Feb. 8, 2010
Villanova head coach Jay Wright...
Opening statement: This was a great BIG EAST victory for us. WVU is always one of the toughest places to play and we've always had trouble scoring here with the way they play defense. Tonight, we had 18 turnovers, but that is credited to their defense. This place is a great atmosphere and we always like coming here, just not the outcomes. The fans were great tonight and it was a great BIG EAST basketball game.
On Villanova's freshmen: I thought our freshmen did a great job and to do what they did in this environment and against this team is impressive. This is an outstanding team and they're very difficult to play against and very well coached, so if you don't play BIG EAST basketball with these guys it's going to be exposed. For our freshman to come in and do that was really big.
On West Virginia coming back from a deficit: Their reputation of coming back was a fear for us at halftime because we've always lost here. You know they can hit threes, and we really concentrated on not letting those guys get to the perimeter. I think that's why they got a lot more offensive rebounds in the second half and maybe more fouls driving the ball.
On the significance of the win: It wouldn't have been the end of the world if we lost to them today because they're a good team, but it is huge doing it.
West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins...
Opening statement: They're good. They're good when they are able to step behind ball screens and make shots. We tried to use our length to make it hard for them and stay in front of them and tried to get our guys to stay down because they are really good at pump-faking and jumping into you. We didn't do a very good job. The two guys we tell them to stay down on were 17-for-20 from the foul line. They're very good, but at the same time we probably didn't do as good a job as we hoped we would do. They're 19-for-22 from the foul line and we were 18-for-32.
On West Virginia's 1-3-1 zone: We didn't do a very good job in it. The strength for us in that is our length and when you stand there with your hands down they're going to pick us apart and they did. We just didn't do as good a job getting in passing lanes and using our length to our advantage. They exposed it; we just didn't do a very good job. When we don't use our length, we become more like them and our strength is our length. Our strength is not what their strength is. When we drop down from our length to where they are, we're going to get beat.
On Da'Sean Butler: We can't expect Da' to get 30 points every game and carry us. Our other guys are going to have to do things. When they're chasing him around and giving him that much attention, how do we not get a rebound? We got outrebounded by eight and that hasn't happened all year and they play four guards. He put those big, young guys in a little bit, but basically, it was four guards. We didn't rebound the ball.
