North Carolina State University Athletics
Postgame Quotes
1/11/2004 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 11, 2004
NC State Head Coach Herb Sendek:
"This is one of those college basketball games when nobody deserves to lose. As thrilled as we are to come away with a victory and as proud as we are of our men and the grit they showed, I thought that Florida State was extremely well prepared. They played tremendous defense. We had a difficult time scoring. It really was a hard fought, intense college basketball game. It was one of those days were no one is a loser."
"I was especially pleased with our men with the way they responded after we relinquished the eight-point lead. Florida State went ahead 53-52 and I felt that our guys really came together in the huddle. They showed good leadership, we regained our composure and then Levi Watkins hit that big shot."
On Levi Watkins shot to put NC State up 55-53: "In basketball, sometimes, it just comes down to whether that shot goes in or out. At South Carolina that didn't go in for us, but tonight it did. I was really pleased with our overall defensive effort and certainly credit Florida State for an equally good defensive effort."
"In a game like that, you don't want to think about not making mistakes. Because then you don't have the courage to make the three-point shot that Levi made or the free throws that Julius (Hodge) made. You can't go out walking on eggshells."
FSU Head Coach Leonard Hamilton:
"At this level if you are going to compete, and if you're going to be successful, you have to not only give tremendous effort, which I thought our players did, you have to get to the point where you can give good effort and execute. You have to a high level of concentration that will allow you to compete for the full 40 minutes. I thought that was once again the culprit tonight."
"We seemed to have too many stretched where, it's about a four or five minutes stretch, where we will make bad decisions and give up easy opportunities. Even the games we have been winning, we've had situations where we had stretches where we have not played smart basketball. We can't seem to eliminate those and until we do, we'll play hard, aggressive and just well enough to come close."
"You have to give NC State a lot of credit. They did a very good job defending us. They pushed up on our perimeter guys and made us work for everything. On the other end, they remained consistent with their execution. They did a nice job of moving the ball and made us work on the defensive end. It gave them an opportunity to maintain an even keel."
They only had that stretch late in the second half where we made three mistakes and they made us pay for each one of them. They got up by eight and it was very difficult for us to come back. Then in the end they were up and we fouled and it allowed them to extend the lead. Those are mistakes we're going to have to eliminate."
