Posted by BillFromTampa

“We saw on ESPN, from point one they knew Stanford was coming out [of this bracket],” Tanae Davis-Cain said. “But as underdogs, we don’t care about TV. We play hard for ourselves. Once we saw the brackets come out, we knew we’d get Stanford. This was payback.”

“We knew from the beginning what we had to do: We had to contest every shot they put up,” said Florida State center Britany Miller, who videotaped her dancing teammates afterward. “Coming into this game we knew we had nothing to lose. We treated this as a regular-season game where you have to go into somebody else’s home court and win.”

“Ten years ago, this program was 0-16 in our conference,” Semrau said. “It took a lot of players to come and believe that this could be a good basketball school, and not just a football school. These are three of them right here [Williams, Gladden, Freshour]. It was fun to see them succeed tonight. These players all have a lot of courage.”

“Earlier this year we came to this area and lost to USF. For us to lose then and beat a team like Stanford is amazing. We talked about fighting through and develop as a team and we would be a rewarded and it feels good to be rewarded,” added Semrau.

“It takes a lot of courage to come in here and win,” Florida State coach Sue Semrau said. I had a lot of players that believed we could turn this program around. 11 years ago this program was 0-16 in the ACC and it took a lot of players to believe the Florida State could be a basketball school and not just a football school. Shante Williams was able to come up big tonight. Stanford is a great basketball team and is a great program. This is a huge win for our program; you just need to credit the courage of our team to just play our style of play. Even if we aren’t the most talented team or the best team, we were able to fight and get a win here and that really makes me excited for the players on this team. 

“I felt pretty good today. All year long (my team) has been carrying me and it was about time for me to carry back,” Shante Williams said.

“I thought getting the ball inside was critical. Britany Miller was in foul trouble but for our big to step up was big for us. Shante really did what Shante does best with the ball in her hands and get back-to-back stops, which helped the run,” Florida State coach Sue Semrau said.

After the game’s final horn, the dazed Stanford players did the quick-handshake thing with their opponents then sprinted to their locker room, so as not to have to witness the spectacle of the Seminoles whooping on the Maples maple as their fans tomahawk-chopped themselves silly.

“Rebounding was a huge key for us. It was one of the defensive keys before the game we focused on. I thought we got good position and were able to hold our own against a great rebounding team,” Semrau said.

Added Williams, “We had a great week of practice, they had a different team and we had a different team. This is my last year so we had to go all out and give all our effort.”

“Candice Wiggins is an awesome player and she caused problems for us. For Harden and Gladden to step up like that was huge for us,” said Williams. 

Commenting on playing on Stanford’s home floor Freshour said, “It was awesome. We were excited before the game and we are still excited now. Our team did an awesome job of fighting the crowd and even though we had a hard time hearing some plays, we fought through it.

 

“Florida State just had us from the get go,” coach Tara VanDerveer said. “They made a lot of big shots while we struggled. They broke us down off the dribble. They are very physical. … We seemed to play the whole game extremely tight, and didn’t have good shot selection. We’re just really, really disappointed.”

“I don’t think it was nerves or anything that got to us,” Wiggins said. “They just kept making the shots, and we didn’t get it done.”

“They were a very similar team, but we were able to hit some shots last year and get some separation,” Stanford junior Candice Wiggins said. “This year, it was the other way around. They hit some shots and got separation.”

“We had such high expectations for ourselves,” freshman Melanie Murphy said. “We thought we were going to the Final Four. Losing tonight is such a big disappointment.”

“It’s really, really disappointing because we did not get it done,” Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said. “And on top of it, we were playing here, which I think is harder on our team. It puts pressure on people.”

“I told them at halftime they were trying too hard and they needed to relax,” VanDerveer said.

“We weren’t playing well, we were lucky to be up,” Smith said through tears.

“I thought Jayne (Appel) was very steady,” VanDerveer said, “except for the fouls. She played with a lot of poise.”