Quotes from Gary Williams
11/16/2010 7:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Nov. 16, 2010
Head Coach Gary Williams
Opening statement:
"We're looking forward to continuing the Coaches vs. Cancer tournament. I remember right after September 11th we were [in New York] playing against Arizona and Temple. It's a good tournament and obviously very good teams this year. It's a great opportunity for us to see where we are against quality teams, so we're looking forward to that. I like our team in terms of the effort their making to learn what we're trying to do. This is another step to see where we are with that. If you're a college basketball player I would think that you would enjoy the opportunity to play in Madison Square Garden. I never got to when I was in school but it certainly is a great place to play basketball."
On the possibility of changing the rotation throughout the season:
"There's nothing that says you can't do that. You have to look at who is playing well. I think when you have younger players there is a bigger tendency for those guys to go up and down than the veteran players. One week it might be a certain rotation, the next week it might be different, and who you play has something do with that too."
"Pittsburgh is a great offensive-rebounding team. That's what makes them so tough. They have the ability to offensive rebound in addition to guards that can really score. It's one thing when you play a one-dimensional team that you can take somebody out of the game or if you do one certain thing you can have a good chance to win, but against Pittsburgh you have to do a lot of things."
On Pittsburgh:
"[Ashton] Gibbs is a very good guard. He proved himself last year and started off in the same manner. He's very smart, knows when to shoot, good ball handler, does a lot of things really well. They have a couple other guys that know how to play in the backcourt, but the thing is they can go big. They're very big inside to start with and they bring [Dante] Taylor off the bench at about 6-foot-9 and he's a great offensive rebounder. Those are the two things that they give you. They have guards that can play and shoot the ball and they're going to go the offensive glass pretty hard."
On Jordan Williams:
"I think he has more endurance this year. He doesn't get as tired. He got tired quickly last year. You all know that he lost 10 to 12 pounds and has more muscle so I think he has that ability to play longer and play harder for periods of time. That's important for any player, not just an inside player. That has really helped Jordan. At the same time we're going against different inside players against Pittsburgh, against Texas or Illinois, whoever we play that second game. They're a different level of player inside."
On style of play:
"We're going to play our game. We like to run. If we get the opportunities hopefully we take good shots. It's early in the year so we might take some bad shots but we're going to fast break just like we always do. You can't go along changing for every team you play because you don' t develop confidence that way. We know how we want to play, it's just can we do that against a team as good as Pittsburgh."
