Alabama players and head coach Avery Johnson were asked about moving on to battle Kentucky in the SEC Tournament after their quarterfinal win over South Carolina.
Check out what they had to say about the Wildcats:
Q. This is for both players, talk about the challenge of Kentucky. I know you haven’t had too much success against them the last couple years. A golden opportunity on a huge stage tomorrow.
RILEY NORRIS: Kentucky, what can you say? Really well-coached, got a lot of young talent, really skilled. Going to be a tough competition tomorrow afternoon. But I think you got to be focused, learn from this game and move on and turn — turn our focus towards Kentucky and go out and play hard tomorrow.
BRAXTON KEY: Everyone knows Kentucky. I mean, play a little better. You play harder and better, rebound better. So we’ve got to do a lot of things better. We had a great performance tonight. We have to carry it over to tomorrow.
Q. Coach, to kind of follow in that same vein of thought, what are your thoughts of Kentucky? What do you know about them at this point, and what do you think you can take out of your previous meeting into tomorrow?
COACH JOHNSON: When I look back at our game against them, we were very lethargic in the first half. When you’re 9-26 from the free throw line, that doesn’t bode well for you. We just have to do a better job of starting off the game better. We didn’t start off this game great, but we got it going eventually. But we got to play more of a 40-minute game against them and not, you know, 18, zero minutes, because they’re too good. But, you know, hopefully we’re a team that’s trying to put something together during this time of the year. It’s not really about what happened during the season. This is just a moment in time where you know if we continue to get better independent of the team that we’re going to play, we’ll give ourselves a chance to win.
Q. Coach, you remember the first Kentucky game you mentioned your team was iffy from the free throw line, lethargic —
COACH JOHNSON: You’re being nice.
Q. — lethargic in the first half. From a coaching standpoint, are you going to change much going into this game, or do you feel like you had the right game plan the first time around?
COACH JOHNSON: I thought our game plan was good, but it wasn’t great. We talk about going from good to great. And we’re much better from the free throw line tonight, 15-21. It’s not bad for our team, if you’ve been following us a little bit. But I don’t think we have to be under so much stress where we have to be perfect, because that adds too
much tension. I don’t see a tense team in our locker room. We play well on the road. This has been road games for us. So, you know, 5-4 on the road and we had two other games that were very winnable games. So, I just think for us we just have to take care of whatever we can take care of. I just don’t really know –we weren’t Alabama in the first half of the Kentucky game. Little bit more in the second half, but we wereplaying catch up too much. They’re a talented team. We respect them, but we got to be ready to continue to do what we’ve been doing, which I think is playing balanced basketball.
By the way, Kentucky has never lost to Alabama in the semifinal round of the SEC Tournament:
We're 14-2 all-time vs. Alabama in the #SECMBB and a perfect 5-0 in the semifinals.
— Kentucky Basketball (@KentuckyMBB) March 10, 2017
