UK Coach Bernadette Mattox
“I am very pleased with our players. All along I have been saying that we have been getting better in small spurts and it really showedtonight. Our defense stepped up and though we gave up some three’s in the first half, we talked about it at half time and we didn’tgive them up in the second half.”
“SeSe [Helm] was superb tonight. Her offense was outstanding and she is really starting to understand our defense. LaTonya[McDole] was sick tonight and she went out there anyway and laid it on the line. She played with her heart tonight. Rita [Adams]played well tonight too. When she got her fourth foul with a few minutes left in the game, she came to me and told me that she wouldnot get another foul, that she wouldn’t let the team down.”
“Tonight was a team effort. We have talked all along about competing, not for two or five minutes, but for 40 minutes. We wouldcompete for five minutes and then drop off for fifteen. We have to put these five-minute segments back-to-back for 40 minutes.”
“The excitement and energy has been there so I knew it would just be a matter of time before we put it all together. These players arefighters.”
Freshman Center SeSe Helm
“We knew that we wanted and needed a victory tonight. We needed a pick-me-up for ourselves and we wanted to regain respectfrom our fans, families, friends, and coaches.”
“Basically I can sum up the Tennessee game by saying that they were the hammer and we were the nail.”
“We learned from the Tennessee game. We know now that we have to come out and compete for 40 minutes and play the way weare capable of playing.”
Alabama Coach Rick Moody Quotes
On the loss…
“I knew when we shot 65-percent in the first half that we wouldn’t continue at that pace. I thought we lost the game on the defensiveend of the floor. We weren’t rebounding the ball with any authority. I thought we gave them (UK) the ball in spots where theywanted it and they had the courage to make the shot and then their free throws when we missed ours. We deserved to get our buttsbeat.”
“We didn’t have any enthusiasm. They wanted to win it worse than we did. You have to give them (UK) credit.”
On UK’s 18-2 scoring run to end the game…“I don’t think we played with any guts or courage down the stretch. We got to the free throw lines a couple times. We missed twofree throws, twice, at a time in the game when we were tied or we were ahead. We had several times when we got the ball to thebasket and missed lay-ups. Then, when we got shots, we had people running away from the basketball and not wanting to reboundthe basketball bad enough, so we deserved to get beat.”
# 20 Beth Vice
“It’s always good to come back home and see my family and friends, but to go back to Alabama without a win is not something Iwanted to do. The first half I was alright, but the second half I quit being aggressive and rebounding the ball. Obviously, we putourselves in a bad position by losing this game.”
