Nov. 27, 2008

Recap |  Final Stats

Maryland Head Coach Gary Williams

"We played great early. Then we had the little lull, then we came back and ran the offense just as well as we did early. We got very patient. I thought that's as good as any team I've coached in playing with a lead against a good team. We didn't take bad shots, we didn't turn the ball over, for the most part we just stayed steady."

"I know how hard these guys have been working in practice since Oct. 17, and you can't do that without being in great shape, No. 1, to play that kind of defense. No. 2, they have each other's backs. The great thing about these guys is there's no sellout. Every guy out there is working; if a guy makes a mistake nobody is yelling, there's guys picking you up. We're not where we can get to yet, we can still improve as time goes on."

"Greivis (Vasquez) is a great player, a second-team All ACC as a sophomore, he really knows the game. He's got a lot of experience besides Maryland - internationally. He's been double-teamed before and he knows the way you make them pay is to find the open man, then they won't be so ready to double-team you the next time. He did a great job of not trying to force it into the double, he was always ready to pass it, and then, we found him."

Michigan State Head Coach Tom Izzo

"I sure don't want to take anything away from Gary Williams. I thought his team played awfully well and hard, and their guards played really well. We started the game out with three mistakes right off the row. About the only guy that played really well for us was Trav (Travis Walton). We struggled with (Raymar) Morgan, all the foul trouble he was in, I'm just in a dilemma right now. I can't leave Delvon (Roe) in there too long of a time. It's really been a mess to try to deal with that whole thing. I don't think there's an excuse for the defensive lapses, the free-throw shooting - I don't think in my career I've seen anything like that. It just was one after another. This team has been I think pretty good free-throw shooting team, so I'm just a little confused."

"I think some of it was some of the lineups we've been playing with. You take one cog out of the wheel and everybody adjusts some. But it was pretty easy to see - you're talking 17, 18 free throws - more if you hit 10 or 12 of them, and that's enough to win games. Guys gotta step up. Our freshmen stepped up, our upperclassmen didn't, except for this guy (Travis Walton). We're not a great basketball team with that lineup in there. We're a great basketball team with the lineup that's supposed to be in there.

"I was not disappointed with Marquise (Gray)'s play, I thought he did all right, I think he's going to do better. It's like Travis said, your best players have to play well and you can't be put in a position where you're missing that many free throws. Some of those, directly the layups, hurt us again. We bogged down, we got tired. All the things we've been working on we couldn't use, we were just running out of guys."