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Seton Hall 72, Georgetown 64
Washington, D.C. ââ'¬" Verizon Center
Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Georgetown University Head Coach John Thompson III

On how much early turnovers hurt Georgetown against Seton Hall…
A lot. They are one of the leaders in our league in steals. I'm looking at the stat sheet and it says 13, but I felt like we had 30 turnovers, with all of the deflections that they had. Against a team that's that good you can't have so many empty possessions. It kind of set the tone early, got them out and then they got some easy baskets.

On if he takes any positives from Jessie Govan's performance…
To be honest, it's hard to sit here and find some positives. Jessie played well in a loss. He'll be able to do that, he'll be able to score. We missed B.J. We missed B.J.'s presence and we missed B.J.'s voice. I mean literally his voice, where he's on our defense end, offensive end. You go through a game and you hear him talking and placing people and we need someone. When you have a player that goes down you need someone to step up. Most of the time people think about scoring, but with B.J. we need someone to step up and replace his presence, his command of what we're doing, his ability to move people and place people at the defensive end. We miss that greatly.

On Georgetown's difficulty in getting the ball inside against Seton Hall…
I think Jessie scored. They were getting deflections, it feels like. I have to go back and look at it, I don't remember the exact stretch. We did get it in early, but then we had a bunch of turnovers.

On the message to the team going down the stretch…
We just have to fight. We've been fighting, I mean the team is still scrapping, but we just have to find a way to manufacture wins. The beauty of being in the best conference in the country is you still have two games against top-10 teams. We still have some good games to be played. As frustrated as we all are, we can still do something. We can still make some noise. What's the old cliché? You just have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps or whatever? We have to do that. We have to make sure that we get more than one or two people to show up at a game. Multiple people show up we play well.

On if being outscored at the free throw line was a matter of Seton Hall being more aggressive...
I don't think so. And I say that to say, I think there was a stretch ââ'¬" definitely in the first half and maybe a small stretch in the second half - where we were taking too many outside shots. But I think we went to the hole a lot. We weren't fouled and we missed. But I don't think it was a question of attacking the rim or us not getting the ball inside. They just didn't foul us and we fouled them.

On Isaiah Whitehead being Seton Hall's driving force…
He always does. He's really playing well, he's playing at a high level right now in all aspects of the game. Not just scoring, he's so improved this year because he's realized that the more he passes, the easier the game gets for him. Whereas last year he was just trying to shoot every time he could, this year his game has really grown and developed. He's showing what he can do more, because besides the fact that he's scoring points, he makes things easier on all of their bigs and everyone else and gets it to them where they need it. And he might be one of the better defenders in the league also.

Seton Hall Head Coach Kevin Willard | Pittsburgh '87 | sixth season

On Seton Hall's early fast-break offense …
"We had a couple deflections early on Georgetown's drives that led to some easy baskets for us and I thought that kind of relaxed us a little bit. I thought we passed the ball really well in the first half; we had nine assists on 14 field goals. But I thought our hands were really good active and kind of got in Georgetown's passing lanes a little bit and that gave us chances to make easy buckets."

On Isaiah Whitehead leadership in the game …
"I think Isaiah's [Whitehead] playing. If he's not an All-First Team BIG EAST player, I don't know which one is. I've been around this league a long time; I've played in, I was an assistant and now head coach now for six years and he's as good as player."

On Seton Hall's opening stretch …
"I thought the three was big; it settled us down. I thought we had a good feel for what we wanted to do defensively for them. Offensively though, with [L.J.] Peak and D'Vauntes [Smith-Rivera], [Isaac] Copeland really gets us with his length and I think defensively has bothered us. I thought it gave us a chance to kind of get into a nice rhythm. But again sometimes we've been getting up 15-16 and when you have five sophomores sometimes they look at the scoreboard and realize there are 14 minutes left. But we did a good job hitting our free throws and playing aggressively down the stretch."

On taking away Georgetown's inside game …
"We've been pretty solid with that and we did a pretty good job of that in the first game. With Georgetown not having [Bradley] Hayes really changes the way you play them. I though Jessie [Govan] had a great game, banging some 3's. He had two really big 3's, one that cut from 15 to 12 that was a big momentum changer and he hit one late. Georgetown has been going into [Bradley] Hayes so much, one out of every three possessions was going into him, so without him in there that changes the dynamic of Georgetown greatly."