Dec. 31, 2006

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Maryland Head Coach Gary Williams
Opening Statement:
"I was disappointed in our team. I hate to say that, because I don't want to take anything away from Siena. There are certain things you have to do as a basketball player, and one is mental preparation. I don't think that's too much to ask because being a college basketball players is what these guys have worked for all their lives. It's good that it happened now, because we can work on it. It's getting very close to the time when you take a night off, you lose. There are a lot of things for us to work on in the next week to get ready for Iona and the rest of the season."

On Siena:
"Fran McCaffery has done a good job with that program. That's a good basketball team in terms if the way they approach the game, and they should be proud of the way they played today. That doesn't take the place of a win, but they're going to do really well."

On Maryland's inside game:
"Because we've shot the ball well recently from the three-point line, there's a tendency to think that shooting threes is the way we're going to beat teams. Good teams are going to stop the outside game and force us inside. We do have an inside game, as we saw in the second half. We're capable of getting the ball inside, but we have to want to do it."

On Maryland's defense:
"I told [the team at halftime] that we had to get the ball inside and play better defense. We had played good three-point defense throughout the first part of the year. Today we didn't, and they made us pay for it. They took a lot more threes than they usually do. We had to make an adjustment, and we did a good job in the second half. One of the things a pressure defense does is wear teams down. I thought they were tired the last 10 minutes. When you're tired, those long jumpers don't go in like they used to."

On Maryland's mental preparation:
"I thought we had good practices. It's part of the process. You've seen teams throughout the country lose games because they're not ready to play. We didn't want to be one of those teams, and in the second half we had enough pride to pick it up."

On Maryland's offense:
"They have a good staff, and they looked at the tape. It's a one-game shot for them. They can really focus on that one game because they're not playing in our league. They can decide to take Mike Jones out of the game. That's when you have to run good offense, where you don't just pass the ball to Mike Jones when he's covered. A couple of screens later he might be open. We never got that far in the first half. It just showed that we weren't running good half-court offense."

Maryland Guard D.J. Strawberry
On the game:
"We just have to come a little bit harder. We just have to be confident and play harder. Everybody just has to look at them themselves and get ready for each game. It's an individual thing. If one person comes ready then everybody has to do the same."

On mental preparation before the game:
"It's always been the same; just be ready to play. Today we just needed to work on our shooting and our offensive rebounding. You always have to be ready to play."

On offensive goals for the team:
"Just stay mentally focused. We're making mental mistakes out there. We have to be strong with the ball."

Maryland Forward Ekene Ibekwe:
On the game:
"We just have to keep doing what we're doing, playing hard. We just need to stay focused throughout the whole game. We just want to show that we can win and that's what we tried to do in the second half."

On the slow first-half start:
"We should never come out slow in the first half, no matter who we're against. We always have to come out strong."

Maryland Forward James Gist:
On Siena today:
"Siena played a really good game. We can't do things that other team won't let go once ACC play begins. I think we struggled a little bit, so we have to come in and practice well this week."

On his four double-doubles in five games:
"I just try to play my role on the team. Everybody has a role and mine is to block shots and I think that will help make the team better."

Siena Head Coach Fran McCaffery
Opening Statement:
"You are never satisfied with a game like this as a coach, but you are satisfied with the effort of the players. I thought the effort was there. I thought we would have to come in here and play a lot of zone, but we were able to press them and trap them. We battled on the glass, and outrebounded them in the first half. We played a very good basketball team today. They're going to go a long way."

On Maryland:
"They're a very good offensive rebounding team. There was a stretch where it seemed like they were scoring every play on a tipped dunk or a rebound off a missed free throw. When you're trying to come back like we were, that hurts. I thought we got a little three-point happy in the first half when we were in the bonus. Ultimately, Maryland wants a game like this, because they think that they will probably win a 90-point game, and they did."

On coming from behind:
"From that standpoint, I thought we did a pretty good job. We were able to weather they're run [in the first half] and we did it again early in the second half. But there again, Maryland is a very good team, and they kept coming at us."

On positives from the game:
"We can go on the road against a high major team like Maryland and compete. We knew coming in that it was going to be difficult. But we thought we could pressure them, and we did a pretty good job of that. They have young guards, and often teams like that who like to press don't like being pressured. So I think that in the long run, our having some success pressing them will actually help them as they go into ACC play."