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KENTUCKY HC MARK POPE & PLAYERS Q&A:
* Pope: Congrats to Alabama. Played well, played aggressive all night.
* On Lamont Butler... Different and unique injury to the other one he had. The imaging came back perfect, so hopefully we'll have him back for the NCAA Tourney.
* I hope it's really hard to flush this feeling. I hope it's hard, but I hope we do it.
* Give credit to the opponent, but I was disappointed in that the whole night we were stymied from playing with our typical character. Disappointed in our response to the moment.
* On Travis Perry getting 30 minutes... I thought he competed hard. He's probably our next best option at the point to just give us some diversity of play-calling right now. There just aren't a ton of options right now. But he competed well.
* On going 5/19 for 3s... Our capacity to earn shots for each other needs to be better. Needed a Herculean focus on that tonight, and we just didn't have it.
* On being prepared for the NCAAs after going through the SEC "bloodbath" ... It should make you better if you have the fortitude and togetherness coming out of it.
* On Oweh's play... Every guy is really important every night, but Otega had to battle through a bunch of stuff tonight. He's one of the guys that we really rely on, though.