Postgame Quotes: Alabama 56, UCLA 50
December 29, 2014 | Men's Basketball
Alabama 56, UCLA 50
December 28, 2014
UCLA head coach Steve Alford
opening statement
“I thought both teams played really hard. I thought both teams played back off the break. Offensively, in the first half, you just have to give their defense a lot of credit. I thought that we had no rhythm, at all, offensively. Defensively, we take out of this some strides, because we have been struggling. I thought we made some strides. On the defensive end, we have to build on that going into league play. That's going to be the next big step.”
on UCLA's turnovers
“I thought they [Alabama] did a really good job. They're a really good defensive team. We had a lot of unforced errors. We would step out of bounds, travel violation and hand it to them a couple of times. We had 18 turnovers, and that's uncharacteristic of us. You have to give their defense a lot of credit. We did not value the ball the way we're supposed to value the ball, especially away from home. It's not easy winning road games in college basketball. We had [an opportunity] here. We had a good chance tonight. We weren't able to get it done. I thought not making shots and turning the ball over was a big key to the reason why [we lost].”
on UCLA's slow starts
“It's been a bad trend. The last four games, we have not started well. We're trying to figure things out. For whatever reason, our first halves have been brutal over the last couple of weeks. We're going to have to figure that out going into league play. We dig ourselves in a hole like we did tonight. I felt our second half, we really battled and got ourselves in it and gave ourselves a chance to win it late. That's a lot to overcome when you dig a hole like we did in the first half.”
on Alabama's defense on the last play
“Well, [Bryce Alford] got a really good look the first time. The second time was my fault. [With] 20 seconds [left], I should've called a timeout. We had one. We had time to set. Nothing was materializing. That was just a difficult shot, but they defended it very well. It's no secret, when you look at three-point shooting, who you're going to cover. They did a nice job of covering him. Had I done it over again, I would've gotten a break during the action and set something up with 20 seconds left. I was not happy there."
junior forward/center Tony Parker
on UCLA rallying from a 12-point halftime deficit
“It wasn't a comeback because we lost. The game just got a little bit tighter. We are going to have to win games. Everybody wants to make it to the NCAA Tournament, to the Big Dance, and in order for us to do that, we have to win games. That's just the bottom line. We lost the game at home [to Gonzaga], we lost a game on a neutral floor [to Kentucky], and now we lost our first away game. We have to play harder to win games. The first half, we were slow. We have to come out tough. We cannot have lapses like that, especially on the road, against good teams.”
