Clemson vs. NC State Postgame Coaches’ Quotes

Clemson Head Coach Brad Brownell

Overall thoughts:“It was a really good second half by our team tonight. I felt good about the game coming in and I told our guys that. We had a great practice Sunday coming off of the loss. Short, but very physical.  We needed that tonight. They threw a bunch of different things at us and beside the bad play at the end of the first half, I thought we really played exceptionally well for 33-34 minutes of the game.”

On Rod Hall‘s play:“We thought he could get in the paint against their smaller guards and have a chance to do some things. He should be able to do that against certain teams, and this is a game he could do that. They tried to do a lot of things to take K.J. (McDaniels) out and when those things happen, other guys have to step up. We can try and do some things as coaches to help K.J. a little bit, but at the end of the day they are forcing your other guys to be playmakers.  Adonis (Filer) made shots, Damarcus (Harrison) was good tonight, and Landry (Nnoko) was certainly a factor. His size and length around the court on both sides was big. Again, I thought out guys played well. There were a couple breakdowns defensively, but I thought we were a good team tonight.”

On bouncing back after three straight losses:“We lost three in a row, but we didn’t play bad. You can lose games and play well, especially in this league. You can play bad and win, but that doesn’t happen very often. I reminded our guys that we had done some good things. With nine or 10 minutes left at Syracuse, we were down five and made it a game, but we let it get away from us. At Notre Dame we didn’t play great for a while, but hung in there and had two chances to win the game. We ended up losing in double-overtime on one day prep. We played a top-15 team in the country even for most of the night without a good player.  It’s easy for everybody on the outside to think things are going awry, but we’re playing pretty good and sometimes you are going to play well and lose.”

On surpassing preseason expectations:“We haven’t worried about those things; we have used it a little bit as motivation because we thought we were better than we were picked.  It doesn’t matter what you think, you’ve got to go play. The thing that our guys deserve credit for is playing hard. We’ve played hard most nights, given ourselves opportunities, competed and we’ve been together and stuck together.  We’re far from a really good team, but we are a competitive team that when we play well, we can be a challenge and 13 games in (ACC play), we have proven that.”

NC State Head Coach Mark Gottfried

Overall thoughts:“You have to give Clemson a lot of credit because they played very well. We wanted to limit K.J. (McDaniels) and keep him somewhat in check throughout the game, which I think we did at times. They answered by having some of their guys step up that hadn’t in other games, so you have to give those guys credit. Our team seemed to be a step slow all day. Not wanting to take anything away from Clemson, but we seemed to not really have the edge that we’ve had in a lot of our games. The fact that we were not at our best was very disappointing for us.”

On how his team played today:“Today we just didn’t have that same intensity level, zip, and energy that we usually do. We had a terrible start to the game and we got going at the end of the half. We just never seemed to have the same energy level that we’ve had in previous games, which was very frustrating.”

On T.J. Warren’s performance:“Truthfully, he has been very spectacular, but I thought today’s game was probably his worst game he has had in a long time. He just never really got going, and again, he did some things that he doesn’t normally do. He missed some shots around the rim and he bobbled the ball out of bounds. Those are things that T.J. (Warren) doesn’t do very often, but he just had one of those days where everything wasn’t clicking. I think our whole team did and it wasn’t just T.J. (Warren).”

On Brad Brownell preparing his team:“I think Brad has done an excellent job with his team. I don’t want to take anything away from what they did. They played well and had guys step up and score. (Rod) Hall had 20 and Harrison got 14. They played great tonight.”

On his team’s edge all season:“We have had a great edge all season and I didn’t see that tonight. We have had a spirit about us, but tonight it just seemed like we had cement boots on and couldn’t get going.”