It was a defensive gem for both teams as the Seminoles forced 20 Cavalier turnovers and the Cavs forced 19 themselves in the 58-55 FSU win. The Noles have won seven in a row and still sit a top the ACC standings at 7-1. FSU is now 16-6 overall while UVa is now 18-4 (5-3 in ACC play). Okaro White led the Noles with 13 points and Michael Snaer chipped in 8, all 8 in the last 4:42 of the game.

“We just needed to settle down,” White said afterwards. “We kind of let them do what they wanted to do on the offensive end towards the end of the game. We just got a timeout and got in the huddle and settled down and played our offense.”

FSU Coach Leonard Hamilton had this to say in his post game presser:

“It’s one of those typical ACC games that could have gone either way. It was two very determined defensive teams who forced each other into a lot of turnovers.”

“Whenever you have two guys like Zeglinski and Harris, you don’t want to leave them when you know they’re capable of knocking threes down, and Harris did that. They kept us from helping out very much and we didn’t do a very good job of handling the ball screen. But down the stretch, Okaro and Mike made some great plays.”

“The game could have gone either way and that’s a typical ACC blowout, a three-point victory. That seems to be the way it goes in this league. We’re very fortunate, very proud of our players. We fought very hard.”

“I still think we’ve got a tremendous amount of room for improvement as we continue to keep finding ways to win and keep pulling games out.”

UVa Coach Tony Bennett said:

“Florida State certainly defends at a high level. They’re athletic, quick, and physical. They certainly with their quality defense made us turn it over a lot of the time, but some of that is on us because we got sped up and rattled at a stretch there where if you want to be competitive or successful in a game like this, you can’t give it away. I’m sure Leonard was as frustrated with some of their turnovers as well. It was kind of guys giving it back and forth to each other.”

On what was said after the game in the locker room…

“I told our guys in the locker room after, I said, you made a statement with the kind of heart you have and the fight in you and that was good, but we also made a statement that we need to clean up some of these turnovers and be more efficient to play against a team like this because baskets aren’t easy to come by. There was a stretch where we looked really poor with turnovers and got a little worn down, but they fought to get back to have a chance to tie.”