UAB Head Coach Andy Kennedy met with the media after the loss to 94-70 loss to NC State.
NOTE: Click the video above to watch the press conference.
Coach, what are your overall takeaways from this game and what can you learn from it?
NC State's good. He's got a lot of, I like the way that the pieces fit. It's early for us both. And I don't know if my pieces fit or not. I've got to make them fit. It didn't look like they fit very well tonight, obviously. But I told Will, I like the way that his pieces fit. Their ability to shoot the ball.
I thought early in the game, our zones bothered them a little bit. And we were able to score, which allowed us to get in our zones. I thought Chance and Jacob Meyer, I didn't think the moment was too big for them, and they were really on the attack.
And then we were able to get back into the zone and had them a little disjointed. And that's how we were staying in the game. The reality is we were down eight at the half. And the way that they had played, if we could have finished the half a little better, that should have been a two, three, four point game. We might have even taken the lead if we could have made a shot.
We go four for 25 from three, which is just gonna be a recipe for disaster for a group that's undersized already. And then in the second half, the smoke cleared, and they just started knocking in shots. And our inability to be able to execute offensively at any rate of efficiency led to the blowout.
Hey, Coach, I know you got some history with NC State. Just wanted to ask kind of the warm perception pre-game and what your thoughts were on that.
I think they booed me, but that's what they should do to the opposing coach. It's been a long time. I've got great memories from my time at NC State. For some reason, people think I don't, but don't believe in all the tabloid journalism. Please, no, I've got great memories here. My wife is from Raleigh, and her family was here, and they're all Wolfpack fans. I told them that if I was gonna give them tickets, they had to wear green, so that's why they were wearing green. I had to coerce them, but they're all big State fans.
I saw my man, Chucky Brown, who I played with. Chuck's doing the radio. What a great guy, great representative of this university. And I think you got a good guy, man. I've known the coaches here throughout the course of the years, from Mark Gottfreid. He was at Alabama when I was at Ole Miss for years. I've known Kevin Keatts, great respect. But I think Will brings the right energy at the right time to really ignite this place, and he's done a great job with his roster construction, as I said, and I think he's got a chance to have an outstanding year.
When NC State pulled away, was it as simple as just shot making, or did you notice anything further than that?
I think it was shot making on their part, and the inability to do so on our part. When you have empty stretches, and it's been problematic for us. We played Vanderbilt in an exhibition game. We played Western Kentucky in an exhibition game, and now NC State.
And we have these stretches where we'll go three, four possessions, empty, empty, empty. We don't really have anybody to throw it too close. So we've gotta be shot makers on the perimeter. For Chance, Westry again, he started the game great. I thought he did a good job all night of getting the ball to the basket. Ahmad Robinson is a guy that we brought in to be a scorer.
He's a 17, 18 point per game guy. You put bigger guys on him, the moment. I mean, the kid's great, he works hard. But it's gonna be hard to survive it when the guy that you think is potentially your leading scorer goes two for 12 and one for seven.
And overall, we go four for 25 from three. If you're gonna take 25 threes on the road against an opponent like NC State, you better at least make eight or nine. John Calipari once said, man, you don't have to make them all, but you damn sure can't miss them all. And we went about a five or six minute stretch where we couldn't make it and the game gets away from us.
