Florida State took the lead on a touchdown pass from DJ Uiagalelei to Ja’Khi Douglas in the fourth quarter while the defense held Cal scoreless on four of its five drives in the second half. That included the final possession of the game when the Golden Bears entered the red zone but the Seminoles sent them tumbling backwards to finish off the victory.
Following the win, head coach Mike Norvell spoke with the media to provide his thoughts on Florida State advancing to 1-3. His full comments from the post-game presser are transcribed below.
MIKE NORVELL: All right, just first off, just so proud of our team. You know, we needed — every part of what that game showed, what that game had in it, we needed to experience. It’s been a tough first three weeks of the season. You know, just disappointed in the beginning. Going into this week, you know, you say challenge, you say opportunity. You know, we talked about bouncing back. You know, we’re in control of that. Not who we’re playing, not where we’re playing, not any of those things. It’s about us and just can the choice we get to make on what we want it to be, what we want it to look like. I will say that I was so proud of our team for how they approached the work this week in practice. There was energy. There was competitiveness. Guys were really pushing each other. I thought that showed up today. You know, I’m not sitting here saying we haven’t worked up until this point.
When you face disappointing outcomes, there is a lot of things around you that can get in your mind and that you might want to pull back, might want to just hold. But these guys, they didn’t get distracted. They continued to believe, continued to push. I thought the week of practice showed up big today in just how we were able to respond throughout the course of the game. This was a tough game. This Cal team, obviously they have got some talented guys, some playmakers on both sides of the ball. Everything had to be hard-earned tonight. Our guys, I thought they definitely played with a relentless spirit. I thought they played with just great effort and a lot of physicality. A lot of hits on both sides of the ball. But at the end of the day we made the plays that were necessary to be able to go get that win. For the defense coming up big with the stops, I mean, you look this week we spent extra time in the red zone and focusing on our red zone work competitively. I mean, that showed up big. Our defense being able to keep them out of the end zone. I think there were two of five total in the red zone.
