Feb. 22, 2005

Recap |  Box Score |  Notes

Maryland Head Coach Gary Williams
On the game:
"I thought we would come in and be aggressive and do all the things we did during the Virginia game. But we couldn't do it back-to-back and that's basically the story of the game."

On his team's play:
""There's X's and O's and then there's the things that are in every level of basketball whether it's a pickup game outside or playing in the NBA. The grunt things like toughness on the glass. We didn't do many of those things and we gave up 97 points."

On his team's comeback in the second half:
"We came back. We were five down at one point, I thought we could win the game."

Maryland Guard Chris McCray
On the tough loss:
"They play hard. They came in with confidence because of how they played against us at Clemson. They were a better team than us. We have to start from scratch tomorrow. We have to come in and work on fundamentals."

On where the Terps go from here:
"It hurts to lose late in the season, especially when we're trying to get into the [NCAA] tournament. We know we have to put Clemson behind us, regardless of how much it hurts. We have to think about beating Carolina now."

On the rest of the season:
"There are still two games left. We were in this situation last year. I think we play our best with our backs against the wall."

Maryland Forward Nik Caner-Medley
On the failed comeback attempt:
"There was no question in my mind that we were going to come back. They did a lot of things well and we did a lot of things poorly. In this league, if you don't play well, you're going to be exposed."

On Clemson shooting 58 percent from the field:
"They made a lot of shots with hands in their faces, but at the same time, we gave them a lot of easy shots which made them feel comfortable. They have a lot of shooters on their team."

On the confidence of Clemson:
"All year long, teams have taken their confidence early, but we're the one team that let them get going early and gain confidence. When you're young, if you get going early, it gives you confidence for the whole game."

Clemson Head Coach Oliver Purnell
On the win:
"It was an outstanding win for our team. I look at it as another step in the maturation process of our young group. In a lot of ways it was a carbon copy of the first game we played against them. The difference, obviously, is you're in hostile territory, coming off a game against Carolina where we didn't play well in hostile territory, and that's one of our main themes and lessons that we can take from Carolina on how we're going to react when adversity strikes on a very good team's home court. Obviously, they got that lesson. I thought they fought throughout. You could see the look in their eye that they knew they were going to win, confident they were going to win. They could answer any challenge. I'm just real proud of them tonight, particularly coming off the Carolina game."

On the play of center Sharrod Ford:
"He was quite a force. He's played real well against Maryland. He obviously was the dominant force out there. Sharrod's the big guy in there and our guys are smart enough to continue to throw the ball in there."

On the high-scoring game:
"With its small lineup especially, [Maryland] looks to outscore you a lot. The fact that we made shots and made a lot of threes got us into position. But not before this game did I think we were going to score 97 points."

Clemson Forward Olu Babalola
On the game:
"We know that every road game in the ACC is a game of runs. We knew when they made a run that we had to stick together as a team and we did that. We also knew that if we could play hard for 40 minutes we could get the win."

Clemson Center Sharrod Ford
On his play:
"I have just been playing well. My team did a good job of getting me the ball. When I am getting double teamed, I am able to kick the ball out and get it back and it just opens everything up. When I look at the schedule early on in the season, this is one of the games I really wanted to win. Being from here [Maryland] I just really wanted to get this win."

On their fast start:
"One of the things we wanted to do was jump on them early, instead of them jumping on us. We did not want to happen to us what happened in our last game at North Carolina. Carolina jumped out on us 12-1 at the beginning of that game. We wanted to make the first hit."

On the second half:
"We saw ourselves doing what we usually do, and that is fading away, but we didn't. We came together as a team and just stuck with it."