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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEDecember 8, 2011Matthew MitchellKentucky – 72 COACH MITCHELL: That was a fantastic win. Just a great battle, great basketball game. Two good teams going at it. We thought it would be a battle. We just tried to hang in there, play really hard. We just kept telling the players, Hang in, keep playing hard, maybe we can break it open at some point in time. We finally did. Really, really proud of our basketball team. It's a big win to build on. We will continue to try to get better. THE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. You weren't very happy about that no‑call in the second half. COACH MITCHELL: No, the officials did a good job. I get a little worked up over there sometimes. I had been acting really good this year, had been behaving pretty well. I reverted back to some poor behavior and I'll have to work on that as we move forward. Q. Do you feel the team responded after that? COACH MITCHELL: I don't know. I don't know if they did or not. They responded to something. I don't know if that's what they responded to. But we just kept fighting. It was such a tough game. As you're out there watching it, I don't know if you're like me, you're wondering if this is going to actually work, just keep trying to push the tempo. I don't know if they ever got up eight, maybe they did one time. You're sitting there thinking, Maybe this isn't such a good idea. They're shooting 56% at halftime. But you have to stay committed. We believed we could finally break it open. Made some tough, tough plays. Didn't look pretty all the time. But they responded to the moment, it was a big moment, and they won. Real proud of our players. Q. (No microphone.) COACH MITCHELL: Well, so frustrated at halftime because our offense was just not aggressive. That's not to say Duke doesn't have a good defense. They do. We were just standing and not making it very hard on Duke. You saw 12 turnovers in the first half. We are fueled totally on turnover margin. We need the turnover margin against a team like Duke to be between eight and ten. That's where we need it. It was three at halftime. I felt like we had too many careless turnovers. We tried to talk to them about trying to value the ball. It was not going to look pretty all the time, but don't cough it up. If you have to heave it up at the shot clock going off, just don't throw it to them was the message at halftime. We tried to show them a couple things that might help them. You see four turnovers in the second half. There's the story of the game right there. Q. You had a couple of freshmen who played really well. What does that tell you about young kids when they perform that way in this type of environment on this type of stage? COACH MITCHELL: Well, it tells you that we're fortunate that those kids signed with Kentucky and we recruited some good players. That's a credit to our assistant coaches, our players, just the atmosphere that is Kentucky. So real fortunate that Bria Goss has been steady. Proud of Azia Bishop. She had been underperforming, no question about it. We had a long talk, let her know we believed in her ability, that she needed to start playing better. She's worked a lot harder and practiced harder. I was pleasantly surprised. I thought she would start doing better, but she really was able to rise to the occasion tonight. Good for those two freshmen players. They're good, good players. Q. A little more on Bishop. What kind of potential does she have? COACH MITCHELL: Well, I think that she could be one of the best post players around. I think if you look at her tools and her gifts, they are substantial. One thing you haven't seen yet is her ability to shoot the ball. She can really shoot the three. But the game's moving so fast for her right now, that just hasn't come around. I tell you, she has a lot of ability. She struggles with just staying focused every day. That happens with a lot of freshmen. But if she will work as she has the last couple of days, and play that way, then the sky's the limit. But she has a lot of gifts. Q. You mentioned the first half, the way the girls played. Would you attribute that to playing here at Rupp Arena, the crowd? Could we see them playing one game a year here so they can get used to the atmosphere here? COACH MITCHELL: Great crowd. Fantastic job by people showing up tonight. I really, really appreciate that. Can't thank people enough. I thought the crowd actually helped us in the first half. I thought we weren't playing a lot of intelligence on offense with their zone. And zone a lot of times is about making some reads. Sometimes players don't set screens the way they do in man offense. I just thought it was a lack of execution more than the venue, as you see, unless we just can't shoot very good on that end and we shoot better on the other end. I don't know what to tell you about the building. But the building was fantastic and the atmosphere was great. Whether we play down here, I don't know. But we were awfully happy to get a win tonight. Q. What did the team do different the second half to eliminate the looks right at the bucket that Duke was getting in the first half? COACH MITCHELL: Well, one thing that we were doing in the first half I thought poorly was we were not defending dribble‑penetration and we were helping too early. So we were giving up on the drive. We were what we call 'opening the gate', letting the kid drive straight to the basket. We call that a straight‑line drive. Too many straight‑line drives, too much help. I told them the whole key to this game was trying to keep the ball in front of you so you didn't have to rotate and help. That helped us a little bit. Then I just thought Duke played really tough and worked hard, eventually got some shots that you could not have done a whole lot about. A lot of the looks at the basket were because they have real tall, good basketball players, and there wasn't a whole lot we could do with that. I thought we defended the ball much better in the second half. Thought that was maybe a product of our pressure. To come out tied on the boards with that kind of size disadvantage, we played four guards for most of the game, is a testament to our kids' toughness. Q. Can you talk about the two wins back to back. I know there's a long season, a long way to go, but the confidence level of this team. Also, when you get a crowd in like this tonight, how big is it to pull a win out and maybe they'll come back? COACH MITCHELL: You just couldn't put it much more succinctly. That was the whole key tonight, was this opportunity. You don't want your kids to play tight. We didn't really talk about it, but that was in my mind, boy, just hoped we could play well. If we could find a way to win, you capitalize on a moment like this and you just try to continue to build and create energy. We just need to keep at it. I think people appreciate how hard the players play. I will tell you this. They practiced so hard. We were so demanding of them. So it's great that people recognize that. It's great to be in Kentucky where people care about basketball. It's great to have an administration that's behind you and will make an event like this come off. The win is the best marketing tool we can ever have, is win a game like this. I think people will come back. Q. You've beaten the No.10 and No.6 team in the country. You have two McDonald's All‑Americans that haven't even played yet. What is the ceiling for your team? COACH MITCHELL: I think we can be good. The trick with us is trying to make them understand that this was a great night. This means a lot only if we continue to work really hard, we continue to win games, we continue to get better as a team. I don't think we are nearly as good offensively as we can become. So I think the ceiling is high for this team. I think we can be good. I think they have put themselves in a position physically where you can continue to run the ball back at people. I think that's one of the best things we do right now, is we just continue to come at you. As we develop the team and get a little bit better maybe in the halfcourt, I think we can be very good. But I'm real excited for them tonight. They worked hard tonight. Great, great win for our program and for Kentucky. Q. In the first half you gave up a lot on the baseline. I was wondering what you might have done to slow that down. COACH MITCHELL: That's what we were talking about earlier with the baseline drive, we needed to do a better job of squaring that up and trying to cut them off before they get all the way into the paint. That was a product of playing better on‑ball defense. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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