Feb. 16, 2000
UK Coach Tubby Smith
“We certainly did not shoot the ball well tonight, even with open looks. Ithought we were shooting the ball extremely well this week at practice, butit just didn’t carryover.”
“I’ve got to compliment Alabama. Even though they are missing a lot ofguys, they played extremely hard. They are very tough to guard. They’rekids made shots from the outside. They got way down, but they made some bigshots to get back in it. I was very impressed with Rod Grizzard andTerrance Meade, both of them made a lot of threes. That was one of thethings we were trying to do, defend the three-point shot, and we didn’t doa very good job.”
“We got plenty of shots, but thank goodness we were making them from thetwo-point range because we sure weren’t making the threes. I thought Jamaalhad a good game, his back has been bothering him, but he really showed alot of heart and played really tough inside.”
“I thought Tayshaun played a good game, but we’ve still got to get morepeople on the boards. They were beating us at halftime in rebounding. Wedid take care of the ball, that was one of the keys we were trying toimprove on because in the last two games we turned the ball over quite abit. The zone was causing us a lot of problems tonight and that issomething that we have to resolve or we are going to see a lot more of it.”
“We had all kinds of open looks tonight, I don’t know why they aren’tfalling. That’s not to say they were leaving us open because they playedtough defense. I think we are still a little hesitant and not going upsmooth. We did push the ball and run the ball more, but we just didn’t putpoints on the board. We really shot the ball as well this week as we haveall season. “
“I thought Jules and Marvin played great. They both did a good job on theinside when they were in the game. Tayshaun was also sharp. I thought allof our post players played well tonight.”
“We didn’t do any real trapping, we tried to play man-to-man, somethingwe’ve been working on and I think it is going to be a real help to usbecause guarding people off the dribble is something that we’ve hadproblems with. With the Alabama players being smaller than us they had goodsuccess taking us off the dribble.”
Alabama Coach Mike Gottfried
“Well, we put ourselves in a hole. I thought Kentucky did a good job. Inthe first half, we had some turnovers, and we got into a hurried pace. Iwas proud of our players. We kept fighting. We got to where we wereshooting foul shots and cut it to four. That made me feel good about ourplayers. We just didn’t seem to have enough. Kentucky did a good job. Theyare a real good team. They are a very, very underrated defensive team. Oneof the reasons they are good is (Jamaal) Magloire on the inside and thepresence he gives them. He plays bigger offensively. He does a good jobwith penetration and gets the ball in front of players. Then you have todeal with him around the basket. Where we are right now, what we are goingthrough, for our guys to keep fighting like they did to get ourselves rightback in the game so that we were only a possession or two away, makes meproud of them. We should just get better from here.”
On playing Shea Cotton:
“Shea hasn’t practiced, and I thought he looked real out of sync. There wasjust the question of whether we should let him play through it or not. Hewent seven or eight days without practicing. I didn’t think he was in anykind of rhythm. We felt like the guys who were playing could have given usmore tonight. With Erwin’s (Dudley) four fouls, I didn’t really want toplay Sam (Haginas). He has come along after separating his shoulder, but wedidn’t want him to lose any ground. I thought he could do a good jobdefensively for us, and he did.”
On playing a zone defense:
“Typically, just looking at the numbers, Kentucky looks like a team you canzone. They did a good job of attacking. I’ll tell you what they did a goodjob of is rebounding against the zone. I thought it helped us a little bit,especially in the second half. They didn’t shoot the ball very well behindthe three-point line, but they have size. They did a good job on theiroffensive rebounds. I thought they overcame the fact they didn’t shoot itwell behind the line by rebounding the ball.”
Kentucky Players
#21 Tayshaun Prince
On the 6 a.m. practices:
“In the last two games, we haven’t been shooting well. It was time for achange to see what helps-what helps and what hurts. I though it hurt ustonight. We looked sluggish and tired. Waking up that early takes it toll.People were not up on their shots. They weren’t ready to shoot before theball came to them.”
On getting over 6 a.m. practices:
“You just have to try and get as much rest as possible. Getting up early ishard to do, especially with classes. You just get the rest when you can.”
On raising their shooting percentage:
“I don’t think it’s too late. We have to shoot like we do in practice andhope it carries to the games. We have to stay positive.”
#42 Jamaal Magloire
“We came out and got a solid win tonight although we were still a littleslow out of the starting blocks. We still have to work on a lot of thingsto get where we want to be.”
On UK’s shooting woes:
“We just have to watch our film and figure it out from there. We have beenshooting well in practice. We’re just going to have to review and figureout what we’ve been doing wrong.”
On the play of Jules Camara:
“We got some spectacular play out of Jules tonight. He has really steppedup and is really playing tough for us.”
#11 Saul Smith
“We have been shooting the ball really well in practice, then we come outand we can’t hit anything. That’s what is the most disappointing.”
“Tonight we got a good lead and then lost our focus. We didn’t rebound andwe gave them second chance three’s. I think this performance shows that ifwe start hitting shots and doing the little things better, we are going tobe alright and tough to handle.”
Alabama Players
#21 Rod Grizzard
“I thought Rupp Arena would be louder tonight. I enjoyed playing here,but I didn’t think it was quite the atmosphere everyone makes it out to be. It would have been nice to get a victory during my first trip to Rupp Arena.”
“We had too many turnovers during the first half. Our team was just out ofit physically and mentally. We played better during the second half, butthe first half killed us.”
#20 Doc Martin
“We just had a bad first half. Our coach stresses that we must play 40minutes of basketball and we did not come out and play 40 minutes ofbasketball tonight. We had too many turnovers. We also failed to blockout (Jamaal) Magloire and (Jules) Camara.”
“Kentucky is a good team and they have good shooters. A good shooterpossesses the mentality to shoot until it hits. Kentucky players have thatmentality.”
“Tubby kept his players fresh. It was like he had three different squadshere tonight. We were just out of gas.”
“Kentucky is a good team and that is why they are number 16 in the country. My hat is off to Kentucky and the game they played tonight.”
