Kentucky Men’s Basketball
Kentucky vs. Pikeville [EXH]
Postgame Quotes
Rupp Arena – Lexington, Ky.
Nov. 2, 2014
Pikeville Head Coach Kelly Wells
Opening Statement
“Well obviously you found out who the most talented team in the country is. It wasn’t us tonight, but I think you’ll see we’re not the only team that’s going to happen to. I was proud of our guys there for a long stretch in the first half. I thought we battled hard. We knew size was going to be an issue with our two posts still being out. They’re so big and one of the problems we talked about earlier as a group was we knew that many of these shots were going to be hard for us to find tonight. Obviously, they were few and far between offensively. Our team battled for the most part. We need our post players to get in there and do a little better job. You’re looking at a team that is historically probably the most talented team ever assembled here and that’s saying a lot. No disrespect to any team that’s been here. You’ll be hard pressed to find anybody more talented than that bunch. We just couldn’t compete on the glass with them. When they started pressuring us they’re just so long that we couldn’t find any outlet passes. It just was a tough night for us and it’s going to be a tough night for everyone that steps in this gymnasium.”
On what impressed the most about UK…
“They don’t ever settle. They don’t settle. I’ve never been a part of a team where we gave up 80% field goals in the first half. They don’t settle for anything, but dunks and layups. You and I make a conventional bounce pass and chest pass and every time they’re throwing lobs and we look like middle school kids out there at times because they’re just so big. They take away the basket from you, they take away easy baskets, but I think the biggest key is they don’t settle for anything and (Devin) Booker when he’s open, it’s good for him to shoot it.”
On UK’s weaknesses…
“They didn’t have a weakness that we could expose. I think there will be some times where they have to not get fact happy. They have to be hungry all the time and all night. There will be nights throughout a college basketball season when you just don’t have it; somebody gets hurt, injuries and rotations. I would like to have some of the problems that they’ve had.”
On Devin Booker…
“Well he’s going to make their post players even better. He stretches your defense and we didn’t do it tonight because we got behind, but if the situation were close we would’ve stuck to him and not even let him see the floor. He’s one of those what we call ‘dead eye’ shooters. You have to find him all the time and this will make all of their post players, (Marcus) Lee and Dakari (Johnson), all those guys are going to be better because he’s out there on the wing.”
On each of UK platoon’s cohesion…
“We couldn’t really expose a lot of it, but I do think that will be some kind of a concern for them. I like to give a group a role and let them play all of the minutes, but that’s going to be a challenge for Cal. He’s won more games than I’ve coached in so I’m not telling him anything new. I think sometimes that will be an issue. How he can keep those guys happy, I can’t keep five guys happy, but he’s the master at that. I think they’ll be fine. They seem like they love each other. There’s a lot of good continuity on the floor for them.”
Pikeville Student-Athletes
#24, K.K. Simmons, G
On his performance…
“Honestly, I felt like the rim was a big ocean. I felt really good before the game. I was excited to play. Those guys are pros. I wanted to see where I could measure up to those guys playing wise. I spoke to a lot of family members, went out there, took my time, and played basketball. It felt really good.”
On shooting over the taller players…
“We work on those kind of shots in practice. We have our taller guy, Big Mike (Michael Eneh), sometimes before or after practice we’ll just shoot over him. I’ve been shooting a long time. I love to shoot.”
