Rick Scruggs Quotations

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 .

I've never seen these guys panic. We came from 22 down against Lipscomb a couple of weeks ago, so we've been there before. They've just got the heart of a champion.

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

They shot the ball really well. Thankfully, we were as hot if not hotter.

You're going to have to play the best to get out of there anyway. We'll be tested from the first tip-off. We got ourselves into this by being the fourth seed. Now we'll just have to see what we can do about it.

Taking the two of them out at the same time would hurt any team.

It helps that we were up there a few weeks ago, when it was loud and wild. We were able to control the tempo and get the win. They like to play up there in the 80s and 90s, so if we can keep it in the 60s or 70s, I think we'll have a good chance.

They made us change. That made it sort of funny, but I thought we came out with some good intensity tonight. Our guys did a good job of holding on and getting the win.

We got ourselves in a hole and we just couldn't get out of it. We ran into too good of a team tonight to not be able to play with our legs under us and not be able to play with the emotion we need.

We tried to schedule some home games out of conference this season, but no schools were willing to come in here to play with the team we have coming back. Porter Arena is a tough place to play. Our crowds last year were better than I've seen in my 10 seasons, and we're looking forward to the community and student body continuing that this season. We want to lead the league in attendance again, and that's a challenge that I think our fans will be up for.

If he hits those kinds of shots, it's hard to get on your kids. There's the thing of not wanting to foul him and make him a 3-point or 4-point threat.