Kentucky Women’s Basketball Postgame Quotes
Kentucky vs. Alabama
Memorial Coliseum – Lexington, Ky.
Jan. 25, 2018
Coach Matthew Mitchell
Opening Statement …
“Very happy for our players. They have been working extremely hard. A lot of hard work went into that one. Alabama has been playing well, and we just knew it was going to be a tough game, and it was. We had that big fourth quarter there. Just really happy they could seize some fruits of their labor. They’ve been working really, really hard. We need to build on this one.”
On winning at home …
“There was some real joy there from our players because it’s been a tough road. There’s a tough road ahead. During the bye week, we had to try and adjust our attitude and get out of the doldrums. They have worked extremely hard, so I was overjoyed for them because we sure have worked hard to earn that victory. I thought they earned it tonight.”
On the big fourth quarter …
“Alabama is a good team. They made some mistakes and we were able to capitalize. I thought our confidence grew and maybe theirs took a dip. You see that sometimes when shots aren’t falling. We got some pretty fortunate bounces where the rebound came out long, and Taylor (Murray) could get out in transition. Transition was good to us tonight. The players really pushed it hard. I thought our confidence started to grow. We got much more active in our zone. We just haven’t played much zone around here, and it’s a new thing for all of us. We’re trying to work hard at it and get better at it. I just thought it was a combination of some good hustle and some real good activity and effort on the defensive end, and we made shots. There have been so many games where we’ve worked hard to get open shots and have created open shots, and we haven’t been able to put them in the basket. We were really able to shoot well in the fourth quarter.”
On Taylor Murray’s performance …
“Real proud of her. I thought she lived in a place of disappointment and discouragement for some time, and you can’t get better in that. It’s been some discouraging times and disappointing results, but you can’t live there. You’ve got to pull yourself out of it, and to her credit, she has done that. She has really listened to us. I think all of us at some point have to surrender to what’s going on and not fight it. She really made plays with her left hand tonight, and that’s where she was having a hard time. What I’ve tried to tell her is actually now you can really go make some plays because everybody is trying to scheme you and keep you from going right. She made some great plays tonight. I’m really proud of her resilience and being a big enough person to admit she needed to change her attitude and she has. You’ve seen some good play from her recently. We need it desperately.”
On how important of a win this was …
“Yeah, it’s been a journey for us. You know, it’s another hard thing that we’ve gone through that’s when can we push and when do we need to set up and we kind of got caught in between setting up every time and we lost that ability for her to make plays. But we had to get to the stop where we could get lined up and execute on the offense and you guys have seen us, it’s been very ugly at times, but I think you’re seeing this team work so hard. I didn’t know what we’d get tonight for the result, but I knew we were getting better and we just have to keep doing that but we’ve got to do both. You have to be able to use Taylor (Murray) in order to get some bursts in transitions. I just thought she made some beautiful plays tonight. She pushed the ball, made some great transitions, didn’t force very much, and so it’s an important part for us to be the best that we can be.”
On turnovers in first quarter and not many the rest of the game …
“Well, we have so much that we’re working on and trying to figure out the formula to be good. It’s just hard to spend a ton of time on the opponent, but we can certainly prepare for the opponent and what we think is difficult and what their strengths are. I told them we’re going to have to be a team that makes some adjustments throughout the game, and Alabama has been doing a great job turning people over and we just really talked tonight about getting the ball in the middle, get the ball reversed, don’t get into traps and I think once we got a feel for that we started making better decisions. So I was proud of them for making adjustments in the game. That was really key. We wanted to not get killed on the boards tonight, we were even with them, and we wanted to win the turnover margin. They’ve really been doing a good job of that. So, proud of the team. That’s three quarters with four turnovers is really good against that team.”
On how important is this win for confidence …
“Yeah, hopefully, you know the thing about this… This is what I told them: I can’t manufacture confidence for you. If I could, I would. I’d just give it to everybody. And if I could manufacture a good attitude, I’d give it to everybody. Confidence comes from achievement. That’s the only way you can get confidence, and I thought that over the last… we’ve been working, listen, these games, we’ve been working extremely hard. I mean, we’ve spent a lot of hours to try to get us to the point where we could do some things that we did, but it’s been really important for them, for KeKe to have the mindset of do the little things and stop worrying about your 3s going in. And go get some offensive boards and go get some layups and some of those things. I think she is just so I’m supposed to be a stretch four, I’m supposed to make 3s, I’m not making 3s, and it just sort of paralyzed her and made some plays on defense, get some rebounds. And I thought her attitude changed last week and you saw a little bit of that in South Carolina and we saw some more tonight and that’s big. We need them to do well and produce and get better, and just make sure we’re working hard and try to get that done. So, proud of them but we cannot stray from the formula. You know, KeKe’s got to be a tough player that makes a couple plays and does some of the dirty work and you know she can’t be a glamour player. She’s got to go get it. And then Dorie (Harrison), she’s really worked hard and she made some moves. I told her today, I didn’t know if it was going to be tonight or next week or next year but she made two moves in practice today that she couldn’t make two weeks ago. I mean we’re really starting to see it come along and she made some great plays tonight.”
Kentucky Student Athletes
#25 Taylor Murray, G
On shooting their best field-goal percentage of the season …
“Those are shots we practice everyday, but it’s good to have that good execution. I had two steals, but instead of me scoring, we wanted to run a play just to run the clock out and we were able to execute those. So those shots that we’re getting, we practice every single day and it was good to see them go in.”
On whether something changed for them tonight …
“Just staying aggressive. You know, that the shots you are taking may not be falling, but if you keep practicing those shots eventually they’re going to go in. You just have to stay confident and just stay aggressive.”
On what the difference was in the fourth quarter to outscore Alabama 25-5 …
“We ended the quarter off well and I feel like every quarter you should just go in the first five minutes and we did that. One thing that we’ve been practicing on, we’re getting one stops and we were able to get a lot of transition points within that fourth quarter.”
On how it feels to get a quality SEC win …
“It feels good. We’ve been working really hard and it showed. It paid off tonight, it’s really a good feeling. So, we have to take that same attitude and aggressiveness and stay as a team and a family and go to Arkansas.”
On how different tonight feels than a couple weeks ago …
“It just feels good. A win is a win, but we still have a stretch to go. We can celebrate now, but we still have more games to finish up. Like I said, stay together as a team, come back to practice and work hard and go to Arkansas.”
On if the 3 she hit before the half fueled Kentucky…
“It was a good feeling. I was wide open so why not shoot it? The clock was rolling and I think he was trying to call a play and I was like, “All right, I don’t have enough time.” I’m right there and I stared. The defender was trying to look at their coach on what to do, so I was open and I was like, “OK, I’m going to just shoot it.'”
#3 KeKe McKinney, F
On shooting their best field-goal percentage of the season …
“Going off Taylor, we do practice them everyday so to see go from practice to the games and actually go in was great to see.”
On if they get a feeling when shots are starting to fall or if something changed for them tonight …
“That’s pretty much what it is is confidence.”
On what the difference was in the fourth quarter to outscore Alabama 25-5 …
“Coming out of the locker room for the third quarter we knew we needed to come out with high intensity and compete. In the fourth quarter I guess everybody was all aligned.”
Alabama Head Coach Kristy Curry
Opening Statement…
“Credit these guys. They survived getting into the fourth. We had a really bad fourth quarter. A lot of that is because their sense of urgency was at a high level and ours was not. I credit those guys. We have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get ready to go.”
On what went wrong in the fourth quarter …
“I thought we weren’t very patient offensively. We missed some shots on the left side, then we take another 3 up top, then we take a 3 on the left side. I think all three of those shots were really quick with the shock clock and that lead to easy baskets by those guys. I thought our decision-making, our choices had consequences that weren’t so great offensively. We wanted to reverse the ball, play inside out. We just didn’t knock those shots down. They were quick shots, not good shots.”
On Taylor Murray disrupting every Alabama run …
“Oh, absolutely. She does a great job of getting the ball out so quick. You know, to have 20-10 is incredible. One turnover. She did a great job running her team. You know, we’re fixing to see that on Sunday. We’ve got to do a better job and we continue to watch and teach and talk and work in practice and do a lot of film time here lately. We’ve got to make adjustments. Our kids have got to buy in the things we’re asking them to do and I credit her because she was outstanding. You know, I walk out when we first pull up and she’s (Murray) already out there on the floor. That’s pretty special and you know says a lot about her. These kids, again, they’ve had some adversity. I think it’s probably a lot of who they’ve played. They’ve played a lot of top-tier teams in our league and they have a great sense of urgency and desperation tonight that Alabama couldn’t match, and that’s not good on the road. That’s not a good combination.”
