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When he took a hard fall trying to put up a shot against LSU Saturday and banged his head on the Rupp Arena floor, Kentucky freshman guard Aaron Harrison wasn’t sure what to expect.
“I was scared at first because you can’t see how you’re falling but I knew I had to get up fast. The longer I laid there, the more it would hurt so I knew I had to get myself up,” said Harrison. “I think I was more scared than anything. It just a scary feeling, falling and you don’t know where you’re falling or what you’re going to hit and I hit the ground pretty hard so I just tried to pop up as fast as possible.”
Not only did he get up and make free throws, but on LSU’s next possession he dove on the floor for a loose ball and slid into seats on the Rupp Arena sideline.
“My head was hurt. I hit my head, and my back and my neck was hurting so I think I just had to get up for my teammates,” he said. “You can’t really think about it, you can’t feel sorry for yourself or nothing like that. That’s not what we’re about. I just had to fight through something that, some pain. Not a big deal.”
His twin brother, Andrew Harrison, seemed more concerned than Aaron when his brother hit the floor.
“He’s my brother. If your brother looks like that and gets hit like that, you’re going to be concerned too,” Aaron Harrison said.
Of course, he got into another pile-up when UK won the game in overtime thanks to Julius Randle’s game-winning shot with 3.9 seconds left. He was part of the group that piled on top of Randle after the game ended.
“It was a really tough win. They played really well. We just grinded it out,” Harrison said. “It was really fun (piling on Randle). I think it’s going to bring us closer together. I think it helped us a lot, become more of a team. We had another overtime game (at Arkansas) and we lost it and we didn’t want to lose another one.”
He admitted players probably were relieved as they celebrated after avoiding a home-court loss that would have been damaging to UK’s NCAA Tournament seeding.
“I think that was a big thing, too, that was just fun. We enjoyed that. We were all happy for Julius that he hit the shot and we just all wanted to win. Whatever it takes to win,” he said.
He says having fun at this level is not easy for any player or team.
“But you can’t really enjoy basketball, you can’t play as many games as we play or practice as much as can if it’s not fun so we have to find fun in it. I think we make it fun for each other,” he said. “I think we definitely needed it because it was fun. We just make sure playing basketball as serious as we do, we still have to make it fun or you won’t really play that long.
“We (are) still just going to keep working hard, just keep fighting, doing little things. I think that’s why we won. We scratched and crawled to get the win. So I think we’re going to build off of this game and keep getting better.”
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