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Louisville vs. Kentucky - Freedom Hall - Post-Game Quotes
December 18, 2004 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 18, 2004
Recap | Box Score | Notes
Louisville Head Coach Rick Pitino:
"It was a great basketball game. You've gotta give a lot of credit to Patrick Sparks, he made the big shots."
"We played excellent defense, but got a lot of bad breaks and unfortunately we didn't execute on the last play of the game. That's a lot of credit to them and we made a mistake, but hopefully it will up us in a close game down the road."
"You gotta give them credit, it was a big win for them and a bad loss for us."
"Certainly what we didn't want to do under any circumstances was foul, but we did. We had two mental breakdowns and hopefully we'll learn from that and move on."
"They had to make a lot of big shots and they did. They deserve all the credit."
"We're trying to be a tournament team. We're not gonna play scared. We were playing great. We played great defense. We're not gonna play scared, no matter who comes in here, it doesn't matter. You play with what you have."
Kentucky Head Coach Tubby Smith:
"It was a tale of two halves. You expect your team to come ready to play, but as Rick Pitino's teams always do, they were tough and fought hard. We did things that championship teams do. I though our guys didn't panic, they kept their poise, and we did the things we needed to do to win."
"Going small was the major difference in the second half, because we just couldn't stop them in the first half. Otis George was too active and too quick, so we thought going small would give us easy baskets in the second half."
"We played a lot of people early. We didn't want what happened to us last time we played Louisville to happen again. (Last time) I thought the game and the excitement around it kind of drained our guys, so we played a lot of guys to kind of combat that."
(At the end of the game) "The timeout by Patrick Sparks was a very heady play. He saw he didn't have a shot or a pass and the timeout was very heads up."
"Our staff kind of lost a little bit of our religion (at halftime), but we knew we were better than what we showed in that first half. I am very happy for our fans. To get a win in Freedom Hall is great."
