Leonard Hamilton Win Quotations

This is uncharted waters for us. I'm sure that in the future we'll try to win games by a little larger margin.

I've been around long enough to know how fragile it can be. We need to continue to get better. We haven't proven anything yet ? not enough to start relaxing. We've got a chance ? a window of opportunity. We've got to jump through it.

With each game you play, if you win it, you cant let yourself get too excited because there is another tough opponent coming right behind it. And if you lose it, you cant wallow in self-pity, you have to put that behind you, learn from it, and grow and then move on to the next game.

It seemed like they scored four, five or six possessions in a row there where we couldn't get a stop. We put ourselves in a very big hole there, but I thought we picked our defense up and put ourselves back in a position where we had a chance to win the game. I thought we dug too big a hole.

I hope this was a sign of us growing up. We definitely needed this victory.

We're still in a growing up stage. Last year we relied on a lot of freshmen and sophomores and we lost a lot of close games. One reason the sophomores from last year who are now juniors are playing better is because they're more experienced. A.J. (Johnson) and Al Thornton are giving us good leadership, and we're getting leadership from our three seniors. Todd Galloway has been in the program for four years, so has Andrew Wilson. We have some guys who are maturing a little bit and it's taking some pressure off of our new players.

It'll be real meaningful if we can win a couple more.

Our team continues to play well enough to almost win games.

We got beat by a team that did the things they needed to do to win the game. Clemson overcame a challenge. They did the little things. We didn't.

Getting beat on the boards seemed to be a very significant part of this game. You have to give them a lot of credit for pounding the glass. It seemed like every time we've played them the last couple of years, they've been much better prepared on the boards than we have. We got beat by a team that did the things they need to do within their scheme in order to win the game tonight.

Any comments that I make in relation to the technical foul, and the impact that it did or did not have on the game, I think would be seen as (taking) away from how outstanding I think Duke's players played. They made tough shots. They made the plays they had to make to win the game. We had equal opportunities, and we didn't come away with the points. We didn't get the stops that were necessary during the critical parts of the game, and we had maybe even some better looks than what they had; they knocked theirs down and we didn't.

They are entertainers and they're speaking from their heart and the information that they have, but at this particular time, none of that matters, because we still got games to play. I'm not gonna allow myself to get all caught up in all these things, because if you win enough games, it takes care of itself.

It's painful, to lose a close game like this. Close is not what we're trying to do. You've got to get over the hump by winning these types of games.

We feel like we're getting better, but we're at a point now where we have to avoid allowing ourselves to be affected by coming close and not coming away with victories.

They play to each other's strengths. They play with an unselfish spirit, and they play to win without any ego.