March 1, 2014

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South Carolina Head Coach Frank Martin
Opening Statement
I’m really proud of our guys. We weren’t in a very good mood when we got on that plane after Auburn. Our practice yesterday was challeneging and I’m really proud of our kids. My staff does an unbeleivable job at keping our kids even keeled. I’ve been pushing these kids really hard so they can understand what it takes to win against quality teams. We’ve been fighting and been in this moment numerous times this year and just have not been able to close it out. I’m really proud of their resolve and I’m so proud of Sindarius Thorwell. I can’t tell you how proud I am of that kid. Number one, for having the courage, it would have been easy to go to another school, he had the courage to come here and help me build this. And then to have the courage to continue to lead on a team where he is the leader as an 18-year-old kid. That says a lot about who he is and how important our team is to him. I’m going to quote what I told them after the game, “I was extremely dissapointed in our approach when our practice started yesterday. I was equally proud of our resolve and fight tonight.

On the meaning of this game
Our game today and our game on Tuesday have been the two most dominant prorgams in the SEC for how many years now? That’s who we need to compete with to become the program we’re working to be. And that’s no disrespect to the other 13 teams in the league. That’s just who sits at the top of this league year in and year out: Kentucky and Florida.

On the atmosphere in the arena
How about our fans today. Our student sections, our marketing people – how hard they’ve worked to help us build this program. Now we’re building [attendance] here. I was feeling it today and I’ve been feeling it since the Ole Miss game. Our time is coming. I know what happens at football games. Obviously we know what happened for Dawn Staley the other night. I know what happens for Coach Tanner and [Coach] Chad [Holbrook] down the road here. If we do our jobs, we’re going to have the best fans in the country in men’s basketball. I know it, I feel it, it’s coming. Our student section was phenomenal. Our fans we’re not going to allwow Kentucky to take over our arena.

South Carolina Senior Guard Brenton Williams
On what was said in the final timeouts
The first thing that was talked about in the last media timeout was the coaches explaining to us that we’ve been in this position before with different teams. He told us we just have to buckle down. We stayed together and we made the plays we were supposed to make to be able to finish out the game.

South Carolina Freshman Guard Sindarius Thornwell
On what was said in the final timeouts
The biggest thing was don’t let the moment get to us. It doesn’t matter if [Kentucky] hits a few shots, we don’t have to panic. We just need to focus and stay on task and that’s what we did. We stayed on task and pulled away.

South Carolina Sophomore forward Laimonas Chatkevicius
On his contribution to the game
All it was was teamwork. When we were on the offense they switched so I always had a small guy on me and Sindarius [Thornwll] always drove and got good shots so I was able to get a rebound or they were feeding me in the post so that was just the plan.

Kentucky Assistant Coach John Robic
On Kentucky’s performance
Our guys played great. They fought and didn’t give up. We didn’t start the way we wanted to, but they showed some toughness in the end. They are hurting in the locker room right now, and we have to be back at it tomorrow.

On Kentucky’s shortcomings
We had 16 offensive rebounds at half, yet we only made 5 field goals. We didn’t finish plays that we should have. I think on some of our drives we really didn’t look to play through. We really threw it a little bit. Give South Carolina credit. They had a game plan and stuck with it and it worked. Frank (Martin) did a great job.

Kentucky Freshman Guard Aaron Harrison
On Kentuck’s energy
The energy changed. We didn’t come over the line with the energy we should have and in the second half we talked to each other more; we were more team oriented. We talked to each other more and I think that’s what brought our confidence up and gave us that extra boost.

Coming back after back-to-back loses
It’s frustrating to loose, but we know what we can do. We talk about it. Even after the game we know we’re going to make a run and it will be a great story for everyone to talk about.

On coming together as a team towards the end of the game
I think it was more about pride. We knew what we had to do. We couldn’t go out like that so we just chose to fight and scratch and crawl, and do everything we could.

Kentucky Freshman Guard James Young
How to come back after the loss
By practice tomorrow we just have to let this loss go and keep moving forward. We we’ll try to make a big run in the end so we have to keep going day to day.