[B][COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Kentucky Women’s Basketball[/FONT][/COLOR]
[COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Kentucky vs. Alabama[/FONT][/COLOR]
[COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Postgame Quotes[/FONT][/COLOR]
[COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Memorial Coliseum – Lexington, Ky.[/FONT][/COLOR]
[COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]Jan. 29, 2012[/FONT][/COLOR]
[CENTER][COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri][U]Head Coach Matthew Mitchell[/U][/FONT][/COLOR][/CENTER]
[COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri][I]Opening Statement …[/I][/FONT][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]
“We are happy to win and go to 9-0. That is a great development for our team. We were able to score enough points to hold off a tough Alabama team today. I thought that they played really hard and really put a big run on us there in the second half. They never gave up. My compliments to Alabama.”[/FONT][/COLOR]
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On Alabama’s run in the second half …[/I][/FONT][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]
“I don’t know about the score, but I know that we had an uncharacteristic second half of defense. I didn’t think that we gave a Kentucky type effort in the second half and that is disappointing.”[/FONT][/COLOR]
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On the team’s free throw shooting …[/I][/FONT][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]
“I think that it was a day where we weren’t at our sharpest and weren’t really locked in and focused. Thank goodness their free throw shooting wasn’t good either because it would have been a very different game. I had high hopes for the day. I thought that it could be a really good day for us. I was excited to welcome our alumni back, but didn’t feel like we defended up to a Kentucky level today.”[/FONT][/COLOR]
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On what happened defensively in the second half …[/I][/FONT][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]
“We just never got the ball stopped and I thought that Alabama was extremely aggressive and they worked hard and saw that we weren’t going to stay in front of the ball or rotate over. It was hard to rotate because the drives were coming mainly in transition in the middle of the floor and you can’t make a lot happen when you just let people dribble by you in the middle of the floor and lay the ball up. I thought the main issue was controlling the dribble and that is something we talked about before the game but didn’t execute it very well. Thank goodness we scored enough points to win.”[/FONT][/COLOR]
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On what it says about this team that they didn’t play well in the second half but got the win …[/I][/FONT][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]
“Well, I think if they continue to do that they will get beat. That is really clear that if they don’t stick really close to the fundamentals of defense that they definitely poses and worked hard to earn. They have good defensive fundamentals and we are a good defensive team. For whatever reason, we didn’t choose to use that today. I don’t know how we will respond from this. A lot of things we can learn from.”[/FONT][/COLOR]
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On how the first half went …[/I][/FONT][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000][FONT=Calibri]
“I thought that the first half was sort of like the whole game. We had some good moments and got out to a big lead, but let them go 9-2 (run) to end the half and didn’t look really interested. It was almost as if we thought if we got a certain amount of points ahead that Alabama was going to go away. That certainly never happened today. We had some tremendous moments there in the first half when we tried to call a timeout and talk about our energy, but that is when this team is struggling when I have to call a timeout to talk about their effort. I don’t generally have to do that. Look, it is a long, long season and 16 games in this league is long. You aren’t going to paint a masterpiece every Sunday afternoon and every Thursday night. To be able to earn a victory is significant and we are glad to have it.”
[B][CENTER][FONT=Arial Narrow][U]Kentucky Players[/U][/FONT][/CENTER]
[FONT=Arial Narrow]#13, Bria Goss, Fr., G[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow][I]On if there is a negative feeling after a game like this…[/I][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow]“It’s just a learning experience. As much as we don’t want to have these types of games, we are going to have them. Hopefully this will be the last one and hopefully we will learn from it, play harder, and get better.”[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow]#4, Keyla Snowden, Sr., G[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow][I]On the intensity during the second half…[/I][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow]“I just thought that we had a lack of intensity. We are going to come back and work harder and be ready for the next game against Ole Miss. We are going to try and put this game behind us and learn from it so we don’t have this type of game again.”[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow][I]On the difficulty of playing a team that is winless in conference play after playing numerous ranked teams…[/I][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow]“I think that we come out with the mentality to play hard and sometimes things don’t go our way, but we all come out ready to play. We just have to learn from it so we don’t have a game like this again.”
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[FONT=Arial Narrow][I]On only scoring two points in the second half after scoring 12 in the first half…[/I][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow]“I think other people stepped up scoring in the second half. A’dia (Mathies) and Bria (Goss) both finished with double digits. That just says a lot about our team. It doesn’t take one person to do all of the scoring, it’s spread throughout the whole team.”[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow]#1, A’dia Mathies, Jr., G[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow][I]On the biggest difference between the first half and the second …[/I][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow]“We just did a poor job on defense. We let them go where they wanted to go, and weren’t denying like we are capable of or picking the ball up in transition. It’s really on us, we have got do a better job of that.”[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow][I]On what it says about the team to play the second half like that and still get a double-digit win …[/I][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow]“I think it says a lot. Even though we gave up a lot of baskets, we were able to score a lot of baskets. I think we can turn it around in the next game against Ole Miss. I’m just glad we got the win.”[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow][I]On what it means to get 20 wins for a third straight season …[/I][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial Narrow]“It’s special to get 20 wins. Especially like the two years before I came here, and just looking at the program, it’s a big turnaround, and I’m just glad we can keep the momentum going. We have a lot of talent and people that care. Twenty wins is a great thing.”[/FONT][/B]
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