Robert Brown on his return to action: “I didn’t know I was going to be able to play till probably yesterday (Friday). I took my temperature again, it had dropped under 100 finally and (trainer Dave) Dietter was like, I’m going to travel and I’m going to hopefully play. Today I got in the game and felt pretty good, started running. It felt good being able to be out there with my teammates again and help them, especially to get this win we’ve been fighting for. It’s a great feeling. … Thankfully some of the shots I shot fell in overtime. … We’re happy to finally get a win. We had 4 losses (in a row) and a couple were pretty bad.”

CJ Barksdale: “I just worked hard on the boards and scored when I could. … We came out here and gutted down and played defense.. … We’re proud. We’ve been working hard every day, trying to get better and get that win. Today we played better team defense and did better on the rebounding. … You can’t give up when you hit adversity. You’ve got to keep fighting and fighting.”

Erick Green: “We’ve got our confidence back and we didn’t give up. We believed that we could win and we had some guys contribute and step up big tonight. That’s what we needed. … People filled their roles and we just wanted this one. We didn’t give up. We knew this whole time this was a winnable game. … I’m just proud. I’m just really happy that we get back on the right track. … We rebounded really well. The main thing is guys stepped up. CJ, Cadarian, the guys rebounded. Robert Brown came back from being ill and played really well. He was tired. He was wore out. He had towels over his head. He was really sick. So I had to step up. Jarell had to step up. CJ stepped up. We had guys step up and play big for us.”

Green on the multiple scratches on both of his arms: “There’s a couple of them I didn’t get no call on, but it’s part of the game. This is going to burn in the shower.”

Green on the offense: “Sometimes we just wasn’t getting good shots. Sometimes we had a couple good shots and we were just missing them. …. I know when I go to the basket guys are going to collapse on me, things like that, so guys will be open. And these guys stepped up big. CJ Barksdale had a heck of a game. I’m real proud. He’s getting back. He needs to keep it up and I think we’ll be a great team.” (Well, “great” is stretching it …)

Green on getting just 1 point on 8 straight possessions after cutting the lead to 53-50: “We were turning the ball over, making silly mistakes. … But we didn’t give up.”

Green on the 15-2 run where GT did not score a basket for the final 7 minutes of regulation and the first few minutes of OT: “That’s crazy. I honestly didn’t even know that (about the GT stretch without a bucket). They were arguing with one another — we saw that when they were huddled up — who was shooting the ball, who they wanted to shoot the ball, things like that. So once you see that, it’s kind of a good sign for us that they’re already bickering and arguing back and forth at a crucial time.”

Green on GT playing Enter Sandman: “Will Johnston said, ‘It’s our time.’ We got up for that. It definitely carried us.”

Green on the VT defense: “People just clamped down and really played hard. We didn’t allow 2nd chance points. … With our numbers limited and staying out of foul trouble (being key), we’ve been working hard on the zone. …. We went zone a lot to keep guys out of foul trouble … We started working on it for Maryland and then …. through the time off we got better at it.”

James Johnson: “Winning is hard. Winning in the ACC is hard. And winning in the ACC on the road is certainly hard. This was a great win for this team. … We had a lot of guys step up and make plays. …. We limited them to one shot, basically. That was the key to our defense. And were able to mix it up a little bit and play some 2-3 zone, which we did a good job of rebounding out of the zone. … (Green) kind of took it over. …. He did a great job stepping up. I think we were down 11 and he turned it on. …. To reward us for this hard work is tremendous for this young group and our confidence.”

Johnson on using so much zone defense: “That’s based upon the short bench I had, trying to keep the guys out of foul trouble and based upon personnel. It’s something we’re going to have to continue to look at throughout the season. We’ve got to continue to get better in our man to man defense and our zone defense. … Our defense was pretty good tonight.”

Johnson on Brown: “I didn’t know what to expect from him. He missed 2 days of practice but was at the shootaround last night. I didn’t know what we were going to get out of him. I had to go to him earlier than I expected because of the injury to Marquis Rankin and he came in and did a really good job. … He was big for us tonight, gave us another ballhander on  the floor that could get to the basket. Having him back is great. I felt he was a little fatigued (for the OT) but he was playing well. He gave us another threat, at least they had to guard him, out on the floor so I felt he had to be in the game (in OT).”

Johnson on his offense in OT: “I wanted to run a few things to … make their big guys move a little bit and have them chase our guards a little bit off some of the screening actions. Our guards were able to be a little more aggressive.”

Johnson on getting just 1 point on 8 straight possessions after cutting the lead to 53-50: “You’re talking about a really young team and then you’re talking about a team that had lost a few games in a row. Maybe that was going through their mind at some point. I had to remind those guys, ‘Hey, we’re going to win the game, let’s hang in there, we’ve got to keep getting stops, we’ve got to make plays, we’re going to be fine.’ ”

Johnson on why he didn’t start Raines: he said he wanted to see more consistency out of Raines (who didn’t exactly impress vs. BC)

GT coach Brian Gregory: “Give Virginia Tech a lot of credit, I thought they played extremely well in the 2nd half, especially the last probably 12 minutes. …. Although they were struggling to score some, they have a pretty good ace in the hole in Green, and for about a seven minute stretch there he had it going pretty good and that kind of kept it close. … I’m disappointed the way we rebounded. We’re going to have stretches offensively when you’re relying on  some younger guys to make plays for you and make baskets, that you’re just going to struggle to score. With that, you’ve got to … do a great job defensively. We did in the first half….. But in the second half just didn’t do as good a job on the defensive end or on the glass. They had some key putbacks in the last couple minutes of the game which are backbreakers during that time.”

Gregory on Green’s outburst in 2nd half : “It’s a lot to ask Mfon to run the team, score for us, get us into everything we need to get in and also to defend the best player. So we put Brandon Reed on him for a little bit and it seemed to, initially he scored a couple times but then after that that was a pretty good matchup.”

Gregory on his offense: “We had some pretty good looks in the last 10 minutes, had the ball around the basket  a couple times and didn’t get a score or no foul was called.  .. They did a good job defensively, they were able to extend the zone and we didn’t make some of those shots. When we took the lead, there was about a 4 possession stretch where we didn’t play with the basketball IQ you need to play in this league. Where we’re at as a program, …. every possession has to be near perfect for us to be good. When it’s not, it puts you in deep trouble. … Robert (Carter) had some good shots against the zone, I thought Daniel (Miller) had some looks around the basket too. Unfortunately we didn’t finish any of those, or if we did get fouled, we didn’t get to go to the free throw line and put those in. There was a couple key points in there where you go up to the FT line to stop the bleeding and you go 1 for 2 or 0 for 2 at the line and that doesn’t do that. … One of the things we struggle at sometimes, especially (when) Marcus is out of the game, attacking some of those gaps against the zone in dribble penetration.”

On the refs not awarding the basket to GT on Eddie’s flagrant foul: “No comment. I don’t know. …. I better not say anything on that one. …. I guess pretty big (sequence) — Layup, flagrant foul and the ball back and you only have one point (cause the bucket was not counted, then GT made only one of 2 FTs, then got the ball back but didn’t score), so that’s a critical play.”