LSU head coach Johnny Jones spoke to the media after last night’s 92-85 loss at Kentucky.
Jones complimented Wenyen Gabriel and gave his thoughts on Kentucky’s defense:
Transcript:
Opening statement …
“First of all I’d like to let the people back in Louisiana and the New Orleans area know they’re in our thoughts and prayers from the bad weather – tornados that sit down there today. A lot of people been effected and I just want them to know we’ll be praying for them tonight. I knew it would be an extremely tough game for us. The setback Kentucky was coming off of, there from Florida, we knew they would come in and be focused. That they were. I thought they played a really good first half of basketball. I thought our guys did a good job of remaining focused and continuing to battle to the bitter end there and at least continue to fight and battle, unfortunately we couldn’t overcome the first half deficit there enough to get a victory here in Rupp Arena tonight.”
On the performance of Antonio Blakeney …
“I thought Blakeney did an excellent job tonight of staying aggressive, especially coming off of two what we call subpar games for him. He’s an excellent offensive player and I thought tonight he continued to stay aggressive. I thought they did a great job of trying to get into him and catch him on the perimeter, to not allow him to get comfortable. But I thought because of our spacing, he was able to find some and drive the lanes and get the ball to the basket.”
On what changed in the second half offensively …
“Well we actually ran a couple of other plays and started sticking with it a little bit. We felt we got into a little bit of a rhythm with some screens that were being set. We knew how certain things that were switching were trying to hold on what we wanted to do is just try to find some gaps in their defense and try to attack them. We were fortune enough when we did attack and they rotated right we made some pitch plays and some shots went down for us in the second half that did not fall for us in the first half when we thought we had looks.”
On Wenyen Gabriel producing on the offensive end …
“He’s really good. He’s talented. He can really stretch you on the defensive end of the floor because he can certainly shoot it and I thought he made some big plays for them tonight. I think he, what did he wind up at four? What did he have three 3-point baskets tonight was it? I thought he was certainly a big difference in the ball game finishing with 23 points. A really good solid player for them and thought he played a great role tonight.
On what weaknesses he saw in Kentucky’s defense …
“Not so much, I don’t think you would call it a weakness. I thought it was a strength of ours because we tried to space the floor against them tonight and they tried to lock down on our shooters, which they did a good job of especially in the first half. We only shot 37 percent in the first half because of the job that they did and didn’t give us easy looks. I thought we were better in the second half mixing it up, taking advantage of some things and getting to the rim was one of them because they took away our perimeter guys and were able to attack and get down hill. But I don’t think it was so much a weakness for them that were able to execute a little bit on the offensive end.”
On competing when they fell behind …
“Again, I thought the first half one of the big things we wanted to make sure we did coming out of the locker room was make sure we competed and tried to make sure we got the 50-50 balls and that we made the tough plays tonight. I thought Kentucky did that in the first half. They beat us to 50-50 balls, they got second chance opportunities and I think they may have had 10 points of off second chance points and we can’t give up those type plays like that. We did in the first half. I thought that was one of the reasons why we had the deficit. Second half I thought we competed better, I thought we were on the floor, we came up with more of the hustle plays. I think got to some of the 50-50 balls. We were able to execute on the other end of the floor because of it and I think we wound up with 23 points off turnovers and that was good. Really good for us at least to get back from that deficit.”
