18 Quotes by Rick Scruggs

I don't ever remember having a team that came from 20 points down and win. Of course, I don't remember being down 20 points at halftime many times either.

Our goal this season is to take that next step and win the A-Sun's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. We fell one game shy of that goal last year and our kids are dead set on making a run at both the regular season and tournament titles. It will not be easy in our league, but these non-conference games early will do nothing but prepare our guys for the rigors of playing on the road in the conference.

Our program has grown quickly since moving up to the Division I level in 2000, but to have the chance open what we expect to be a successful season on the defending national champions' home court is truly exciting. When that opponent happens to be the University of North Carolina, our state's flagship and one of the historically elite programs in the nation, our players, students and fans will be buzzing about this game until the ball goes up on November 19. It doesn't get any bigger for our program, or university, than this.

Our team showed great composure tonight. They could have given up after we missed some foul shots that could have tied the game, but they didn't.

That was really the game. We were four up and hadn't gotten anything the last two possessions. Those rebounds were huge.

Well they're frustrated and I can understand that. We're frustrated. People are asking me around town 'What are you going to do?' Well, if I knew that, I'd be writing books and journals, I wouldn't be coaching. If I knew how to snap people out of these doldrums, I'd be making a lot more money. We're doing all we can do right now.

Tim Smith's a heck of a player. He's probably the top player in our league. Tim Jennings and T.J. McCullough did a good job of staying in front of him up there, and they'll have to do a good job on him again.

Well, the first question you all are going to ask me is, how did we beat Minnesota and play Carolina so close? It's a tale of two teams. Ohio State just took it to us tonight and we didn't have an answer for them. A lot of it had to do with Ohio State .

We had something different called and T.J. made eye contact with Jennings and it worked. I probably won't run them for it.