St. John’s Head Coach Mike Anderson
Opening Statement…
“This is the kind of game we expected against Leonard Hamilton and a good Florida State team. I thought the game was going back and forth earlier on, and then it became a game of runs. We had some runs early in the game, and we had one to finish the game off. Hats off to our guys. I thought, from start to finish, we were engaged. They played unselfish basketball. [Joel Soriano] was a big key to that. Everything starts inside with him. I thought him, David [Jones], Posh [Alexander], Andre [Curbelo] and Montez [Mathis] were really connected in the first half. At the end of the day, we shot free throws well and we took care of the basketball. It was a good team win.”
On the message in the closing minutes of the game…
“I said let’s continue to do the things that got us the lead. We were in a hurry, and they [Florida State] were getting some easy outlets. We lost the shooters. [Darin] Green was having an unbelievable shooting night and we lost him a couple of times. Before you know it, they were making a run, but that’s going to happen in a game of this magnitude. The game is not over until there’s zeroes on the clock and our guys played from the start to the finish.”
On the state of the team after the non-conference slate…
“We can get better. When we jump into conference play, it’s a big turnaround. We play again on Wednesday against a very good Villanova team. All we can say is let’s go.”
On the mindset going into the next game against Villanova…
“We know that once we get into conference play, the magnitude of the game goes up one-hundred-fold. The sense of urgency has to continue to be up. You saw it here today from start to finish, but we have to get prepared for a team that really shoots the ball well. They’re playing well too.”
Senior center Joel Soriano
On the preparation for the game…
“We were working in practice all week. We came in with a different mindset. We didn’t play well against New Hampshire, and this was our last non-conference game of the season, so we tried to finish it out strong. It was a good team win today.”
On the win coming against Florida State in Florida…
“We tried to come in with a good mindset. We knew they had homecourt advantage being an in-state school. We just tried to come out aggressively and play our style of basketball.”
