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Florida State basketball earned their sixth win of the season in style, blowing out N.C. State Wolfpack 105-73 on Wednesday evening. FSU shot over 70-percent from the field, moving to 2-1 in ACC play.
While setting a new career-high for the second game in a row, senior guard Rayquan Evans scored 24 points on 9-of-11 shooting from the floor and also grabbed 6 boards. Fellow senior guard Nathanael Jack also was red-hot with 18 points in just 12 minutes.
After the game, FSU head coach Leonard Hamilton, along with Evans and Jack, joined the media for post-game comments.
Quotes from Hamilton:
Opening statement: “I thought that we showed we were hungry to go out and play. Anytime you get 24 assists that means you’re moving the ball…We had one of those exceptional nights where the ball was falling. We were making the extra pass. We showed that we were hungry…Wanted to get that bad taste out of our mouths [from loss to Clemson].”
On starting Evans over Barnes: “Scottie had a little strain, nothing serious, and I wanted to make sure that we got him warmed up. We held Scottie out of practice the past couple of days to get him warm for tonight. Evans has shown the potential.”
“Our press offensive attack was on point. But I am concerned that we had little answers for them on the defensive end. Still got a lot of work to do. I thought we really, really shot the ball well.”
On North Carolina: “Now we have another type of team coming in this weekend that has a whole other strength that we need to prepare for. But every ACC team is going to have something that they are doing well.”
“We still are a team trying to find ourselves. As a coach I am still trying to find the right rotation to utilize a team that I think has a lot of potential.”
“A lot of this is a mental approach. Free throws are more mental. I think we are capable of being a good shooting team. Jury is still out on how good of a defensive team we are going to be.”
On the delays from COVID-19: “Somebody is going to deal with it efficiently, and somebody is not. We wan to be the team to deal with it efficiently…Get to the postseason.”
On the status of Scottie Barnes: “I think he turned his ankle, a guy fell on it. I don’t think it is anything to be overly concerned about, Some guys recover differently from ankles, so we just have to give him a lot of treatment, hopefully he will be ready to go on Saturday.”
“We still have a lot of upside here. We are still learning about each other. I think we still have a lot of growth to do. Defensively I didn’t think we were contesting shots well.”
Quotes from guard Rayquan Evans:
On the layoff the past two weeks: “It was definitely different for sure. Everybody was kind of out of a rhythm. I just tried to facilitate as much as I can and stick to the game plan.”
On career night: “I just tried to stick to the game plan as much as possible, since it was working. I just kind of stuck with what I was doing.”
“We pride our program around defense.”
On the delays: “It’s definitely an adjustment. I feel like it benefitted us because we had more time to focus on the little details we were struggling on.”
Moving forward: “We just need to build off of it. Everybody being disciplined, everybody coming into practice focused.”
Quotes from guard Nathanael Jack:
On his performance: “It was fun, I felt very relaxed. We knew their gamelan thru and thru. We knew they were a trapping team. I knew I was going to get open shots. We were able to break the press really well today and open the trap well so I got a lot of uncontested shots.”
On what he has worked on recently: “The big thing I focused on is defense. On-ball defense and off-ball defense, everything really. I was focusing a lot on defense, getting a lot quicker getting a lot faster. And really watching film.”
On the break: “It was extremely frustrating for us. What was frustrating to us was we came off a loss and had 15 days to harp on the loss. That left a bad taste in our mouths. We knew we needed to win today. We just took that energy.”
“We knew that we could do this and we know that we can actually do better. There are still a lot of things we can improve.”