Wake Forest Men's Basketball Post Game Quotes
1/29/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
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Wake Forest Head Coach Danny Manning
Opening Statement:
"Tonight was a hard-fought ballgame. I think both teams came out for stretches, asserted themselves, played really good basketball. Unfortunately for us, we didn't make enough plays down the stretch. Florida State made some big shots and came up with some offensive rebounds and some loose balls down the stretch to help push them over. But we certainly did enough things to give ourselves a chance to win and we just have to finish and close out."
"To Florida State's credit, Coach Hamilton's team is always long, athletic, they're hard-nosed and they continue to grind and grind back in it and, eventually, you guys were there, won the game at the end."
On Xavier Rathan-Mayes:
"He's just a dynamic scorer. He scores at all three levels. He's able to go make plays for his teammates, as well. And tonight he came out, he had 21 points and five assists and five rebounds. He stuffed the stat sheet and did a lot of things to put them in a position to win."
Florida State Head Coach Leonard Hamilton
Opening Statement:
"Obviously, we dug a hole for ourselves at the beginning of the game. It seemed as though we just couldn't finish our plays. For whatever reason, we just were not playing with the same level of energy that these guys were playing with. After we got down 13, 14 points, I thought we started executing a little better, making some plays and creating some offense from our defense. We got some stops and deflections. We were able to put the game within reach at halftime. The second half was a typical ACC game. If you are not ready or at your very best for 40 minutes, you can get down, and this team could very well, they're what, 1-7 (in the ACC)? They very well could be 7-1. You look at it and say, "Well, this is a team that's toward the bottom of the league, and they very well could be 7-1. Look back at the games that they've played, with 3-4 minutes to go, they've been right there, with the exception of one, and that was the (North) Carolina game and they extended the lead when they went to the zone defense late in the second half. This is a league, we have a lot of heroes; I said earlier in the week that we have to win games by committee. (Michael) Ojo only played four minutes, but he got two big rebounds for us that gave us to big energy plays inside. Jarquez (Smith) didn't score, but he had two big blocks during critical parts of the game. Boris (Bojanovsky), I don't think he scored a basket, but he gave us seven rebounds and four blocks. Phil (Cofer) and Xavier (Rathan-Mayes) gave us some productivity from the offensive position, and I thought our defense stiffened up a little bit. I look at the numbers, we had to fight, claw, and scratch, and scratch and claw to win a double-overtime game. They shot 34 percent for the game, but it's those 22 offensive rebounds that kept them in the game and kept them being productive. Some of it was that we didn't hold our position and the ball went over our heads, some of them they shot some three's, they shot 27 three's. When you shoot that many three's, the ball is going to bounce long, it's not going to bounce right in, and they ran a lot of those down. We're very fortunate to come away with a victory tonight."
On how resilient this team has been in order to comeback like they did tonight:
"I think we're learning and growing. We are not ready to start taking any bows, we made a lot of mistakes and boo-boo's tonight. We're learning the level we have to play at to compete in the ACC - the new and improved ACC. This is a rock `em, sock `em game and league now. It's going to be something that people are not accustomed to. We've been accustomed to the teams with the best reputation and most tradition being successful, but what you're going to see in the years to come, it will be a battle royale every time two ACC teams show up. This was typical of what to expect. "