Clemson vs. Florida State Postgame Coaches’ Quotes

Clemson Head Coach Brad Brownell

Overall thoughts:“Obviously, it was a tough day at the office.  First, I would like to thank our fans, our students for coming out and supporting us in a tough game.  We couldn’t do anything to get them up to get them to help us.  I thought we defended pretty well and played hard from that standpoint.  Sometimes that’s hard to do when you can’t score, it just puts so much pressure on you that it’s hard to continue competing like that. In the second half we just wore down emotionally and they slowly pulled away.  Credit Florida State, I thought they played great. When you play bigger, stronger players at almost every position it comes down to execution. Tonight, we didn’t execute.  Our main players did not play very well, which put a lot of pressure on us. We forced some things and turned the ball over and became our own worst enemy.”

On the team’s sluggish play:“I think it was a combination of everything.  It was one of those nights when your best players don’t play great, you don’t get a lift off the bench from anybody to think everything is going to be good.  Even though we were down five to seven points, it felt more than that.  It was hard to get the guys to believe that we were going to make a play and get something going, we just never made any. We were shooting 23% and playing awful in the first half and had 16 points, but we were only down five. I was trying to get our guys to cheer up. Our youthfulness showed tonight. We as coaches did not do a good enough job of helping them offensively. We just didn’t handle it well. We haven’t faced a lot of this, but we will face it again Saturday, but hopefully we will play better. Hopefully we will have a little more spark, make a couple plays and learn from this.”

On motivating the players for Saturday:“That’s the million dollar question. If you have that (pulse), you would be a rich man as a coach.  Hopefully our guys will be resilient. We’re not going to beat them down, but we certainly are going to point out mistakes and get ready for Duke and do the best we can to get our energy level back up.  They’re going to come in needing a road win and will be ready to play.”

On the mistakes and poor shooting:“Some of the turnovers, you get to a point in the game when it’s not going well and you do something you probably shouldn’t do. You want to go make a play and you don’t trust enough what you’re doing as a team. That’s when sometimes the guys on the court have to do some things to help you. I challenged the guys at halftime and told them this is a great opportunity for them to rally together and do something special, but you’re going to have to do it out on the court. That part is a little disappointing.”

Florida State Head Coach Leonard Hamilton

Overall thoughts:“This was a very hard fought game, and I thought our guys played well. We have so much respect for what we have seen out of Clemson up to this particular point. They’ve been doing such a good job at everything that they do; we knew if we weren’t up to our very best it would be very difficult for us to win. I thought they brought the best out of us tonight.”

On FSU’s defensive showing:“We are capable of playing pretty good defense. We’ve had a hard time mixing good offense and good defense. We’ve been trying to be a lot more aggressive in transition. We’ve had a difficult time once we get in the half court executing. I thought tonight we did a much better job in the half court executing and it really made a big difference. I thought our energy was up the entire game from a defensive standpoint. We just wanted to make sure we kept with our defensive fundamentals. We didn’t think we would hold them to this low of a field goal percentage, but they had some good looks on us. I think you can get a good look and the shot just doesn’t fall. I know we played pretty good defense, but I think they had a poor night shooting as well.”

On not scoring in the first four minutes:“Honestly, I was a little more relaxed at that point because I thought we were running good offense but we just couldn’t find a high percentage shot. We didn’t panic; we just executed and stuck to the game plan. We were patient and that’s what you have to do when you play a good defensive team like Clemson.”

On Clemson being out of character:“I think that you have two really good defensive teams playing against each other and we just a had a few less turnovers. It was just one of those nights where sometimes the ball falls out of your hand. It’s just the way the game goes. You have those kind of nights, like we did against Virginia last weekend. I think they’ll bounce back, there’s no doubt about that.”