March 5, 2013

Coach Andy Kennedy

On bouncing back after Saturday’s loss:
“I was really proud. I thought they defended well. This is a team that shoots about 30 percent from three, and they went 12-for-21. The thing I was the most proud of was, I don’t understand why we can’t do it on the road, we’re so much better offensively in this building than on the road. We were sharing the ball and attacking the basket. That’s what gave us the separation. At the end we were trying to get to the finish line.”

On defense:
I was thinking coming into the game to play a lot more zone because of some body issues that we had up front. We were trying to read stats, and we saw that they struggled a little bit against the zone. I didn’t want us to come out passive. We needed to come out aggressive. We decided to go with man defense and we were very effective. We had very active hands that allowed us to get some steals and open up the floor.”

On the difficulty of winning in the SEC on the road:
“Historically, it’s tough when you go into someone else’s venue. I don’t know if it’s fan intimidation or your familiarity with your own baskets. I don’t really understand it. If I did I would be in another line of work. One possession here or there, we could have easily lost some games or won the others. You have to keep playing in that margin of error. We have to correct it, and we have to correct it Saturday.”

On Marshall Henderson:
“Look at his minutes. That’s the only way I can convince him. I thought he was efficient because when he was out there he realized maybe he shouldn’t shoot it one on four.”

Alabama Head Coach Anthony Grant

“Uncharistically for us we had 14 turnovers in the first half, which was really our demise. They’re a very offensively talented team. They had a lot of guys that were explosive and they really hurt us. We dug a hole for ourselves and it really carried over into the second half.  They did a good job continuing to attack. They had multiple guys step up for them, (Marshall) Henderson is a terrific player, but I thought they got great play out of their bench. LaDarius White did great. Derrick Millinghaus gave them great minutes, and Jarvis Summers came in and gave them good minutes. We knew Summers was going to be aggressive and he did a great job closing out the game making free throws. They had a great performance tonight. I was proud of the way our guys battled through but unfortunately for us we couldn’t get the win. Despite the deficit it was good to see our guys continue to compete and play out the whole 40 minutes. It's a tough loss for us, but give credit to Ole Miss, they played extremely well.”