Trio of Alabama players react to NCAA Tournament win over 13-seed Hofstra

TAMPA, Fla. — No. 4-seed Alabama defeated No. 13-seed Hofstra, 90-70, on Friday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Shortly after the Crimson Tide’s win, Labaron Philon, Taylor Bol Bowen and Aiden Sherrell spoke to reporters inside of Benchmark International Arena.

Here is everything the Alabama trio said after advancing to the Round of 32.

Q. Taylor, for all three of you, starting with you, the hardest game to win is the first. Survive and advance. How important was it to get to a point where, okay, we got this handled?

TAYLOR BOL BOWEN: It was really important. I felt like there were multiple times in the game that we came together. We played well as a team and made a bunch of great team plays. I’m super happy and proud of our guys for how we played today.

AIDEN SHERRELL: It’s win or go home, so we had to come up with a different urgency. Had to go out there, execute our game plan.

LABARON PHILON: For me, I would just say the flow of the game, you kind of felt it. We made a little run. They called a time-out, made a little run. Everybody said it in the huddle, in the second half. When we went on the run, they called a time-out. We told the guys, we can’t let them go on a run. We stopped them from going on a run, we went on a run. They caught another one.

From that point, we said the same thing. The same result happened. That’s what led to us pull away. We focused on just getting stops and pushing our pace. They were trying to slow the game down.

Q. Labaron, you guys obviously overcame some adversity in the game. Was there a specific moment where you guys felt like momentum flipped, or was it the halftime adjustments slowly coming together in the second half?

LABARON PHILON: I would say being ready to make adjustments, for us, listening to the coaches, the coaches got great adjustments. They do a great job of getting the game plan ready and have multiple things we can throw out there.

We’re not just based off one thing. We’ve got multiple things we can do. Once everybody locked in, it shows the second half our pace broke them down a little bit. We started getting out and running.

Q. Labaron, it seemed like you were off your game offensively in the first half. You had the missed open lay-up, which, of course, we never see from you. Then you turn it around. You get 21 points in the second half. What triggered the scoring binge for you?

LABARON PHILON: I think not just worrying about scoring. I missed a couple open shots, but I don’t really bank myself on that. I try to get guys involved. I ended up with seven assists, and I was just mainly focused on getting the ball out of my hands when I needed to, getting it back if I needed to.

So all the guys were ready to play. Amari did great attacking the slots. Taylor hit open shots. Rell got rebounds. It’s a collective thing. Once we play like that, it’s hard to contain it in the full and half court.

Q. Taylor, there at the end with that altercation with Victory Onuetu, was there anything that was said beforehand that led to that moment?

TAYLOR BOL BOWEN: No, we’re going to leave that on the court. Just playing hard and competing hard.

Q. How was your mindset different with not having Aden available with you in the backcourt?

LABARON PHILON: I would say mindset-wise, got to be the same. Being a leader, I think I did a great job getting these guys ready for the game. It was a great feeling to get to Tampa and focus on basketball, focus on winning an NCAA Tournament game. We have a lot of young guys on the team. We had to prepare them, get them ready. The veteran guys, be ready to step up and lead those guys in the moment.

The young guys did good for their first game. We’ve got to continue to build from here.

Q. It was kind of similar to Ole Miss where you were down double digits, make your run at the end of the half. This time, you were leading at half. How did you learn from that game to come out with more energy in the second half?

AIDEN SHERRELL: When that happened, we learned from our mistakes. We came out, we gathered ourselves and just went out there, executed the game plan in a better way and had a lot more urgency defensively. We cleaned up our loose ends.

Not a member, Alabama fans? Join BOL today!

Have you subscribed to BamaOnLine.com yet? You can sign up for ONE MONTH of premium access to our Alabama coverage for just $11.99! Be able to read all of BOL’s premium articles and nuggets covering Alabama sports and recruiting, and also join thousands of other Crimson Tide fans around the globe on the BOL Round Table message board! CLICK HERE!