March 9, 2001

Recap| Box Score| Notes

Wake Forest head coach Dave Odom:
"Maryland is a very talented team. They play quick. They play big, long, up. Defensively right now, they're at the top of their game. Offensively they're playing very well, but they're awfully tough to score on right now. I thought our shot selection was questionable at best. We kept taking it into the lane and not reversing the ball, and consequently we were shooting through arms and bodies all night long. That's not a good decision when you're playing a good team like Maryland.

"On the bright side, I do think our defense was much better than it has been. We worked awfully hard on that this past week. I thought by and large, our defense wasd good in the first half. We got beat down a little bit personnel-wise in the second half with fouls and the injury to Craig Dawson. They just kept running the bodies at us very effectively. Maryland showed the type of team that they are - a team capable of beating anybody and doing so convincingly.

ON CRAIG DAWSON
"Obviously he only played one minute and he barely broke a sweat in that minute he was out there. It is separated. They took some x-rays, but I don't think they were conclusive as to when and if he'll be back. I talked to the doctors and they prefer to wait until we get him back home tomorrow. It is his left arm. Hopefully that will be the better of the two if you've got that type of injury. I feel badly for him and for our team, because he's somebody we need. It certainly will impact us. He's one of our better players whether he's shooting or coming off the bench. He causes the defenses to stretch, which helps our inside game."

ON STEVE BLAKE
"When he's playing well, when he's scoring, penetrating, attacking, running the offense, he really is the head of the engine. He really gets the other four playing the pace and the speed and execution that makes them very difficult to stop. During that five, six or seven minute stretch when they really got ahead of us, he really was the catalyst."

Maryland head coach Gary Williams:
"This was a very good win for us tonight. I was very pleased with the way that we were able to come out tonight and play well, which has been out of the routine for us. I thought our defense was good both halves and our offense got better as the game went on."

"We made some big plays on the offensive glass. Byron Mouton had a couple of great offensive put-backs and really worked hard defensively guarding a very good player in Josh Howard. When we play good defense it really seems to help our offense. It just seems to key our offense and we were strong tonight defensively and I thought we fought every possession that Wake Forest had and just didn't give them any open looks."

"Wake Forest has really been a good team this year. Sometimes in a league like this you get overshadowed by the top teams in the league. When you look at what Wake has done in their wins, it is certainly a team that deserves to be ranked in the Top 25 and certainly an NCAA team. They are going to be a very tough tournament team, and because of that reason, this was a very good win for us against such a good basketball team."

On playing Wake Forest after two Maryland wins: "I felt like we had played two of our best games against Wake Forest earlier in the season and I didn't know if we could play that well three times. The first half was very competitive and I thought we were fortunate to be up 5 at the half. The second half our offense caught up with our defense and once that took place we were a good basketball team that second half."

Maryland guard Byron Mouton:
On the defense the team played tonight: "Our job tonight was to come in and play tough defense. Wake Forest has a lot of big and aggressive guys and our whole plan was to get in there and scramble, be aggressive with those guys and just go all out and play tough defense."