Kentucky Head Coach Matthew Mitchell
On general thoughts on the game…
“Well, we’re disappointed to lose today and you hate that outcome there, but real proud of our players. They prepared really well for the game. I just couldn’t think any more of them for the approach they took to get ready for what we knew was going to be a tough basketball game. I thought we rallied from some tough situations all throughout the game so we showed some toughness. We were asking for that and to just come up one point short certainly stings, but proud of our players and you just have to give UofL a lot of credit. They played really hard as well, and they always do, so they made one more play than we did and they will get the benefit of the victory. But I think we learned a lot from this game, and it’ll help us improve, so we just have to stick with it and keep at it, and just like I told them, I wouldn’t trade locker rooms for anything. I really love our team.”
On the 3 from Kylee Shook in the third quarter…
“Well, you know, she shoots some, we were more concerned with Dana Evans. She was shooting 50 percent from the 3 and didn’t want her to get into rhythm. We just got a little too deep off of Shook, and now once Evans turned the corner we were just kind of in no man’s land there. Was it a switch or was it not, and we don’t ever want to leave anybody wide open, and that’s what happened a couple of times there at the end of the game. You know we were able to tighten it up and we were able to slow Evans down and then get back to Shook, and then we also rotated up one time, but we gave them a couple there, and to her credit, she knocked them down. She came into the game at 21 percent, and she didn’t shoot 21 percent today from the 3. She had a great day, 3-of-5, so you have to give her credit. She made big shots.”
On Sabrina Haines’ four-point play…
“Yeah, we played well there at the end. Sabrina’s was a big shot, and I mean, we got off to a rocky start offensively in the beginning and you give UofL credit for that. They are a tough defensive team; always are. I was real proud with of how we hung in there and had a really good first half offensively, and it’s always exciting to have a four-point play. Glad to see that go in and great crowd today. Really outstanding energy from the crowd, so we were appreciative of that. And then I thought we made a good play there at the end defensively and basically had them in transition defense, and you know, we’ll learn from that situation. I wish we would have driven it to the basket. Really would’ve loved to have seen us try to go, we were in the bonus and we needed to drive that one to the basket on them. They weren’t quite organized then Rhyne Howard’s was pretty deep, but it was a good look and she makes them a lot. So, was more than happy to have the ball in her hands in the end and to have her take the shot, and it didn’t go, but she’ll learn from it and you have to give Yacine Diop a ton of credit in the second half, she was extremely physical and hustled and was a tough defender on Rhyne. And so, Rhyne will learn from that as well. I think our team will grow from what was a tough game.”
On Dana Evans…
“She’s a great player. Dana Evans is a great player. She’s one of the top guards in the country. She is a very impressive player. She has great ball handling abilities with her head up, which makes her a great play maker. She can handle it with both. She can score at the rim, she can shoot the pull up, she can really shoot the ball great from the 3. I don’t know that we’ll see a lot of guards better than her. She’s really, really good. Hats off to her. She had a good performance today; tough player.”
On game takeaways headed into the next game…
“Yeah, like I said in the opening statement, just really proud of how hard we’ve worked to improve, and I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen today. We played a couple of tough games early, and we’ve been on a series of games here where we’ve won by very comfortable margins, and you could put on the tape with UofL and Oregon game, and some of the games they’ve played, and you could tell what they were doing against top level competition. So, it was great for us to see what they were doing, so we could come into a game, prepare well, and I can’t say enough about our team’s preparation and how hard they played today. It was a result of their great focus and great intensity and prepared for this game, so I learned that and that builds trust as you go forward. We learned that we can bounce back from some adversity. We got into some tough spots early and then battled back. Third quarter was just a really, really difficult quarter for us. We just did not have answers to stop them enough so learned that we have some toughness about us and we can bounce back with some resilience offensively against really tough team that’s trying to confuse and trying to mix it up on us, so we can have some poise, try to make plays and had some great plays, but needed to make one more, but just found out a lot about what our team does and what they’re capable of. We’ve said all along, we certainly have flaws as a team, but if we’ll just keep at it and keep working, we’ll be a tough team, we’ll be a dangerous team, and that’s what we’re trying to be as we progress through the season.”
On Louisville rebounding …
“That’s been an achilleas heel for us. We have to do better, we’re not a flawless basketball team and in many games, this season we’ll be undersized and that was the case today. I thought we did a more than adequate job on first shot defense today, it was the second shot that really got us. We’re just not quite physical enough and not in the habit of really finding and boxing and making the play and that falls on my shoulders. I have to do a better job in practice of making sure that we’re ready to rebound at a higher level than we did today. I’m not sure if we’ll ever out rebound a team as big as UofL. When you get out rebounded by 20, you can tell they played pretty tough. That was a big factor, UofL did a really good job on the boards.”
On free throw shooting…
“I think our free throw shooting is going to be fine. We’re good shooters, so we just have to leave it all in the past. You just have to have some toughness and get up there and knock them down. You can’t shoot the ball the way we do from the 3 and not be a good free throw shooting team, so I’m not concerned. Unless for some reason you wouldn’t be focused or trying, we don’t have that issue with this team. It was a good day at the free throw line, wish we would’ve made 14-15 and we would be a little bit happier right now, but we made 80 percent of our free throws so that’s a good day.”
UK Student-Athletes
#10 Rhyne Howard, So., G
On the final shot…
“I think it was a pretty good look. It looked good coming off my hand and I thought it was going in. I’d probably take that shot every other time.”
On how Louisville defended against her…
“They did a good job of blocking my shot when I drove it. That’s pretty much it.”
On Tatyana Wyatt’s impact today…
“[Tatyana] is a great player. When we bring her out, she makes a lot of things happen for us. So, we just try to get her the ball as much as we can because we know she can knock down that shot, and we know she can get to the rim for us and finish around the rim.”
#1 Sabrina Haines, R-Sr., G
On what the team learned from this game…
“I know that I would fight with this team any day. We learned a lot about ourselves and just what we can also work on and what we’re good at. I think Louisville’s a great team, and the coaches prepared us for the games we have coming up.”
On Tatyana Wyatt’s impact today…
“I think, momentum wise, those shots that she hit were absolutely huge. She got me some assists, so that made it a little better. But we were kind of struggling a little bit at the time and the fact that she was able to hit those shots when we needed them, it really helped a lot.”
#14 Tatyana Wyatt, Jr., F
On improved free throws and rebounding struggles…
“We work on rebounding a lot actually. Just today, a couple of possessions when we got into a scramble, we kind of got lost finding some players. So, we’ve just got to work better in doing that and trying to find somebody to box out so we can get our defensive rebounds and transition.”
On what playing a close game today does for team confidence…
“I don’t think it knocks our confidence down. If anything, I think it’s building us up even more, since it’s showing us how good we can be in the future and it’s getting us ready for tough SEC teams. So, I think today was not the outcome that we wanted, but it was something that showed us where we can go.”