Feb. 17, 2002

Recap| Box Score| Notes| Photo Gallery

Maryland Head Coach Gary Williams
Opening statement:
"Our players did a tremendous job in terms of preparation. Their focus [over] the last two days in practice is what you need to play against a team that good with those types of players. With eight minutes left, they thought they could still win that game. I was trying to impress upon my players that we needed to earn that win."

"It's really hard when you play a team like that and you get them down 20, you think 'Well, this game is over.' But you can't look at a Duke player and see that on their faces. You can never tell what the score is, and that is to their credit. We talk all the time in practice about the necessity [of playing hard for] 40 minutes. That was important for us."

"We gambled a little bit. We tried to take away their dribble penetration. But you can't do that completely. I thought we did a pretty good job in terms of getting to the free throw line, and we were able to go inside. It wasn't easy, but we executed pretty well."

On the play of Steve Blake:
"When you play against guards like that and handle the ball like he did, that gets overlooked sometimes because of points and rebounds. That's equally as valuable to a team's success when you play a good basketball team. You really have to role play in those situations. "

"You want a player to be aggressive, so you want him to look downcourt. And we got several breakaways because we did look downcourt. At the same time there is a fine line there, and I thought Steve really walked that line about being aggressive yet taking care of the ball."

On Maryland's offense:
"[Duke is] such a good defensive team. Every possession is a fight. Some teams you can get away with not running your best offense, but I thought we had to have every possession. "

On the play of Chris Wilcox:
"He didn't do anything different to get ready for this game. It just turned out that way. When he stays within his game... he's really good. Like all players, if you go outside your game against a good team, they will usually make you pay for it. Chris was right on today. He did a great job."

On being No. 1 in the ACC:
"It's great, but you play for the season, not for one game. We proved today that we can beat Duke, but other than that, we haven't won anything by what happened today. We still have to focus. It will be hard going into Clemson Wednesday night."

Duke Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski
Opening statement:
"Maryland played an outstanding basketball game. We worked out there. Most of that had to do with Maryland's performance, and their crowd was really great. I thought we were ready to play but we got ahead of ourselves... We got a little bit flustered. You can get away with that if the other team isn't playing well, but Maryland was playing well. They played like a veteran team... Gary [Williams] had his team extremely well-prepared. The team that should have won, won. And they won in convincing fashion."

On the play of Steve Blake:
"Blake's floor game was really outstanding. This is one of the few games we've had when we committed more turnovers than our opponent."

On the individual match-up:
"I don't think today was about one individual match-up. Their team played better than we did. I can't single out one person on their team [that keyed them]."

On Maryland's team defense:
"We had a hard time scoring in the first half. I could say that we missed shots but the reason we missed shots was because they were playing very good defense."

On his team's final game at Cole Field House:
"It is a great basketball environment all year round. Some of the best games that have been played in here are games that nobody ever saw. In the summers when pros and college kids got together and used all the courts. This is a building that has a soul. It has a soul because a lot of life was pumped into it, not just on gameday. It has been a great, great building. It has seen many great basketball players, and of course the predominants have been wearing Maryland uniforms."