November 18, 1998
On his teams performance against Eastern Kentucky
“After looking at the tape and reviewing the game last night, I thought wedid some good things. We played unselfishly, and defensively, I wasimpressed with everyone who played. When you watch tapes to evaluate games,youre never as good as you think you are and youre never as bad as youthink you are. But there are some areas we need to improve. We played ateam that doesnt have the full complement of players, but I was impressedwith Whitney Robinson. He did a good job penetrating and getting thethree-point shot. They have a pretty good team.”
On UKs play against EKU’s Ronnie Griffin
“I thought we did a good job against him. When you throw different peopleat him, like we did with Scott Padgett, Jules Camara and Michael Bradley,he has to keep adjusting his offensive game to different defensive skilllevels.”
On EKU’s Robinson
“I was very impressed with him. He showed a lot of quickness, poise,athleticism and body control. He can also shoot with range. Hes reallygoing to be good.”
On UK center Michael Bradley
“He played excellent. He did what he does besthes an excellent passer, hekeeps the ball up and he utilizes his quickness. Because of his strength,he doesnt have to come down with the ball and go back up. Obviously, weall need to get better at our free throws. Otherwise, he did the things weexpect him to domake the good pass and make the good decision inside. Hisstrength and conditioning has helped him a lot. Thats why hes able tofinish inside offensively. Hes always had good offensive moves and skills,he just needed to develop his strength and confidence. Hes gained a lot byplaying more.”
On UK’s Scott Padgett becoming more of a leader
“Hes been more vocal in his positive talk to the other players, and thatsbeen a big help. Scott is such an intelligent player, sometimes hesfarther ahead than other players and he might get frustrated if he made aplay and someone didnt react to it. But hes gotten a lot better atcontrolling his responses and his emotions.”
On playing smaller schools such as EKU and Mercer
“If I were those schools, Id love to have a Kentucky on my schedule.Thats the way you attract outstanding players, because they want to playand compete against the best. What better team is there to play thanKentucky, the national champions. As for us, we have to play 26 games.Thats not to cut anyone down. Certainly, we need to find out where we areearly in the year and what we need to work on. Just because you are thenational champions doesnt mean you beat up on all those teams. All I seeis how Im going to help my guys get better, and what I have to do to makemy team better.”
On how valuable playing schools such as Mercer is to the freshmen
“Players get better in practice, not in games. Playing in a game is like areward of how youve worked in practice and how youve developed. Thatsthe way I look at it. You get a great opportunity to play at Kentucky, youget a great opportunity to play period, so you better give your best efforton the court, no matter who you are playing. Obviously, we want ourfreshmen to get a lot of playing time. There are going to be games wherethey dont get the opportunity to play because the competition is going tobe a lot tougher and they know they are not ready for that type ofcompetition. Thats why they are freshmen.”
On the performance of the UK freshmen
“They have to learn every day in practice. You are only as good as yourlast performance or your next performance. Certainly, this is valuableexperience they are getting and it will be beneficial in tough, close gameslater. Even though EKU wasnt a close game, theyre out there among thecrowd, and they are experiencing the feeling of having to make decisions,make shots and make passes.”
On the team
“Weve got a veteran group this year in Scott Padgett, Wayne Turner andHeshimu Evans. They are very athletically gifted and talented. They allhave opportunities to play after their college career is over. So we needto make sure they are on the court as much as possible to give us the bestopportunity to win and to give them the opportunity to play to their fullpotential.”
On Mercer
“They shoot the ball pretty well. Mark Adamson is their best player at 6-6.They are not as big as Eastern Kentucky so they create some match-upproblems for us on the inside. Michael Bradley is 6-10 and hell beguarding Terry Lawyer who is 6-8. Hes quick, and Michael will have to makesome wise decisions on how he guards him. Padgett is about two inchestaller than Adamson, but we have to be concerned with his quickness.Otherwise, I think we match up pretty well with everybody else.”
On what UK needs to improve on against Mercer
“We had about 46 deflections last night, and our goal is to get 35 or more.We were giving the effort. We didnt get into our press as much as wedlike. A lot of that had to do with Eastern Kentucky. They had a good gameplan to attack our press. We werent scoring early. We missed some openshots early that would have given us some momentum and gotten us into ourpress. But once we started making some shots the press became a little moreeffective. So thats an area we need to work on.”
