Dec. 2, 2001

Recap| Box Score| Notes

Maryland Head Coach Gary Williams
Opening statement:
"They have their game plan, we have our game plan. In the first half they executed theirs -- we didn't. We were very impatient. And Princeton is no secret anymore. It'a been a long time that they've been playing like that and I think our guys have seen them play enough where we know how they try to play. To their credit they were able to play the way they wanted to play. We just didn't seem to be able to run our offense how we had to, and to get the ball where we want to get it. We just had no patience whatsoever in the first half."

On the Terps' play in the second half:
"They weren't going to be able to run their offense as easy if we stayed in the passing lanes and I think that helped us. We rebounded better and we found a way to get the ball into our inside guys -- Lonny in particular. And we made some free throws, for a change. That combination of things turned the game around."

On Maryland's Juan Dixon:
"Juan wins games for us. That's the best way I can describe him. Everybody always talks about his scoring... He always finds that way to win the game, and today it was his defense. Tomorrow night it might be his shooting -- you never know."

On Maryland's patience in the second half:
"We waited until we got open in the middle. It takes more than one cut and one screen a lot of times to get open. That's hard to do becuase you think you have to go faster because you're 13 down with only 20 minutes left against Princeton. The key is to get more patient even though you're trailing, and that's a hard thing to get across when the players are nervous. The thought of losing was there, believe me."

Maryland's Juan Dixon

On the game:
"It's a tough time against those type of guys because we're not used to playing against that type of set offense. That's the first team we played since my freshman year that runs the back door like that. Those guys run it hard and they execute it well. We wanted to prevent those guys from getting open 3-pointers like they did in the first half. Coach [Williams] just got us fired up."

Maryland's Lonny Baxter

On the game:
"They run a lot of time on the clock and try to put you to sleep as well. But we just stayed tough, got the ball inside, and played tremendous defense in the second half."

Princeton Head Coach John Thompson
On the game: "It's disappointing because I think we controlled the game for the most part. Our big guys got in foul trouble, and then we got tenative defensively, and they just started throwing it in. [Lonny] Baxter and Tahj [Holden] were getting the ball much deeper than they had before. That's what made the difference."

"We all have to get better. We all have to keep working. In a tournament setting, you can't really dwell on today. We're going to have a game against a tough team tomorrow. We'll see who that is in a couple of hours, but we have to immediately start to prepare for tomorrow's game."

"It wasn't so much wearing down as it was we got in foul trouble. We weren't as aggressive, we weren't as active as in the first part of the game. But that being said, their post players are terrific, and a lot that goes unnoticed is that their guards are also terrific post players. Dixon gets the ball in the middle of the lane, he's tough to stop, Mouton gets in there, he's tough to stop...It seems like in the second part of the game, most of their shots came within three feet of the basket."

"Just looking at the first half when Dom was in there, we did a better job defensively. He's big, he clogs things up, he did a better job defensively until right down to the end. Konrad [Wysocki] is undersized, we've talked about that for two years, so Dom's size was key... He has to continue to progress and grow. He had some turnovers that he's not going to make once he gets more minutes."

"[Maryland] made a conscious effort to extend the defense and stop us from getting threes. We didn't mind as much because we got a few cuts and... we got a few easy shots."

"We're not coming away from this game thinking, 'what a great moral victory.' We had a chance to win today, and we didn't. We just have to keep getting better as the year goes on."