Alabama - Kentucky Postgame Quotes
1/24/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 24, 2009
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Alabama Postgame Quotes
Head coach Mark Gottfried
Opening statement ...
"First thing is that you have to give Kentucky a lot credit. I thought defensively they did a great job. We never really seemed to get in a great flow. Offensively we were not in a good rhythm. Defensively, I think we did a pretty good job most of the game. I thought in the second half the difference was our turnovers, number one. I think we gave up a couple of easy baskets on the breaks, especially with our big guys running the floor. (Mikhail) Torrance has been playing really well and with Alonzo (Gee) and Senario (Hillman), those three guys combined to go 6 for 30. We never seemed to get in a real good flow. That was the name of the game today."
"We had thirteen missed tipped shots in the first half from somewhere around five or six feet around the basket. We just couldn't find a way to get the ball in the basket. In the second half, it was a combination of our turnovers. I think we had 14 turnovers in the second half. I thought we got loose with the ball and dribbled into traffic too many times. We just didn't seem to be real efficient there. But the turnovers in the second half and some of the decisions we made with the ball hurt us. Our shot selection hurt us a little bit."
"There is a lot of basketball left. We've got the opportunity to go to Arkansas next; we've got to play well over there. Our players will bounce back. They'll be ready for practice and our next game. Obviously, today we could have done some things better. I think when you hold a team to 39 percent and they turn it over 23 times, you ought to be able to win a basketball game, but there was not enough offensively today."
On the play of JaMychal Green ...
"He did a good job. He is getting better and better the more he plays. He finished around the basket. He was 5 of 7 from the foul line and he did a good job there."
Sophomore guard Senario Hillman
On guarding Jodie Meeks ...
"He's a great player and great shooter. We've just got to keep working hard and do a better job next game. He was making great contested shots and we did what we could to try to stop him."
Freshman forward JaMychal Green
On Patrick Patterson's play ...
"He was running the floor and hitting lay-ups. But we've just got to get ready for the next game."
On being able to contain Patrick Patterson ...
"It gave us more confidence in ourselves because he is a great player. It gave us confidence that we can stop anybody."
Sophomore forward Justin Knox
On the last six minutes of the game ...
"I think our offense couldn't get going those last six minutes and kind of went on drought. We couldn't really find an open shot. That was very frustrating. We pretty much had the game and then having the last six minutes play out the way it did was really frustrating."
On coach Gottfried's message to the team after the game ...
"He just told us to take it one game at a time and keep our head up and to get ready for our next opponent. We're going to have shooting nights like we had tonight, but we're going to have to learn from our mistakes and move on."
Kentucky Postgame Quotes
Head coach Billy Gillispie
On his team overcoming turnovers and foul trouble ...
"I thought we played great. I think (Alabama) is a very good team and I think it's a team that in the last three games got 18 layups each game so we wanted to keep them out of the paint as much as possible, keep them off the offensive boards, and keep them off the foul line because going into the game they were the only team that had more foul shot attempts than us.
I thought our guys really played well to the scouting report. It wasn't Patrick's (Patterson) best game offensively but they did a fantastic job of taking that away from us. I didn't think that we passed the ball very well, very crisply, and didn't get good ball reversal. One of the problems is that we couldn't get the ball to Jodie (Meeks) because they were doing such a good job of preventing ball reversal so we were kind of hindered a bit by that."
On the pace of the game ...
"The pace of the game is determined sometimes on not how well you shoot but how well you defend. Our team, at the most critical point when they needed to get a great shot, and that's what they were looking for, but our team did a great job defending and making them extend the clock when they would have been better off getting a quick shot. I'm not criticizing what they do but I'm saying our defense did a great job not letting them get off a good shot early in the clock."
On stopping Alabama guard Mikhail Torrance ...
"The team gets credit for that. I think we did a real good job of staying in gaps and those kinds of things. I know he missed a 3-pointer at a critical point, that was really important for us. He's a very good player and they have good schemes with a lot of good players at different spots who play extremely hard, but I thought that we really defended the ball well for the most part. I thought that we were in the passing lanes and help positions most of the time and that is what usually hurts a player's a chance to be successful and help his team."
Junior guard Jodie Meeks
On the atmosphere ...
"The fans made it really hard to play here. It was just a tough game. We expected it to be a tough SEC away game so it was good to come out with a win."
On sophomore forward Patrick Patterson fouling out ...
"It's never good to see him out. He creates such a good presence down low. But it happened, he got in foul trouble, so we had to just grind it out and find a way to win without him because he's such a big part of our team."
On comeback win ...
"It says a lot and shows how we're maturing as a team. There's stuff that's always going to go our way, you know peaches and cream, but when we turned the ball over we faced some diversity. To come out with a win like this is great for us."
Junior forward Perry Stevenson
On pulling out the win ...
"That's just being blue-collar and taking after our coach. He preaches defense and defensive rebounds and that's just what we kind of tried to do."
On taking a bigger responsibility with sophomore forward Patrick Patterson fouling out ...
"Playing with four guards was really easy because playing with four guards it's hard to box them out. But when you're concentrating on boxing them out you can just fly in there and get more rebounds because you're bigger."
