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Jan. 18, 2004
Recap?|?Box Score |? Video Highlights and Postgame Comments
VIRGINIA COACH Pete Gillen
(On Devin Smith’s play) Devin didn’t practice for two days. We didn’t know ifhe was going to play today. He’s got a bad back from getting cracked inpractice trying to take a charge. I’ve coached a lot of years, and he’s one of thecourageous, gutty guys I’ve ever coached.
(On Todd Billet’s play) Todd Billett was on fire. He played with a bigheart. He carried us.
It was a great win for us and we did it with our defense. We finally playedthe kind of defense we needed to win in the ACC.
(On Jason Clark) He’s a physical presence. He’s a man. He helps us protectthe rim. Everybody in the ACC has got a guy like that, and we need that.
If we defend, we’ve got a chance to win. If we don’t, we don’t have a chancewith our offense.
(On Minter and Clark in the game at the same time) Clark’s a great athlete.He protects the basket, he rebounds the ball. Minter isn’t going to wow youwith his athletic ability, but he’s well coached. He rebounds well and he’stough inside.
(On the new starting lineup) We’d lost two in a row. I can live with losing,but I can’t live with the way we played Thursday at Georgia Tech. We didn’tplay with heart, with toughness, with guts, so that’s why we changed the lineup.
FLORIDA STATE COACH LEONARD HAMILTON
Virginia did a very good job of defending us today and that had a lot to dowith the outcome. They did a great job of taking advantage of us not havingNate Johnson.
I thought we played hard today and we defended a lot better in the first halfthan we did in the second. Virginia used their ball screens a lot moreeffectively in the second half and they got some hot hands down the stretch. Wedidn’t get to them and they knocked down the shots, all to their credit.
We didn’t play at certain parts of the game where I thought we should havestepped up. We didn’t take advantage of our leads and build a cushion. Wesputtered a little bit.
Virginia did a nice job of getting the ball to their shooters and they did anice job of denying us the ball. We were not as efficient handling those typesof defensive schemes.
We don’t have a lot of room for error right now with Nate out. I’m proud ofhow well the guys executed under the circumstances, but this league isunforgiving–you can’t have two or three bad possessions in a row where you don’tdefend good players.