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The University of Mississippi Athletics
Postgame Quotes - Kentucky
1/4/2015 | Women's Basketball
UK Hoops 2014-15 Postgame Quotes
No. 11/11 Kentucky 64, Ole Miss 58
Memorial Coliseum - Lexington, Ky.
Jan. 4, 2015
Ole Miss Head Coach Matt Insell
Opening Statement …
"Both teams battled really hard. All credit to Kentucky, they made the plays down the stretch to get the win. We had a couple of missed execution situations there that we can fix, as a coaching staff and as a team, we talked about that at the end of the game. But I couldn't be more proud of the effort that our team put in. We're a young basketball team with a couple really good senior leaders in Tia Faleru, Danielle McCray and Amber Singletary. They're doing a great job with our team in terms of leading. Our young players are getting better every single day. I'm just real proud of our effort. As we say as a program, we have to have a short-term memory in this league. This one hurts, it's going to hurt us for the next 24 hours, we'll watch some tape on it, then we'll be finished with it and move on to Florida on Thursday."
On having Danielle McCray and Shandricka Sessom foul out …
"Yeah, it's crucial, those two players, Shandricka Sessom was a tough matchup, and Danielle McCray was, we felt like coming in, that those two players were tough matchups for Kentucky. They stayed in foul trouble, I don't know if they were fouling or what was going on, I'll have to look at the tape and see what was happening there. I know a couple of them were challenged, I'll look at the tape and find out. Those two players, the mismatched situations, we felt like we had that offensively, and also defensively, rebounding, they are two of our best rebounders. You got Shandricka Sessom, take one step and grab the rim with both hands, when the shot comes off, she just goes and gets it. Danielle McCray is the same type of athlete, she just goes and gets it. Late in the game there, Tia [Faleru] is in there having a battle, and they're battling without two of their best rebounders with them, and that's tough on us. But we'll figure that out, that did hurt us, it hurt us a lot. It was a big difference in the game."
On UK's timeout late that set up a 3-pointer and started a Kentucky run …
"It was a big 3 by Jen [O'Neill]. We kind of knew it was coming. We guarded real well. Jen is a, we've talked about as a team, kind of a hand-down, man-down player. If you're hands are down, it don't matter if you're guarding her, she's going to make it. We were there, we had our hand up, that's a big shot for her. That got them going. But Jen O'Neill scores, that's their energy. It has been Kentucky's energy since I was here, she's an energy player. I remember back when she was a freshman at Florida and she made what, nine in a row, something like that. That's just who she is. She's an energy player with scoring ability. We let her get going and then she gets a four-point play, which was huge, but I was so proud of our team right there. She gets a four-point play, we had plenty of opportunities to quit. We've been in games like this all year where we had plenty of opportunities to quit. We go down four, the crowd gets in it, and we come down and score four straight baskets, two straight baskets to get it back tied going into the under-four media [timeout]. That's huge. The fight our team had. We had a freshman point guard playing against one of the best and toughest defensive teams in the country, one of them. Kentucky applies a lot of pressure. We had a freshman point guard [A'Queen Hayes] play 39 minutes with four turnovers. I had people always ask me who's going to be our point guard, I think we got a pretty darn good one that can handle it for 39 minutes and have four turnovers, against that pressure. I was real proud of how our young players played. I'm real proud of how Tia Faleru played. I don't know, maybe some people start agreeing with me that she's one of the better players in this league. I don't know how many more double-doubles she has to get before people start realizing she's one of the better players in this league."
