Big East Tournament Postgame Presser: Georgetown

Big East Conference Men's Basketball Tournament

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Patrick Ewing

Jessie Govan

Georgetown Hoyas

St. Johns - 88, Georgetown - 77

THE MODERATOR: Questions for coach or for Jessie.

Q. After beating them twice in the regular season and losing tonight, how disappointing is that for you guys?
COACH EWING: It's very disappointing. But you know, it's hard to beat a good, quality team as St. John's three straight times. You know, they have a lot of talent on their team. They're very well-coached. And you have to be able to play your A game if you want to beat them.

And as you see in the stat sheet, we didn't bring our A game. You know, Jessie and Marcus, they played, based on their stat sheet, they brought their A game, but no one else really stepped up. And we need, for us to beat that team, everyone has to pull their load and we didn't get that done tonight.

Q. Can you talk about Jessie's performance today and also throughout the entire season?
COACH EWING: He played well, not well enough. He played well. He's getting better. He still has a lot of work that he has to do on both ends of the court. He has to continue to run the floor on both ends. He still has to rebound. He has to become a better shot blocker.

And he has to do a lot more things for us. And I'm going to need him to be, when he comes back next year for his senior season, he has to be my leader. He has to start leading. And a leader, you can lead in a lot of different ways. And he's going to have to choose which way that he wants to lead.

Q. Early in the game it seemed like all your bigs were able to hit their 3s. And it seemed to throw them off a little bit. What did they do to answer that later on in the game?
COACH EWING: I'm not sure if it's anything that they did. I think we just got too happy with it. We got too happy with it. We stuck with it too much.

We need to be able to -- when we're playing our game, we're inside/out. We post. We shoot our 3s and then our perimeter guys, they're able to hit their shots also.

And if you look at our guys, you know, Marcus took 11 -- he took, what, 12 shots and 11 of his shots were 3s. And that's not good for us. He has to be able to be able to score in the post, along with shooting his 3s.

And Jessie, you know, he mixed his up. So when we have it rolling, it's a mixture. And then our perimeter guys are able to knock down their shots. And they weren't able to knock their shots down. They were horribly cold.

Q. Was this season a good starting point in your opinion?
COACH EWING: You know, right now it's hard to reflect on it. I just have a bitter taste in my mouth right now. So I'm going to take a couple days and reflect. Depending on what happens, see if we're going to get a chance to continue to play and then reflect on it and see -- and make that decision. But right now it's hard to say.

Q. Did you have any overall message for the team after this game that you wanted them to leave with?
COACH EWING: We talked. I'll just leave it like that.

Q. So if invited you'd go to the NIT, you'd accept an invitation to the NIT?
COACH EWING: Oh, yes. Yes.

Q. Jessie, any reaction or response to what Coach just said about you coming back and a leader and how you played this year, this game?
JESSIE GOVAN: Yeah, I mean, I didn't do enough today for us to get the win. I tried. I tried my hardest, but there's things we could all improve on, myself included.

So it's going to be a big offseason for all of us trying to come back and really take the Big East by storm.

Q. What's it been like to be able to work with a player like Jessie and mentor him and what's his potential going forward?
COACH EWING: The sky's the limit for him. He's a player that has a lot of potential. He just has to put in the work to grasp it. He has to put in the work. He has to work hard every day.

But he has potential. And that's one of the things I've been trying to stress to him; if he wants to achieve anything in life, he has to work at it, work hard at trying to achieve that every day.

Q. Jessie, they outscored you in the paint 40-18. What was the trouble with their bigs?
JESSIE GOVAN: I don't think it was their bigs. I think we just couldn't stop the drive. That was a big -- their guards were getting into the paint, and I wasn't altering enough shots. They were just blowing right by us. It's like nobody was down there. They were getting wide-open layups pretty much and and-1s.