Dec. 27, 2008

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Maryland Head Coach Gary Williams

On the team's rebounding:
"This game, the early part of it, reminded of the American game in terms of getting out and playing pretty well early and not being able to sustain that. The bothersome part of it is the rebounding. It was 35-35, even. We have to rebound better than that. Give Bryant credit because they really worked hard on the glass. I mean, they're not a very big team and they worked really hard. We've got too many guys that are rebounding with one hand. They're trying to bring the ball down and it gets scraped or whatever and it gets loose. We have to be tougher on the glass in the future. We'll look at that starting tomorrow and see if there's a way that we can do a better job."

On the team sustaining intensity after getting out to big leads:
"The natural instinct, I'm sure, is to figure this isn't going to be that hard or we've got this thing out away, but I looked up and there were 11 minutes left in the first half and we were out like that. That's way too early to assume anything. I coached their coach and he's a great competitor. They're not going to quit. You're going to have to take it. What you want to see in your team is you want them to fight it and put them away from that point. In other words, from 24-7, you have to go from there. We haven't been able to do that in the last two games and I'm not particularly happy about it."

On the team's offensive advantages:
"We have good players and I think we're a little deeper, probably, than Bryant, so as they get tired, we can put a fresh guy in there and naturally, that's an advantage to us. We can't rely on steals and turnovers as how we score all the time. We have to be able to score out of the half-court offense. You have to be able to score out of second shots from missed shots and they are two things we can do a lot better."

On the team's aggressiveness during the early part of the season:
"It's one of those things that the players know that we have a deeper bench and they know we're probably more physical than the other team. They think they can depend on those things. My job as the coach is to convince them that that's nice that we can do that today, but at the same time, we're working on some things for down the road and we have to be able to do them at the same time."

Junior Guard Eric Hayes

On what he looks for in the postgame stats:
"I think tonight, we're going to look at our rebounding. I know they beat us in the first half and I think we got outrebounded in the second half, so that's a big thing. Personally, I look at my assist to turnover ratio. I'm doing a pretty good job this year of not turning the ball over and that's probably the biggest thing that I'm looking for after the game."

On a four-guard lineup:
"We definitely have a lot more guys on the floor who can handle the ball and can pass the ball better than we did last year. Last year was more of an inside team. We're playing with four guards and all of us know how to play, and know how to handle the ball and take care of it."

On the chemistry of this starting lineup:
"The guys who are starting right now all know each other very well and we're playing well together. I think Coach [Williams] did a good job finding out who deserves to be starting and who plays well together. This is something that Coach did for us, and I think we're playing well."

On what can be improved:
"Just overall, we need to play a 40-minute game. We got up early and let them back in it, and we talked about how when we get into the ACC season, we're not going to be able to do that. So that was the biggest thing we talked about [after the game]."

Senior Forward Dave Neal

On rebounding:
"It's something huge. We practice it every day and we press on it, because when we get down to ACC play, we're going to have to rebound. It's something that I think we take on as a challenge, and hopefully we take on that challenge as a team and become better rebounders, because I think if we're better rebounders, we'll be better in transition, which helps us score more points."

On what Bryant did to throw them off their game:
"When you play a matchup zone the whole game, all those balls that come off as rebounds, they're right there to get it. I think we did a decent job rebounding, but there's always room for improvement. It's a long season and we have a lot of practices and we're going to work on it."

On how they kept their focus:
"When you've got a coach like Coach Williams, he always wants us to look good out there. He doesn't want us to look sloppy, he wants us to execute. I think we executed our plays. We'll have to look at the video and see if we did but I think we did a pretty good job. Bryant's not a bad team. They played hard, and when you play a matchup zone the whole game, that's tough. We're not used to that. We probably won't go against it the rest of the year, but they played it the whole game and I think we did alright."

Junior Guard Greivis Vasquez

On the importance of this game:
"This is a game that we needed to win. We needed to win it to get to 9-2. This is a game we look at and go, `We can't do that against Georgia Tech. We can't do that against Duke,' so these are things we're going to work on. We respected the other team, but we knew that if we were going to win, we just needed to play hard and play our game, and we did."

On executing well:
"I thought we were pretty good in terms of execution. We got a little sloppy on defense at times but we won by 20. We still have to get better. We're not satisfied, but in this game we executed better than some games from last year, so we just have to keep getting better."

Bryant Head Coach Tim O'Shea

On Bryant's mindset coming into the game:
"We have played a lot of these types of rough games during this early period. I think that it is more fun than frustration because of the experience of playing these big schools and legendary programs and coaches like Gary Williams. It's a big thrill for a lot of these kids. Again, they were playing in a Division II league last year, so this is a big deal for them."

On preparing for the Maryland basketball team:
"We prepared for it like any game. We watch tape and go over the personnel. You try to see where you might be successful, and emphasize those things. Honestly, with Maryland you have to handle their pressure and I think we had a tough time with that today."

On Maryland's strengths during the game:
"I thought their pressure defense really got to us, which is Gary's trademark. That's not a big shock to me. It's something we will have to work at in order to get better."

On the experience of playing against an ACC opponent:
"We enjoyed playing here and we hope to bring teams here in the future."