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What Villanova head coach Jay Wright said about Alabama
Before Alabama and Villanova face off in the NCAA Tournament’s Round of 32, head coaches from both teams spoke to reporters gathered inside of PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.
Thanks to a YouTube live stream from NCAA March Madness, here are the questions Wildcats coach Jay Wright fielded about the Crimson Tide basketball team on Friday afternoon.
Question: Jay, what’s it like, the tic toc of after the Alabama game ends, what your staff and you do to prepare for practice today? What’s a little bit of a tic toc of how it goes?
“You watch that game immediately. The staff goes live to watch the game. The team does all their media and really misses, probably, half of the first half doing media and then go back, eat and watch the game together. We actually have started to not make the guys watch the game because we’d rather have them see the game after they know who they’re playing. We did that for the play-in game, we’ve done it for this game. And then the coaching staff, when the coaches get back from the game, then you get together and you start working on your scouting report.
“Now, one assistant has already been watching and now the whole staff comes together. And then you get up early this morning, you refine it, guys come in for breakfast. You meet with them after breakfast, go over the scouting report, go over film. And then you come here and walk through it and shoot and defend what they run. And then you do media and then eat, rest up and watch video and go through the scout again tonight.”
Q: What’s your scouting report of Alabama?
“A very unique team in that they do a great job of defining everybody’s roles and staying consistent in what they do no matter what you do defensively. Like, (Collin) Sexton’s making plays, (John) Petty’s there to shoot. They’ve got a great inside-out game. (Dazon) Ingram can make plays. They keep great spacing. They’ve always got two bigs around the basket. They’ve always got three guys on the offensive glass. Defensively, very, very aggressive defensively and very active. It makes it very difficult for you to really execute offense smoothly, you know? Great length.
“Just a really interesting team. And I don’t know if we’ve faced a team like this. A really difficult matchup.”
Q: Do you think there’s such a thing as momentum this early in the tournament? And if so, do you think 8th- and 9th-seeded teams may be at more of an advantage than a No. 1 given that they typically come off a more competitive game in the first round?
“Definitely. We’ve actually addressed that with our team. It’s something that we’ve experienced a number of times that maybe, as the one seed, you come off an easier game and things went well and you made all your shots, and all of a sudden, you get into a battle with a big, physical team. You kind of get smacked in the face to start the game. So, you’ve kind of got to withstand that initial surge where they’ve already played in a real physical battle.
“Compared the Big East Tournament where we have, in past years, been fortunate enough to get a bye. So, the team that plays the night before on that court and now they’re coming at you after a really tough game that you didn’t play. At the beginning of the game they’re hitting shots, they’re aggressive and it’s your first game. So, we kind of compare it to that.”
Q: Just wanted to ask for your evaluation when on Collin Sexton and John Petty are working in conjunction -- one outside, one inside driving. How difficult does that make Alabama?
“When you have a player as dynamic as Collin Sexton, and then you have a shooter on the same side of the floor with him like Petty -- you could argue Petty could be one of the best shooters we’ve faced all year and Collin could be the most dynamic guard we’ve played all year. So, you put them on one side of the floor, it’s really tough to deal with because you’ve just got to pick your poison. You’re going to get beat on one or the other. And obviously Avery (Johnson)’s a very smart coach. He does put you in that situation a lot.”
Q: Jay, I just wanted to ask you of your evaluation of the job Avery Johnson has done this season.
“I just think he’s done a great job with the program. I’ve been very impressed. For an NBA coach out on the recruiting trails, he’s grinding. I see him everywhere. I usually joke with him about it. He grinds, he really works. But I think when you see a team like this -- someone asked earlier about momentum, there is a momentum at this time of year, and I feel we’re similar in that we have a lot of young guys on our team and it’s hard to get those young guys to understand how hard you have to play, how detailed you have to be to be successful at this level. And I think he showed incredible patience and a high level of teaching skill to get all those young guys he has to play like they’re playing right now. That’s hard.
“It’s an amazing coaching job, because he has a lot of freshmen out there that are playing at a very, very high level now. I think some of their losses came from those guys just being inexperienced and him trying to teach lessons. I think those losses helped him teach those lessons, and he’s an amazing job. This now is not a team with freshmen. This is a team that he’s grown to be playing like an experienced team. They beat a hell of a team last night. They’re playing like an experienced team, and that’s coaching.”
Q: Teams list them on the roster or even when they introduce them, hardly anybody is identified as a center anymore. Is that a position that’s gone forever?
“We don’t have any centers on our roster, I don’t think. I think we consider centers low post, big men who stay in the low post, right? That’s what you’d call a center. Maybe come to the high post. But it’s hard to play that way anymore, you know? That guy’s got to get out, they’re going to get him pick-and-rolls, he’s got to get out and defend on the perimeter.
“You know what, Alabama’s got a couple good centers. Maybe three. There aren’t a lot, but Alabama’s got ‘em. They go inside to those guys, and that’s why I said they’re different than any team we’ve played this year. There’s very few teams that really go inside like that and play out of the post, and they do. But not a lot.”
Q: Talking to some of your players, they said that you might appreciate Alabama football and follow Nick Saban quite a bit. And they said that you gave them a speech about the halftime adjustments they made in the championship game this year against Georgia. Can you just explain your thinking there?
“I love college football, and in the Big East we don’t have it. Therefore I love watching the SEC, and our guys watch those games. So, knowing that, in football season I’ll always say like, ‘Who watched the Alabama-Auburn game?’ And most of them do, so I’ll use examples. And Alabama being the program they are -- national championship game we talked about the unselfishness of the starting quarterback (Jalen Hurts) … that when they made the change at halftime, you could tell if a guy’s faking it or if he really gets the fact that he’s part of something bigger than himself. And when a guy that talented and that’s had that much success, he’s been a championship quarterback, can genuinely root for his backup to win the game then that’s a real program.
“It has great players. Sometimes the walk-ons can be proud of something bigger than themselves. But when the best players do that, that’s a sign of a true, selfless program. And that was the analogy I used from that game.”
What Villanova head coach Jay Wright said about Alabama
