Dec. 3, 2006

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Maryland Head Coach Gary Williams

On tonight's game:
"I think 11 assists might be our low for this year. We didn't get the ball moving like we have in previous games. That translates into a pretty poor shooting percentage. We made some shots at the end, which helped our shooting percentage, ut for the first 37 or 38 minutes, I didn't think we shot very well. We just didn't have the intensity level necessary to win the game today. So, its 8-1, and we have to get back to work tomorrow and get ready for Fordham on Wednesday. We have to get back to playing our style of basketball."

On Notre Dame's play:
"You have to give Notre Dame credit. They made some big shots. They took advantage of our defensive lapses and they converted. They came in and really played well and played with a lot of heart."

On technical foul called on Ekene Ibekwe:
"You can't blame the game on that because strange things happen during games sometimes and that was strange. You have to play through it and we didn't do a great job of that."

On game's second half:
"They had a lot of lay-ups in the second half. We couldn't stop them from driving the ball to the basket. I'm not sure they ran anything different, but we didn't play very good defense. Once they felt they could score on us, they got confidence and they did a good job."

On team's play in the BB&T Classic:
"This is a good tournament and it's for a great cause. You have to be ready to play every time out. In the game of college basketball that is so important. We just didn't do a good job of being ready to play. You have to learn from wins and learn from losses and I don't think we did a good job of learning from the Illinois situation."

On Maryland's play so far this season:
"We're 8-1 and there are not many teams in the country with a better record. But you'd like to be 9-0. You should be able to handle success and continue to play with the same intensity level, and we didn't do that tonight. So we have two days to get it back before we play Fordham. Wednesday is another night and I'm pretty confident this team will bounce back."

On team's youth:
"We had some young guys out there tonight who played like young guys. But that's perfectly acceptable. It's not their job to lead the team. They've had some nights when they've played great, but they couldn't get it going tonight."

Maryland Guard Eric Hayes
On the second half:
"We stopped playing good defense, and they started hitting some three-pointers. Once they did that, they were able to get by us and get some easy lay-ups. It was just a bad defensive effort in the second half."

On the turnaround:
"There wasn't one point in the game where we saw a change in the way things were going. I don't know what happened, but we just didn't play the same kind of defense that we've played for the past eight games."

On expectations coming in:
"We definitely had high hopes coming into the game, but I don't think that we were ready to play. You can't look past anybody, you just have to come out ready to play every game."

Maryland Forward Bambale Osby On preparation:
"Our preparation and our attitude coming in just wasn't the same as it was for the first eight games of the season."

Maryland Guard D.J. Strawberry
On the game:
"We were getting open shots, but we just weren't playing any defense. It was frustrating because we knew we had a chance to be 9-0 right now. We didn't do what got us here."