FSU Basketball: Post-Game Quotes and Video

Northeastern Head Coach, Bill Coen:

"We were extremely, extremely fortunate this evening to come out with a victory."

"Their defensive pressure, you know, just forced us into so many turnovers...luckily we had enough composure down the stretch to earn the victory."

"We have a tremendous respect for this program and Coach Hamilton and this staff."

"We view our non-conference schedule as an educational opportunity for our team; we want to go out and challenge ourselves against the best. Certainly playing against Florida State, Coach Hamilton, and this program, you have to grow up quick."

"Their defense can be suffocating. Certainly their size was a challenge for us, their length, their quickness."

"Early in the year these type of trips can help bond your team. You spend some time in the airport, spend some time in the hotel, and guys get to work on their team chemistry."

"We always try to get our kids back to where we recruited them from and we have a lot of kids from out of the area. We try to plan trips where we can get down and have their families view them. It's not often, but when it works out [getting a win] it's an added bonus." --On Quincy Ford (18 points, 7 rebounds--3 offensive--and 4-7 from three) coming home and playing so well in front of his family..

David Walker (who's 22 points put him 1 off his career high):

"My freshman year I was kind of, I had to sit back and play my role...Sophomore year coach wanted me to be more aggressive. That was more of a transition year. I worked on my game a lot this summer, I got some great teammates that trust me to make good plays."

Quincy Ford (a 2-star from St. Petersburg, Florida): "It felt good to come home. I didn't think it would be this cold (draws laughter from the room), but it's just a good feeling that they all came out. A lot of people from my city came out, friends and family." --After being asked about playing back in his home state.

Florida State Head Coach, Leonard Hamilton:

Overall, Ham was quite terse (spoke 10 minutes compared to normal 20-25) and seemed much more frustrated and easily aggravated than normal. Haven't seen him this hot while answering questions in a while.

"I think we lost to a team that really did a great job of executing and knocking down shots from the perimeter when they had the opportunity."

"Been a long time since we played a team that shot 60% from three and 53% overall."

"We had a stretch there, maybe about the 13 minute mark, where we had about a 1 point lead, went about 11 possessions with the wide open shot opportunities and just could not get the shots to fall...each time they had an opportunity with an open jump shot, they made us pay."

"This loss, hopefully, will be more meaningful than maybe if we had we played a team and won by 25 or 30 points. Maybe this loss will be a lot more meaningful as we move through the season because this team executed so well, they made us pay every time we made a defensive mistake, they pointed out some areas of our game that we need to continue to improve on. I think we have a chance to be a pretty good basketball team. I was glad to see some of our younger players do a decent job, but we still have room for improvement."

"You gotta give Northeastern credit. I thought they did a tremendous job of maintaining their poise...each time they had open looks they knocked theirs down, and each time we had open shots we missed ours."

"I can't fault our guys for taking wide open, uncontested jump shots...but we gotta knock em' down. Tonight was not one of our better perimeter shooting nights."

"To be very honest, had you not told me I don't even know what CAA means...I know the coach, he's an excellent coach, and he's done a tremendous job. That's why they're picked to win their league, because they're a good basketball team. And I don't feel anything other than they outplayed us. I mean, regardless of what conference they're in, I don't think [it] matters. Those days are kind of over, where basketball is being played at every level, and if you just wait until the NCAA tournament starts, you sill a lot of teams be successful and no one cares about what league you're from. It's how well you play...you disrespect them when you start trying to categorize them because of what league they're in. They're a good basketball team. They made the shots that they had to make and they did a very good job of executing their offense...and I think that's the story. Give them credit for coming in and playing some good basketball with some very very good players. You gotta give the coach credit for evaluating talent and creating a system...it says an awful lot about them when they win seven games in their league last year and then be picked to win their conference this year." --After being asked about losing to a CAA program

"He's fine...when you look at a team, it's not all about how many points you score in a period of time. There are other things that go on. Are you in the right defensive position, are you rotating properly, are you getting the rebounds in your area...so if you want to question why he didn't play, I mean there are a lot of other guys on the team that didn't play either" --After being asked about why Turpin didn't play in the second half (for the record, Turpin had 8 points and 3 rebounds in 9 first half minutes, and there were reports that his knee was sore after extended play in the first game).

"If you go back and look at the history of our program, I think we've been a pretty good defensive team. Sometimes you gotta give people credit for making shots."

"I don't think our defensive system has changed, I just think we gotta do a better job of executing."

"[Cofer] and Jarquez gives us a nice tandem of power forwards. Tonight Phil got a little more minutes...because he's very quick, and our rotation we needed a little quicker guy because they were a little smaller and mobile at their four position."

"The combination of both of them (Phil Cofer and Jarquez Smith) playing well is what we need."

"[Montay's] kind of found what he has to do, with the abilities that he has, in order to be effective and help us." --On Montay elevating his play.

"I'm hopeful that these games will create the mindset with our guys that we understand a little bit better of the level of play that we have to be executing in order to be successful" --On the four difficult games right off the bat to start the season

Aaron Thomas talks about the loss, Montay Brandon's impressive performance, the need for the team to be more aggressive, and the guys keeping a positive attitude:

Montay Brandon after the game: