Kentucky Women’s Basketball Postgame Quotes
Kentucky vs. Georgia
Memorial Coliseum – Lexington, Ky.
Jan.7, 2018
Kentucky Head Coach Matthew Mitchell
Opening statement…
“Well, that was a tough game to watch right there. Neither team could really get the ball in the basket at a very high rate. Georgia made more than we did and won the game. We just had an extremely tough day. I thought in the first half, we gave ourselves a chance to be in positon to win, got in some unnecessary foul trouble and really the second unit battled hard and fought hard and we were in the game there at halftime and just a difficult third quarter. We’ve got to find a way to fix that. We have to regroup and try to march forward. It’s not very good right now. It’s not where any of us expected or wanted to be, but it’s where we are and we’ve got to work hard and persevere and see if we can get things turned around this week and go out and compete hard and see if we can get a victory on Thursday.”
On the failures in third quarters this season…
“I will keep searching and try to figure that out because you’re exactly right. It’s been a very poor quarter. We try and give them really good information and it has not been a good quarter for us. I don’t know what’s happening there, but I’ve got to try and get that fixed. It’s not good.”
On Maci Morris’ injury…
“It was just a contusion. She fell on the floor after a loose ball in practice and was in some discomfort Thursday. Obviously played like a warrior on Thursday, and we thought it was a bone bruise. It was really bothering her today and so we’ve just got to go back and see where she is and check that out. So, I don’t have a good answer for you there.”
On how he keeps the players motivated through the tough times…
“Well, it’s been pretty remarkable how hard they’ve worked and how resilient they’ve been. I thought we had a really good week of practice going into the Texas A&M game, really went down there and fought hard and scored 70 points. We just have to show back up and get going. That’s what I tried to explain to them. I’ll be here on Tuesday coaching them as hard as I can. I just think we really gave into the disappointment and the discouragement today and you just can’t do that in this league. You’ve got to find a way. It’s a great opportunity to strengthen ourselves. It’s not where we want to be. It’s not good. It’s a really hard time we are going through right now, really hard. They are a great group of kids and we just have to keep our focus on what went wrong in the game. What could we have controlled? We didn’t box out the way we wanted to, we didn’t make layups the way we wanted to, we didn’t make open 15-footers. Those things aren’t emotional. Those things you have some control over. We didn’t get lined up, we didn’t execute out of timeouts, we didn’t execute. Those are things as a coach that I have to try and get corrected. I have to be really focused on what’s going on no matter how bad things seem over the totality of difficulty and try to stay focused. It’s real hard right now, but I believe in them and I think they will continue to resilient. They have been to this point. We’ve got to just keep battling. Fight our way through it.”
UK Student-Athletes
#32 Jaida Roper, G
On third quarter issues…
“Third quarter we just went in a scoring drought and didn’t knock down shots. We had some great looks, but we didn’t knock them down. The layups we missed, just got to focus in and hit those.”
On what allowed Georgia to pull away towards the end…
“Missing easy layups. Missing simple baskets that we know we can make. So, like I said, we just have to hit those and that’s the game right there. When we hit those baskets, get in the rhythm and stay playing Kentucky basketball, I feel like that’ll end the game for us.”
On what they’re doing to stay motivated…
“It’s easy to stay motivated. We’re in a great position. We play for the University of Kentucky, peoples’ dreams. So, it’s not hard to get motivated. It’s not the end of the world. We just have to re-focus and prepare for the next teams. So, were not really dwelling on the past and dwelling on losses. We just have to get ready for the next team, practice hard.”
Georgia Head Coach Joni Taylor
On the third quarter to get the team through …
“Defense travels every day. There are times that offensively it looks like what it looks like. I mean both teams were missing shots that we don’t normally miss or typically miss. But, defense travels every day. So, until we get things figured out on the offensive end, we’ve got to hold the court defensively. We’ve got to try to force turnovers and grind it out until we can figure it out on the offensive end.”
On being proud of getting through the third quarter to finish with a win …
“Very. I mean you look at, in the past, it just speaks to the maturity of the team. In the past we would have been in our feelings about missing shots. We let offense affect how we played and this year’s team has been able to find a way to not let that take them out of the game. Obviously it comes with experience and we’ve got some players who’ve logged a lot of minutes and played in a lot of crucial situations. So, I think it’s just experience and again, for them to be able to buy in to what we’re asking them to do makes all the difference.”
On what Georgia did defensively against Kentucky …
“I don’t know, I think they missed some shots. I will say we tried to turn them over a little bit. They are a team that takes care of the basketball really well, I think 12 a game and we were able to force 18 turnovers today. And then just, our goal was to try to make them do something that’s uncomfortable. We can’t let Maci get 3s, we can’t let Maci drive us and post us up. And then we knew they were going to try to attack us inside. They’ve been very successful in the past with their inside presence against us, so we knew that they were going to try to get it inside and we were fortunately able today to block a couple shots and rebound the basketball.”
On the team’s 6-0 road record …
“I think it’s a couple things. I think it’s that (defense). I think again it’s the maturity of the team. You’ve got two seniors and a junior that again has played a lot. And, we have some freshmen who have been able to come in and start and play immediately because of where they were when they showed up on campus. When you have more options it helps you out a whole lot. Last year we just were limited number wise and offensively, so you know today you’re able to sub in and keep things going, have fresh legs.”
On the difficulty of getting new players or a new team invested when things aren’t going well …
“Well, I think it’s got to be your message, it’s got to be your driving force and I mean that’s what we did last year and I mean, good Lord, Matthew is an incredible coach. If you look at what he’s doing even this year, you know for him to be able to keep them motivated, they played extremely hard, they execute. Those kids look like they’re on fire to play for him and each other and they play a heck of a schedule. I mean they’re not losing to (bad teams). I think every team they’ve played have been ranked or are receiving votes, so he’s played a heck of a schedule and you look next year, watch out because he’s got some young freshman down there that are going to be really dynamic players.”
Georgia Student-Athletes
#33 Mackenzie Engram, F
On the difficulty of overcoming a bad shooting day…
“Just having to push through and make sure we’re keeping up on the defensive side, which I think we did pretty well and that obviously will carry over and our shots started falling.”
On the frustration associated with missed layups today…
“Yea, it was very frustrating because they were simple layups that a couple of us were missing, but that’s just a challenge for us that we have to start looking at as pushing through that frustration and knowing when our shots aren’t falling, keep doing what we have to do on the defensive end and they’ll eventually fall.”
On whether the team enjoys the road environment…
“I think it’s something that [Coach] Joni has challenged us to do this year – get as many road wins as possible. I know for myself and Haley Clark we’ve never won here, we’ve never beat Kentucky so that was something that we put on our shoulder – a chip on our shoulder. We told the younger girls and that helped us get the win today.”
