dellavedova and Sandman. They have great guards and forwards, great bigs in Hunter, and the supporting cast on this team might be even better. Really good team. Randy Bennett is an amazing coach. It's one of those teams you like to -- I love to watch them play during the season because I love their style. I love how disciplined, how intelligent, skilled they are. And you love watching them until you have to play them, and then it's not so fun watching the film. It's that kind of team, that kind of game. So, we're ready. We're ready to go.

Hoops is in the house, man. Let's get the NCAA Tournament started.

Q. The one thing that they seem to do defensively, they take away threes. They're only giving up five a game, 31 percent. What kind of difficulty does that create for your kids?
JAY WRIGHT: It's really amazing how they do it. I don't think anybody in the country does it like them. They have the ability to keep you in front of them -- keep enough space to keep you in front of them, take away threes, and they protect the rim. It's really -- it's a great scheme. I don't think anybody that we've seen does it like they do, and you know we like to shoot threes. So it's going to be a really tough challenge for us because they don't do it like anyone else does it. Most people get out on you, and they extend, they deny. They use their length and they space you, and yet if you try to get to the rim, they keep their bigs in front of the rim and they protect the rim.

It's why they're one of the best defensive teams in the country. They get a lot of credit for their offense, but defensively, they're really good.

Q. Jay, how did you feel the young guys handled the pressure of the Big East Tournament and how do you feel that's going to help them coming into a week where a lot of them aren't used to the NCAA hoopla.
JAY WRIGHT: I thought getting -- we count Joe Cremo as one of the young new guys. And getting Joe Cremo, Cole Swider in those games, I thought Saddiq Bey was really good. And Collin Gillespie and Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree and Jermaine, they haven't been big players in those games. I thought as the tournament went on we got better. I thought in the Seton Hall game, everybody looked really comfortable.

And I really think that environment, and that one-and-done feeling can help them here in the NCAA Tournament. I do think all of this, you know, is distracting for a player, in a good way. You know, they love it. The practice you have in front of a crowd, that's the one piece you can't simulate in the Big East Tournament. And so how they handle all that is going to be interesting, but I definitely feel like the Big East Tournament helped us.

Q. Your guys were talking about how this has been such a different kind of year, and I know it started out with you kind of pulling your hair out a little bit at the beginning of the season. But from an NCAA standpoint, you've had all kinds of different experiences, in being the number 1 seed. Now, you're a 6-seed, you're back to the smaller building. Last time you were on the floor, 70,000 people and the confetti was coming down and you were holding the trophy. Talk about how -- does this feel different this week?
JAY WRIGHT: It does. It's different. We've been a 1 or 2-seed for a while. You're in a different kind of hotel. We're a 6-seed. The hotel's nice, but it just -- you know, you're -- it's just different, you know? And you could just tell the way people talk about you. It's different. I don't think we'd be honest if we didn't admit to that, you know?

But it's not bad, you know? You could tell we always have a great send-off at Villanova. There's kind of like different expectations, you know, but none of that -- it's all there and we recognize it. But when we were a 1 or 2-seed and we did have greater expectations, we tried not to let that affect us either. So, we're not affected by maybe lesser expectations or lesser attention. We really work on that. We really do.

The real beauty of this tournament is the game you get to play. And that's where you got to put your concentration. That's the real value. If you get caught up in anything else, you miss the real joy in the game and being prepared for the game. So, we definitely recognize it, but I think we're going to take the same approach.

Q. Did you rely on Phil and Eric a lot --
JAY WRIGHT: Yeah.

Q. -- to help the new guys get the feel for it?
JAY WRIGHT: Definitely, definitely. We've relied on them all year for every situation. I think the thing about the sophomores, although they didn't play a lot, seeing all of this and going through all this, they've seen it. I think that helps. But Phil and Eric, just when we leave the locker room here, I'll say, make sure the guys are straight, they know what we're doing here. We rely on them for everything.

Q. Yesterday was kind of a dark day for Big 5 basketball. How did that affect you? I'm sure that -- you get that news about Phil and, of course, Dunph gets knocked out. What did that do to you yesterday?
JAY WRIGHT: I was thinking about that last night. I was in my hotel room last night watching Dunph's last game. They had a camera shot of him walking into the locker room. I don't know if you saw that. It was emotional, and I was doing a radio show -- I was actually doing Coach K.'s radio show, and I was on hold. And the producer said Mike wants to know if it's okay if they ask you about Phil. I said what? He said it just came across. They parted ways and I got emotional. Philadelphia Big 5 basketball is a brotherhood. You know, you're like brothers, you want to kill each other just like brothers do if they're playing in the backyard. But you do everything together. We hang out together at the Final Four, we hang out at the Jersey Shore, we do coaches versus cancer. It's a sad day.

The one thing in life that's a definite is change. It's going to happen to all of us. It's just the day that it happens is really sad, a really sad day.

Q. Is it a little odd that you're probably the Dean of Big 5 basketball?
JAY WRIGHT: I didn't get that far with it yet. I still count on those guys.

I think Phil, as long as I'm around, I'll be like the little brother. I think Phil and Fran will always be the deans with me. I have a feeling whatever they do next is still going to be big in Philadelphia. They're both institutions in Philadelphia. I came up under them, learned a lot from them, and I'll be the little brother to them.

Q. You mentioned when you come up to the podium about the Big East. How cool is it that you guys, Marquette, both Big East teams, Leonard Hamilton, a coach with Big East experience are all here in a Big East building?
JAY WRIGHT: It is very cool. I was walking -- the team went ahead of me. I stopped to see somebody from UConn I didn't see in a while. I was walking about myself, and I was thinking, man, there's been some battle in here, man. Coach Calhoun and Kevin Ollie. I was really reminiscing, as I walked by, look to the Westwood 1 studios, I see Donny Marshall siting there. Oh, my God, another UConn guy.

But I've been reunited with a lot of UConn people. Much like the Big 5, the Big East is a brotherhood. And UConn was a huge part of it and still a huge part of the history. When you come back here, that's what you think about, you think about the Big East. Anybody that was ever a part of that as dominant as they were under Coach Calhoun, that's what you think about, the Big East. I know I do.

I think anybody that had any connection with the Big East still thinks of that. Like I said change is change, it's part of life and it's different now, but you'll never take away what they meant to the Big East.

Q. Coach, you spoke earlier about being at this arena. And Geno Auriemma spoke about what you think about the team. I know you had all of those battles here.
JAY WRIGHT: I don't really care about buildings except when you're on the court, what it looks like on the court. I could tell you things about some of the buildings we played in for National Championship games that there were some things wrong. But when you went out on that court, it looked like heaven, you know?

And when this place is packed -- I haven't played in here as a neutral site, but I've played in here with crazy Husky fans. It's not heaven, but it is an awesome place to play basketball. This place rocks. And if I remember correctly, I haven't been out there yet, but it's all one level, right? There's no tiers and everybody is on top of you and it gets loud. It's pretty cool place to play.

Q. The locker room. Anything like that, could it use any upgrades in your estimation?
JAY WRIGHT: Yeah, anything can use upgrades. We just built a new building and we're fixing things up in the offseason. Yeah, everybody can use upgrades.

Q. Jay, you've been down this road before. You sat on this stage before. You dealt with us plenty of times, how much fun are weeks like this still for you, even after having gone through this so much?
JAY WRIGHT: You know, it's still fun. It's still exciting. You know, just walking up the steps here, realizing, you're on the podium again. You kind of forget what it's like in the offseason and when you get here, it's a thrill. You know you're a part of something that's a national treasure, this tournament. The whole country's watching it.

And we try to -- you know, every year when we do our Selection Sunday Show at Villanova, we do a big crowd, and I say to them every year, don't ever take this for granted. I know a lot of players and a lot of coaches, and I was one of those guys. As a player, I never played in it. When we started our coaching career, I never coached in it. First time I ever did, I assisted in Villanova and it was a thrill. It's still the same thrill, it really is. There's nothing like it in sports, the NCAA Tournament.

Q. Jay, what do you think about legalized sports gambling in the NCAA Tournament?
JAY WRIGHT: You know what, Hoops, I don't know yet. I don't know if I have an opinion. I haven't thought this through enough. When you're responsible for young 18- and 22-year-olds -- we watched a video, the NCAA has you watch a video this morning. It's got organized crime members on there. It scares you a little bit. The NCAA does a good job of the video. It's a little bit of a scared-straight video.

So, when you're responsible for young people, it concerns me. Because I'm mostly concerned about them, right? And then there's so much more to it, like how much more attention it brings to the tournament. There's probably a lot of positives to it, you know. Maybe it cleans it up a little bit. I don't know. So I haven't thought it through enough.

But in the -- any type of gambling with college sports, when you're a coach, you got to think about how it affects your players, so you're always concerned.

Q. You've now taken a team that won the Big East Tournament also to the National Championship and the team that lost the Big East Tournament to the National Championship, so, clearly there's no one way to do it. But I'm wondering, reflecting on it, how the two experiences compare, if there's any notable differences.
JAY WRIGHT: That's a good question. You know, each group's different. The year, '16, I think -- '16 we lost to Seton Hall in the final, right? That loss really helped us. I tell Kevin Willard all of the time. I said hey, I owe you. The game plan they had really opened us up to what teams could do to us, and then we prepared for that throughout the tournament and some teams did it, and we were prepared.

And then '18, we won it. It was an overtime game against Providence, which we won the game, but Providence did some things to us, too. We definitely could have lost that game. They hit some ridiculous shots. It wasn't great execution. We were in trouble. Both of these times, we learned a lot from those games. This past game, we weren't good enough to be -- we're surprised every time we come out. We don't know what the hell's going to happen this year. So it's totally different in that we're still learning about ourselves every day in practice and trying to get better every day. We're really a work in progress still this year.

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