Feb. 16, 2005

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Post Game Coaches Quotes … South Carolina vs. Kentucky, 2/15/05

Dave Odom, South Carolina — “Antoine Tisby had two excellent practices this week — Sunday and Monday. He invigorates our lineup when he wants to. He certainly delivered tonight I don’t know of a player on our team that I have more confidence in right now than Rocky Trice. Right now, he is indeed a “rock.” He makes good decisions. He’s not afraid. We tried to alternate our defenses. I will say that Kentucky did not have their best night tonight. I think we may have had something to do with that. But, obviously, Kentucky wasn’t on top of its game tonight. That’s the great thing about college basketball. It’s a great game. The best team doesn’t always win on a given night. If you don’t give the game its full respect, it can make you pay. I thought it was important that we get our team to re-focus after the loss to Auburn Saturday. Kentucky gets your attention no matter what the stakes are.”

Tubby Smith, Kentucky — “First, you’ve got to congratulate South Carolina. Coach Odom had his team ready to play. They controlled the tempo for the most part, I thought. It seemed like they wanted it more. Our kids fought back, but we couldn’t seem to convert. You’re not going to beat many people when you turn it over 21 times. At 50-45, I thought we had some momentum, but we couldn’t get shots to go down. I thought we didn’t execute. Our screening was poor. When you have a game like we had with Georgia, you worry that some of those things are going to carry over. You hope that you’ve corrected some of those problems, but obviously, we did not. You could see they (South Carolina) were hungry. They were going to challenge everything. They came up with some great blocks and defensive plays. South Carolina went after every shot. They weren`t going to give us any easy baskets. “