Opening Statement...
“We got whipped in every facet tonight. It was totally my fault. I don’t put this on the players, it was me. I didn’t have us prepared. I didn’t do a good enough job in preparation. I didn’t do a good enough job having our guys with the right spirit and right urgency and hunger that we needed for this game. Alabama played phenomenally hitting all of those threes at the beginning of the game. (John) Petty was hot and really took it to us. Once again, it was an all-systems breakdown, starting and ending with me. We’ve got to pick ourselves up off the mat and not let this game beat us twice and find a way to go to Lexington and certainly play better on Saturday night.”
On if the amount of threes Alabama hit was on him …
“Yeah. If they’re making threes, I should do something better with our guys defensively. Hand placement and where we are defensively. It’s on me. We’ve got to get it fixed because we were beaten every way tonight. I give Alabama a ton of credit. They were more ready than us, they were more excited than us and they played a lot better than we did. We have to dig down. Like I said, it’s one game and we have a lot of other games left. We have played well in spurts we just haven’t been as consistent as we need to. We have to dig ourselves out and have a couple good days of practice and preparation and get ready for Kentucky on Saturday.”
On what the leadership on the team will look like after this loss …
“We’ll have our normal leadership meeting on Thursday and go about our normal business. The reality of it is we have been very good in league play for the last three years. Our routine and what we do works. Sometimes when you get blown off your feet like this you want to go change everything. That’s not the answer. The answer is to stick to what we do. We have to do it a little bit better, actually a lot better. At the end of the day that’s the answer of what we need to do. We will stick to what we do in our normal routine. I believe in our guys, our players. We became unglued tonight, head coach included. We’ll get it back together. I like our team. I still like our group. I still think this is a fun group to coach. They’ve been great. Setbacks are part of the deal. We have to focus on getting some good treatment, recovery tomorrow, having a good practice on Thursday and Friday. Just like we didn’t play our best tonight we are going to try and play our best game on Saturday. That’s all we can do at this point. Now is not the time to panic or have any drastic changes.”
“We got whipped in every facet tonight. It was totally my fault. I don’t put this on the players, it was me. I didn’t have us prepared. I didn’t do a good enough job in preparation. I didn’t do a good enough job having our guys with the right spirit and right urgency and hunger that we needed for this game. Alabama played phenomenally hitting all of those threes at the beginning of the game. (John) Petty was hot and really took it to us. Once again, it was an all-systems breakdown, starting and ending with me. We’ve got to pick ourselves up off the mat and not let this game beat us twice and find a way to go to Lexington and certainly play better on Saturday night.”
On if the amount of threes Alabama hit was on him …
“Yeah. If they’re making threes, I should do something better with our guys defensively. Hand placement and where we are defensively. It’s on me. We’ve got to get it fixed because we were beaten every way tonight. I give Alabama a ton of credit. They were more ready than us, they were more excited than us and they played a lot better than we did. We have to dig down. Like I said, it’s one game and we have a lot of other games left. We have played well in spurts we just haven’t been as consistent as we need to. We have to dig ourselves out and have a couple good days of practice and preparation and get ready for Kentucky on Saturday.”
On what the leadership on the team will look like after this loss …
“We’ll have our normal leadership meeting on Thursday and go about our normal business. The reality of it is we have been very good in league play for the last three years. Our routine and what we do works. Sometimes when you get blown off your feet like this you want to go change everything. That’s not the answer. The answer is to stick to what we do. We have to do it a little bit better, actually a lot better. At the end of the day that’s the answer of what we need to do. We will stick to what we do in our normal routine. I believe in our guys, our players. We became unglued tonight, head coach included. We’ll get it back together. I like our team. I still like our group. I still think this is a fun group to coach. They’ve been great. Setbacks are part of the deal. We have to focus on getting some good treatment, recovery tomorrow, having a good practice on Thursday and Friday. Just like we didn’t play our best tonight we are going to try and play our best game on Saturday. That’s all we can do at this point. Now is not the time to panic or have any drastic changes.”
