Alabama basketball players preview Elite Eight matchup with Duke
NEWARK, N.J. – No. 2-seed Alabama will face 1-seed Duke in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday, March 29. Before facing the Blue Devils, Crimson Tide starters spoke to reporters on Friday afternoon at the Prudential Center. Here is everything Labaron Philon, Mark Sears, Chris Youngblood, Grant Nelson and Clifford Omoruyi said.
*** Editor’s Note: Quotes are courtesy of ASAP Sport.
Q. Mark and Chris, specifically how does going against the SEC schedule and some of the best teams in that league, how does it benefit you even if Duke’s roster and their style might not replicate with the teams that you’ve faced?
MARK SEARS: Yeah, like you said, especially our last seven games in the SEC really prepared us for games like this. The SEC is really talented and this team is really talented. Like I said, the conference, it really prepared us well, and I feel like we’re battle tested.
CHRIS YOUNGBLOOD: Yeah, just to piggyback off of what Mark said, we’ve played in a lot of meaningful games against a lot of good teams. We understand what it takes to win it. We’ve lost some close games, too, so we understand the value of each possession in high-level games like this. So we’ll be ready.
Q. Grant, Chris, how difficult is it to prepare for, like your coach said, a matchup with Khaman, especially with his size and what he can do?
CHRIS YOUNGBLOOD: You know, we’ve got a great coaching staff that gets us prepared and a great game plan for how we want to attack that. We just listen to them, the easy part. The fun part is go out there and execute it and live with the result.
GRANT NELSON: Yeah, we know they’ve got a lot of dudes with height, and I think they’re big man’s standing reach is like 9’8 or something crazy. We know we’ve got to be patience when we get in the paint and obviously keep that in mind for everything.
CLIFFORD OMORUYI: Just watching a lot of film about them, we know — we’re going to have the patience advantage and also being able to move the ball. They jump for everything and try to block every shot, so just got to be patient with them.
Q. For any of the players who want to chime in on this, Coach Oats, of course his background before basketball is being a math teacher. Of all the players here or even anyone else on the team, who do you think is the best at doing math and the subjects that Coach Oats taught, algebra, statistics, geometry?
MARK SEARS: I’d probably go with Max.
LABARON PHILON: I’d say Max, too. Sometimes I don’t know what they be seeing, but they just pull it out of nowhere and know where the numbers go.
CHRIS YOUNGBLOOD: I’m going to say Jarin Stevenson. He’s a guy quiet guy but he’s smart. He would understand that, too. He’s a smart player.
GRANT NELSON: I’d say Max and then Cliff. He was going to school to be an engineer for a little bit.
CLIFFORD OMORUYI: My top two I’d go Max, me, then Jarin.
NATE OATS: Max is studying to be a doctor, by the way. Scharnowski got a little time last night. Smart kid.
Q. You had a really nice night from beyond the arc last night. Superstitions, habits, what do you do as best you can aside from trust the game plan, but take us into your intricacies of how you will try and duplicate or try and get close to having the kind of night tomorrow that you had last night from three-point range?
MARK SEARS: Yeah, basketball, it’s all about finding a rhythm and having that momentum, and once you come off the game that we had, the momentum is going to carry over to the next game.
LABARON PHILON: You know, I work out with these guys a lot, especially these two alongside of me, and I just get to see the confidence they have and how they go into games, and I just try to put it in my own ways. But just watching them from a workout standpoint, I know what they give, and I know what type of shots they’re looking for.
For me, it’s really just trying to find them in the right spot.
CHRIS YOUNGBLOOD: You know, you don’t really want to force it. They know we shot great last night, but you just focus on the game plan and naturally it’ll come because of the way we play, the pressure we put on offense, on the defense. And we play selflessly, and the shots will naturally come.
GRANT NELSON: For me, I think it’s just getting these guys open, just doing what I can do to get them the best shot.
CLIFFORD OMORUYI: Getting guys open. We see them in practice and they can shoot the ball, so we’ve just got to get them open.
Q. I know you guys haven’t all been around to follow the ascension for Alabama for the last five, six years, nine years, but do you get a sense that football is always king at Alabama, and are you guys treated now as the big men on campus, too, by fans in town, other people? Do you feel like you’re on equal footing or have kind of surpassed them in some ways as far as how people view the two programs?
MARK SEARS: No, I’d say we’re a championship school. Football, they’ve got 18 National Championships, and we’re still trying to reach our first one. So it’s no comparison there.
LABARON PHILON: I feel like our side of it is definitely, like, there. But football-wise, like Mark said, those guys have built a great foundation program. But Coach, he’s getting there. By the time it’s all said and done, he’s going to be one of the greatest.
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