Nov. 27, 2001

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Maryland Head Coach Gary Williams
Opening comments:
"Defensively, when we look at a team as good as Illinois, we look for a way to shut them down. When you look at their scoring and what they did last year in terms of balance, you can't just take away [Cory] Bradford or [Frank] Williams and say, 'Well, we have them stopped.' They will go inside to their big guys in that situation... We always talk team defense but team defense starts with each player playing his guy and stopping their man. And then we're hopefully playing the good team defense that we need to. We really worked hard."

On Maryland's play:
"[Our offense] usually feeds off our defense, and we have always been that type of team. I am proud of the guys because we did it tonight without full-court pressure, and we did it with our half-court defense."

On Maryland's team defense:
"Tonight we did not want to give open looks to their guards out of traps, so we stayed away from the traps. We just depended on our ability to play head-up, man-to-man defense."

Illinois Head Coach Bill Self
On Maryland's play:
"They've got a really good team. They're really talented and we don't have real good match-ups man-to-man. We don't have a Dixon or Mouton who's going to make plays... We never really gave them a chance to break down."

On the Maryland offense:
"We've got a long ways go before we become a good team. It will happen, but I still don't think we have the intangibles to give us a chance. Trust in an intangible. Unselfishness is an intangible. And right now those are two areas we're kind of lacking."

On Maryland's Chris Wilcox:
"Wilcox just owned us inside... I think he's great."