Seton Hall 85, NC State 74
THE MODERATOR: Coach, what did you think about your team's performance today?
SHAHEEN HOLLOWAY: First of all, I want to say North Carolina State is a team. Got a great coach. Got a lot of respect for Coach Wade. I thought we played Seton Hall basketball today. Happy with some things. Some things we got to clean up. But.
For the most part I thought we got out there, I thought we played the way we're capable of playing and came away with a good win.
Q. AJ, have you ever been to Maui or to Hawai'i, and can you talk about what the experience has been like so far?
AJ STANTON-McCRAY: Never been. It's been great so far. Just nice weather, good sunsets, good sunrise, beautiful views, so I can't complain.
Q. AJ, you guys came out and had a about maybe a 14-2 run in the beginning of the second half. Was there something that you saw from a strategic standpoint defensively that made you guys say, hey, we got their backs against the wall, let's come out and push them over the edge?
AJ STANTON-McCRAY: We just knew what it was coming out of halftime. We communicated with each other. We talked to each other at halftime. As long as we talked on the court, as long as there was no miscommuncation, we're all good defensively. We just got to continue having that 40 minutes of the game.
Q. AJ, what was it about NC State's defense that allowed you guys to be able to find your shot selection and be able to put up the points you did today?
AJ STANTON McCRAY: I feel like them switching a lot helped us a lot with throwing it into the big when they would have a smaller defender on them. They wouldn't trap the baseline so we had open shots off kick-outs?
And then playing aggressive. That's all we can ask for. That's all we do. Just playing aggressive offense and defense, and we came out and did that today.
Q. Obviously your team thrives in transition and trying to force turnovers. You didn't force as many turnovers today as you normally do, but still found ways to be able to finish off of those. How proud were you of your team in finishing those opportunities?
SHAHEEN HOLLOWAY: I was proud because we made -- we had to adjust to the officials, the way the game was being called. So they kind of took away our aggressiveness early as far as trapping and stuff like that. But then we just played solid half court defense.
But that's who we are. We're a defensive team. We work on it a lot. Like I said, NC State is really good. They've got great scorers. They can shoot the basketball. One of the keys was just take away the three. They make threes we got no shot at beating them.
So I thought we did a great job contesting that, understanding who could shoot, and then not letting them get no second-chance points. Not as many.
Q. Coach, can you speak to the impact that the bigs had on this game? I think you guys did a great job of deterring them at the rim, blocking shots, rebounding the ball.
SHAHEEN HOLLOWAY: Yeah, I thought when Steph went out with foul trouble, I think Najai came in and played well for us. It's funny, because I think we was averaging somewhere like 10 blocked shots a game before we came down here, and it's a gift and a curse with that, because when you go for so many blocks you give up on the offensive rebounds.
We just pick and choose our spots with it. But the bigs had a major impact on today's game. I don't even know what time it is on today's game.
Q. I don't know if you saw the news this morning about the Big 12 coming to that partnership with that tournament in Las Vegas. It's a $50 million NIL deal for those teams and players who participate. With that said, what's it going to take for marquee teams like yourself to continue to play in the islands in these tournaments?
SHAHEEN HOLLOWAY: Yeah, this is my first time hearing about that. That's big time. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know too much about the politics of college basketball right now. I just try to worry about us.
We're happy to be down here. We're happy to be down here. This is a great experience for us, great experience for those young men that will probably never have a chance to be somewhere like this again.
I don't want to speak for the tournaments and stuff like that, but everything right now is adjustments. You've just got to adjust to everything.
Everybody has got to try to figure it out.
Q. Can you talk a little bit piggybacking on that question, what's the experience been like so far on Maui for you and your boosters and the players?
SHAHEEN HOLLOWAY: It's been good. We came down a little early to kind of get used to everything. I think we got down here late Wednesday night, Thursday morning. Just trying to get used to the time difference and the weather and the humidity and everything.
I think Seton Hall travels very well. Our booster travel very well any time we go somewhere. I think everybody is far is enjoying it. I'm down here for business. I know everybody else is down here to kind of hang out. But my team and I, we're done here for business.
This is just the first step in our journey. We've got a long way to go. We can't get happy with that. Not saying we're not happy that we won, but there's a lot of basketball to be played.
Q. So follow up on that, it's a quick turnaround and you said there's a couple things you wanted to clean up. What are you going to try to do between now and tomorrow?
SHAHEEN HOLLOWAY: Just offensive. When you're switching 1 through 5, you've not used to seeing that, and they kind of took us out of our stuff a little bit. It was good to see Budd Clark clock playing like Budd Clark. We've got to get him going. And just understanding that it's going to be a quick turnaround. I've got some guys cramping up. I don't know what's going to happen with that. Just kind of trying to figure it out and next man up.
But the approach to cleaning up things is on offense we had too many turnovers.
Q. We saw that you got a lot of quality minutes in with your bench players early in the season. How does that translate to them being ready further down the line, and do you plan on going really deep into the bench for the duration of this tournament?
SHAHEEN HOLLOWAY: Yeah, I mean, if you watch us, we pretty much play 10 guys double figure minutes. Jahseem falling and going down kind of hurt us a little bit with rotation with the guards, but I expect to play 10 guys double-figure minutes. Two guys that played a lot didn't play that much today were Jacob and Josh. They're going to get a great opportunity tomorrow. I told them it's a long week; just keep your head up and be ready to go. I think those guys will be ready to go.
Yeah, especially with Mike right now, I don't know what's going on with him and his situation, so we feel like we've got to be ready.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports