Trio of Alabama players react to NCAA Tournament win over 5-seed Texas Tech

TAMPA, Fla. — No. 4-seed Alabama defeated 5-seed Texas Tech, 90-65, on Sunday in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Shortly after the win, Houston Mallette, Latrell Wrightsell and Noah Williamson spoke to reporters at Benchmark International Arena.

Here is everything the Crimson Tide trio said after advancing to the Sweet 16.

Q. Could you address what Coach talked about, this not being your last game. What got into your mindset, what went into tonight to make sure that tonight wasn’t your last night of college basketball?

LATRELL WRIGHTSELL JR.: I mean, you know, you never want to stop playing. You don’t want it to end. I think it’s self-explanatory. You go out there and just fight to move on, and that’s what we did. We came out there with energy and effort that wasn’t matched today.

And we played for each other. We played to move on, but we also played one possession at a time. We didn’t take it for granted.

We just wanted to get a stop and a bucket each possession at a time. It was never looking at the bigger picture, never looking at the score, just one possession at a time.

And I think over time it built up a lead for us. We’re thankful we made shots. But at the end of the day, it was really a focus on defense and our mentality to get stops. And that’s what we did. Once we got stops, our offense took care of itself.

HOUSTON MALLETTE: To piggyback off what Trelly said, our team has real Mudita. We cheer for others’ success, each other’s success like it’s our own success. You can see it with our team with our program I mean.

We’ve dealt with probably more adversity than any of the other programs in the country this year. I think we’ve been really well equipped in not focusing what’s happened to us but more so our response.

I think the way we’ve responded time after time after time and the way we’ve prepared in practice — like our last week of practice was probably the best week of practice we’ve had. Our film numbers were the best they’ve been.

We’re doing all the right things, I think, and I think it’s showing off. And we just — the big thing is we love each other. I told Trelly today, I love you, bro.

I told everybody I don’t want to leave Alabama. I will die for this school and this place. These guys love it as well. That’s been our whole motto this year.

NOAH WILLIAMSON: We had a long day leading up to this game, a lot of time to think about the finality of it. If we lose today, that’s the last college basketball game that us three are going to ever play. I think that led into us having the right disposition coming out, playing hard.

I think the scoreboard kind of took care of itself. I wouldn’t say we really stopped to look at it too often. It’s just enjoying yourself, playing as hard as you can. It’s the joy of basketball.

Q. Noah, I’m assuming you saw what happened to Florida. They came out, didn’t get after it right away and it became a problem. Did you talk about that, like, we’ve got to put the pedal to the metal right away?

NOAH WILLIAMSON: We talked about, right off the rip, we’ve got to come out with the right disposition, play hard, turn them over, not turn it over ourselves. And I think we did just that.

HOUSTON MALLETTE: I think it all goes into our preparation. I think we’ve been incredibly prepared, and we’ve focused on the things we can control and the things we need to focus on.

I want to give a shout out to Trelly because Trelly is the senior starting for us. And I don’t know, the way he started, like, our senior night in Auburn, the way he started against Hofstra and the way he started tonight, you felt a presence.

He’s incredibly physical. He’s been our point of attack defender like easily. And I think that’s kind of what we’ve been focused on, is just everything we can do to try and win.

LATRELL WRIGHTSELL JR.: And for me, I’ll just say I think it starts with the top guy, our coach. Our preparation through film, through everything we do, walk-through, through everything, it’s just detailed to a timely manner. And I think he instills in us to just play hard, work on our effort and everything else will take care of itself.

So when we have our coach believing in us and — it starts with our top guy doing everything right. We just follow suit. Once we follow suit and stick to his game plan, I think everything else works out because he’s a really good coach and he prepares us really well.

Q. Houston, would you address, talk about all season long with rebounding, and yesterday Coach Oats talked about the guards needing to rebound well. Your first 3 came off a double offensive rebound — you got the first one and someone else got the second one, kicking out to you. What was working for you guys on the board and what was your mentality attacking the offensive glass?

HOUSTON MALLETTE: I mean, we play this thing called the possession game. It’s one of our main things. Coach Oats probably talked about it. We just want to get more possessions, because we’ve got the shot geography figured out. If we get more possessions than the other team we’ll be in pretty good shape to win that game.

So with that being said, just being out there and just playing with a reckless abandon. I tell these guys all the time, I play basketball the way I live my life and that’s with passion, and I think these guys do as well. We just come out there the and compete to the best of our ability.

And rebounding is a big thing, especially in our next game, I know that will be a huge point of emphasis. But also we knew their guards were playing heavy, heavy minutes. And so just crashing and playing fast were two big points of emphasis for us.

Q. Latrell, Coach talked about you guarded Christian most of the game. What were the tendencies you tried to take away that he did well? And what things did you exploit to try to get him into this game?

LATRELL WRIGHTSELL JR.: I think with a really good guard like that you make it tough and put a body down each time and make him feel your physicality and presence there every time. So that’s what I tried to do, just disrupt his timing a little bit.

But with a good guard like that, sometimes you just gotta pray for some misses too. I think I just did a pretty good job just getting into the ball.

And I don’t know it wasn’t just all me, I think as a team, collectively, our guys, our big man Rale (phonetic) and Noah telling me coverages in the ball screens and stuff, they ran a lot of ball screens and helping me out from the backside of the coverages of what I need to do and then getting the ball and stuff like that.

And then we also prepare really well. And our coaches gave me a really good game plan on how to guard and what we need to do. So that’s what I really did. I just tried to make it as hard as possible on them and make it difficult and I’m glad it worked out.

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