Post Game Quotes vs. Mississippi State
2/25/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Feb. 25, 2010
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Alabama Head Coach Wendell Hudson
Opening comments:
"They're one of the toughest teams for us to match up against because they are so athletic and they've got a couple of players, two or three, that we just can't match up against. They have a big guard with No. 5 (Armelie Lamanu), you've got a post player that can step out and shoot threes at 6-4 or 6-5, so that's a tough matchup against us. This was Senior Night for us and I will be honest with you, going into the game after we introduced the seniors and gave out the jerseys and all that and everybody was over there hugging each other, I was thinking to myself that we've got to have Senior Night, but we might have to move it somewhere else. That was not the problem necessarily starting, but emotionally you could just look at them and tell that they were affected. I appreciate them liking each other and all that kind of stuff but making that transition from liking each other to then getting ready to play, we never made it tonight. We never made that transition. You could tell emotionally we did not show any energy and I knew that when I looked in their eyes after we introduced the seniors and went to the bench."
On Mississippi State's level of play:
"I think they're the most athletic team in the conference. If they're not the most then they're the second most. It's between them and Kentucky as far as the way I would look at it in terms of the athletes, and they're a senior laden team with junior college players who've played a lot."
On the second-half play:
"It was a 10-point game right there at the start. It was 29-19 and we talked about just hanging in there. We did a couple of things right early, but we didn't make any transition. We didn't get any easy baskets. It's one of those things where the reason why Mississippi State is where they are in the Conference - 9-6, playing pretty good and probably on their way to the NCAA Tournament. They played that way. They played like they were an NCAA Tournament team."
On how the Tide has bounced back from big losses:
"This team has been very resilient. I don't think we worry about losses much, especially in a game like this. What do you say? They made every shot. We couldn't make a shot. They did a lot of good things. We didn't do as many good things. We had 19 turnovers. They had 17. You start putting things together and we didn't play that bad, but when you get down to it we didn't shoot the ball very well. They had something to do with that. We're going to come back out here and practice and get ready to go."
Senior Guard Dedrea Magee
On the emotions tonight being that it was her last game at Coleman Coliseum:
"This is it. That was my last time playing at Alabama in Tuscaloosa. I feel like it's been a good season and good experience at Alabama."
On if the emotions played into tonight's game:
"I think it kind of played a role. At the end we just did not knock down shots at all. We missed shots and they made every last one."
Freshman Guard Celiscia Farmer
On her scoring run at the end of the game:
"Well given the opportunity I just took it. Shots weren't falling. Nobody's were falling. I figured I'd start going to the basket and try and get fouled to try to get back in the rhythm of things. Besides that, our defense was fine. We just couldn't knock down our shots. We are going to go back to the board and we're going to come back out, go hard, and be strong."
Junior Forward Tierney Jenkins
On hitting her 1,000th career point:
"People have been telling me after each game that I've got to get so many points and so it's a stress reliever because there's no other mark I have to hit. So this is good. It's stress off my back. I can just go out and play and not think about it anymore."
Mississippi State Head Coach Sharon Fanning-Otis
On the way the team played in the second half:
"The field goal percentage in the second half was 59 percent, which gave us a gap. I thought we played a little harder defensively and made some things happen. We just played better together. Alabama kept playing, which we have seen them do all season. They continued to play hard. For us, a lot of people got playing time. I thought Tysheka Grimes did a great job of playing within herself, getting others in isolation positions. Down the stretch we tried to get two touches in the paint before taking a shot to try to move better without the basketball."
On how her team played down the stretch:
"We did a lot of great things throughout the ballgame, but it's the little things that we have talked about, the fundamentals of the game that help you finish. We had a lot of different rotations tonight, especially when Ty (Tysheka Grimes) went out with a cut. That was significant time, about 12 or 13 minutes, that we didn't have her back in the rotation. We had a bigger point spread because we had so many different rotations. Defensively, I thought we slacked up a little bit, but overall I thought we helped each other out defensively."
On the team's three-point shooting:
"It is all about the extra pass. When you give it up, it seems like you get it back in abundance. You really have to work hard away from the basketball, and when we did that, I thought there were some great looks from three-point range and we were able to knock them down."
