December 28, 1998
Head Coach Tubby Smith
(On the keys to the loss at Louisville)
“I think Louisville’s quickness hurt us. I thought we had some breakdownsin our press and they were able to capitalize by going over the top. Wehaven’t gotten much from our shooting on the perimeter, which has caused ussome problems.
(On the team’s status)
“Heshimu Evans and Tayshaun Prince are both sick right now. They’ve bothmissed some practice. Tayshaun got sick right after the Louisville game. Idon’t think he was himself during that game. Heshimu has been suffering>from stomach problems for awhile now. He’s got a stomach virus. I don’tthink either one of them had their best game against U of L.”
(On Tennessee State)
“Tennessee State is a solid ball club. They’ve got a lot of quickness in alot of different areas. They can beat you in many ways. They’ve got astrong inside game. Their point guard can really handle the ball. They canall shoot with range and that’s been a problem for us. We really have tofind a way to limit their touches. They can shoot the ball from deep, deeprange.”
(On UK’s approach)
“We need to refocus on team defense. I’m not going to say that TennesseeState isn’t at the caliber of the other teams we’ve faced this season.They’re coming in ready to play. With us not at full strength, we need tomake adjustments to get back on track. It’s good to be playing somebody,anybody, so we can find out what we’re doing wrong and make changes to getbetter.”
“We’ve got a good group of guys who understand what hard work is all about.They’re not going to get too low and they’re not going to get too high.When we lose, we know we can play better. We just have to come out, workhard and prove it and that’s what we want to do.”
“We’ve didn’t make the big plays (against Louisville). Our guys have got tostep up and make those plays. We had turnovers and missed some easy shots.We’re a young team and it’s been a tough schedule. We knew we were going tohave challenges.”
#22 Ryan Hogan
Sophomore/Guard
On the Louisville game
“In the first half, they really didn’t know who I was. I tried to come outaggressive and give us a spark offensively. I wanted to pick the guys upwith my emotion.”
“After the game, we were really down. We knew we could’ve played a lotbetter. These practices are definitely helping to get our confidence up. Weneed to work on our defense, screening and better execution on offense.”
#33 Michael Bradley
Sophomore/Center
“We work hard on shooting all week long. We’ve just got to be patient and Ithink the shots are going to fall. I need to call for the ball more downlow. I think I’ve been coming out slowly. At the beginning of the game, Ineed to come out more aggressive and get some more shots down.”
#42 Jamaal Magloire
Junior/Center
“Tennessee State is a good team. They’re going to be ready to play. We’renot healthy, so it’s going to be an interesting game.”
#34 Scott Padgett
Senior/Forward
“I was more vocal (during the Louisville game). I should’ve done morethings on the floor. A lot of the problem is that we haven’t beencommunicating well on defense. We’re going to rebound from this. We justhave to go out and play hard for 40 minutes.”
“Against Louisville, we didn’t come up with the big plays at the righttime. We’d come up with a big turnover. Most of our turnovers weren’t evenforced, we hurt ourselves with our mistakes. Sometimes, when you play withtoo much emotion, you make mistakes.”
#5 Wayne Turner
Senior/Guard
On Louisville
“We just have to put things in the past and move on. That’s the onlypositive way to go about it. The world won’t come to an end, but we haveto play a lot smarter, a lot harder and a lot better than we have been.We’re going to be facing teams that are just as good or better than us andwe have to play hard the whole game.”
“If anything, the two losses have made everybody come to practice and tryto get better. There’s a lot more competitiveness at practices. I thinkeverybody realizes that their spot is not a given out there. You have toearn minutes in practice by working hard and giving it your all. We needto get more physical and aggressive. There were a lot of loose ballsagainst Louisville, and we didn’t get after them the way we should have. Weneed to get on the floor and get after every ball.”
#11 Saul Smith
Sophomore/Guard
“I don’t think we need a single go-to guy. We just need guys to step upthe way they have been. Our big time players and guys off the bench needto keep stepping up and contributing. I don’t think there’s a real senseof urgency, but we just need to get back to playing really well. We gotaway from our defensive aggressiveness against Louisville and we need toget back to that.”
“It was great to play against the greatest teams in America during theearly part of our schedule. We didn’t have a lot of practice time.Usually, we had about two or three days between games which gave us one dayto lick our wounds and another day to conserve and get ready for the nextgame, which results in only one day of really hard practice time. Now,we’ll have a little more time to have some good, hard practices and getready to play.”
