Posted by BillFromTampa

ON FSU still having a chance at the NCAA, “That’s all you can do is give yourself a chance,” Rich said. “I think this by far is the best of us coming together.”

“Now we’re not feeling sorry for ourselves,” Hamilton said. “We realize now this is who we are and this is all we have. They are developing a unity, chemistry and passion that I think is a little special. It shows tremendous character under some of the most adverse circumstances and adversity that I’ve ever faced in my 30-something years of coaching.”

“You want to be playing your best basketball in February,” Rich said. “Right now we’re just trying to play good basketball and aren’t concerning ourselves with our goals at the start of the season. I know it sounds cliche-ish, but that’s why we’ve been able to put three together. We’re not looking ahead to the next opponent, but just looking at the game at hand.”

“We came out today trying to execute our game plan, be patient and know that if you swing the ball, eventually they’d break down,” said Ralph Mims, who had 12 points and a key 3-pointer late. “We executed our plays, figured out what type of system they were trying to run and we just capitalized on them.”

On his steal and coast to coast slam dunk to put FSU up 59-49, “That was probably the dagger that put them away,” Rich said.

“Basketball games are about streaks,” Douglas said. “They had their runs and we kept our composure. We didn’t lose our focus.”

“I thought our players stepped up and played good solid man-to-man defense down the stretch, made big plays, hit our free throws and had some stops,” Hamilton said. “I thought that made a difference in the game.”

“It was important to get off to a good start because the last time we didn’t,” Rich said of FSU’s 69-66 loss in Tallahassee to N.C. State on Jan. 26.

On Trevor Ferguson’s 17 points, “I thought they did a great job of looking for him,” Rich said of Ferguson. “They really screened for him and were very creative in the way they got him open. He moved better than we thought he would. He really got them back in the game.”

“I would rather sit on the bench and win,” Ferguson said.

“I thought our starters were just awful,” Lowe said. “We came out and missed a couple of wide-open shots and really didn’t pick it up on the defensive end. We’re back at home, in our building, [with] a chance to get us a win. And we didn’t have that thing we were looking for — that group. As a group they were bad, so we had to go to the bench. You’ve got to kind of call it the way you see it. That’s the way it was.”

“We’ve had days where we played well on the defensive end but we didn’t play well on the offensive end,” Lowe said. “We’ve had days where we played well on the offensive end and didn’t play well on the defensive end. But this start was a combination, really, and it wasn’t good. I can’t explain it. Actually, we had pretty good practices, had energy. We missed a couple of wide-open shots early and it was like we just kind of put our heads down because we were wide open, and didn’t get back and didn’t get the stop the way we needed it. I don’t know why missing a shot would do it, either, because I never cry about missing a shot. But I think that affected us maybe, and they just didn’t play well. The starters didn’t play well.”

“We tried to let those guys (the bench) play as much as we could because they had energy, and they were executing and defending and doing what we asked them to do,” Lowe said.

“We (the coaches) do everything we can to have these guys ready to play,” Lowe said of the staff. “We prepare. We have strategies. We can’t rebound. We can’t make the shots. We can’t get in front of a guy to defend them. So, strategy-wise, I think we prepare ‘em pretty good.”

“Then we had to go out and do it,” he said. “This is not something where I’m calling out my players or anything like that. I’m just saying this was a bad game for us. It was a bad game for our players,” Lowe said. “We’re the team. It was a bad game for us. But you’re asking what happened out there, we missed a couple of open shots early, we didn’t get stops defensively, they got offensive rebounds and that was it. … It’s a team effort, and we just didn’t have it.”

“I won’t do that,” he said. “I’m just calling the game as the game, but I’m not going to question anybody’s pride.”

“All we can do is apologize to the fans,” guard Marques Johnson said. “I don’t know what it is, but we’re not playing hard or something. There is no explanation for this. A five-game losing steak, we’re finally back at home – you would think we would excited to play. But we came out slow and sluggish, for some reason, obviously.”

“You keep working,” Lowe said. “Let’s go on to the next one and try to have a better performance. That’s it.”