Post-game quotes
Arkansas vs. Alabama QuotesJan. 29, 2009
Arkansas Coach John Pelphrey“It’s been a tough couple of days with the weather. I came in and saw nearly every seat in the student section filled. I really appreciate that, our fans are remarkable.”
“From the first possession we had energy, effort, the look so to speak. That allowed us to overachieve. We have to do that to have a chance to win in this league.”
“I thought our ball moving in the first half was terrific. I thought we did a good job executing and getting the ball where it needed to be.”
“Rotnei (Clarke) did a good job running from spot to spot.”
“I thought this was one of the better games that Stefan (Welsh) has played. He did a really, really good job defensively. He had some good rebounds.”
Courtney Fortson, G“It’s good to get our first win. We just kept our heads up this whole time and tried not do get down on ourselves. We knew it would come, and it just felt good to get that first one in the books.”
Rotnei Clarke, G“We’ve been working hard on practice, but we still started off slow. We were able to get back into it pretty quickly. I thought Courtney did a good job like always of finishing the open man and we were able to knock down some shots.”
Michael Sanchez, F“It seems like a long time since we’ve been in here talking about a win. It felt good to finally get that first conference win. I thought we battled all night and didn’t get frustrated early. We looked like a different team tonight. We played with a lot of passion and attitude, and I think it carried over to our win.”
Alabama Interim Head Coach Phillip Pearson“This was a typical SEC basketball game. Give Arkansas credit; we were doing everything we could and just couldn’t get over the hump. It seemed like everything we did, they had an answer for. They started off in a zone and we missed some open looks early, which started us off badly. Their early press caused us some problems too, but those are things we can fix.”
“[Rotnei] Clarke is a guy we were aware of. We started off in a zone and he hit some big shots in the corner early.”
Alabama Player QuotesAlonzo Gee, G“It’s frustrating. We had a lot of mental breakdowns. Coach Pearson did a great job preparing a game plan; we just couldn’t execute it completely. We lost Rotnei [Clarke] a few times and he light us up. When we did manage to contain him, he still managed to hit contested shots, and there is nothing we can do about that.”
“We need to win this home game Saturday against Georgia. We need a home SEC game to get us back on track. Coach Pearson did a great job preparing us, but we’re the ones playing the game, it’s our fault and we need to fix it.”
