Jan. 14, 2015

Recap | Final Stats | Photo Gallery

South Carolina Head Coach Frank Martin
Opening Statement
I’m real proud of our guys. Alabama is a real good basketball team, our fight today, we didn’t play great. Our ball screen defense slipped in the last ten days and I’ve got to get that right again. We’ve done it well before, we’ve got to fix it again. But real proud of our guys. We were on the glass; we couldn’t score. They are real good. Since December 5th, they have been giving up an average 50 points per game. They are real good defensively. We had plenty of opportunities to close out the game, and we wouldn’t do it. We couldn’t score, outside of Michael’s [Carrera] offensive rebound fouls that he made free throws on. And then defensively there were a bunch of basketballs at the rim that were just there and we wouldn’t come up with them. We have got to watch the film on that so guys understand why its so important that we make certain plays. Real real happy with our guys after last week to come out and have the enthusiasm that we had yesterday and to play with the toughness and the resolve that we played with today.

On Carerra’s rebounding, free throw shooting
Thats what he does. Today, I think he missed a free throw, was 7-of-8. He’s a good free throw shooter. He hasn’t been shooting free throws well and all those plays he has made for us coming down the stretch there the last two weeks, he falls down. Well he didn’t fall down yesterday in practice, and he definitely didn’t fall down in the game today. He played strong, he was fully engaged with what we were trying to do.

South Carolina Junior Forward Michael Carrera
On his aggressiveness
I was just doing my job. All I do on the court is try and get my rebounds and help the team win. I wasn’t trying to get in players’ faces, I was just trying to win the game.

South Carolina Senior Guard Tyrone Johnson
On the last sequence of the game
We knew that they were going to either drive the ball, and our thing was to switch every ball screen. In that lineup, we were five guards in. So Coach Martin’s plan was to switch every ball screen. We knew that they were going to go to number 20. Once we switched it and made him have to shoot a fade away jump shot, good thing he missed the shot and it gave us the win. You have to credit [Alabama]. It’s a good team that we played against. We did not play our best basketball today, but we’ll take the win. We want to come in tomorrow and watch some film and figure out what we need to do as far as shooting the ball. We didn’t shoot the ball great, but the team defense and we went in all together. You get a tough team like that, and to beat them at home is tremendous for us.

Alabama Head Coach Anthony Grant
On the physical nature of the game
Nothing we didn’t expect; South Carolina’s always going to be a physical team. They do a great job defensively, so we know it’s going to be a great game.

Thoughts on the last play of the game
I wanted the ball in Levi’s [Randolph] hands, but I wanted him to make the basket, but it didn’t go off that way. South Carolina did a great job defensively.