Nov. 18, 2010

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Maryland Coach Gary Williams

On the Game
"As far as the game goes, we thought we could win the game. We are trying to find out how good we are as a team; we were 3-0, you know not having played anyone of Pitt's caliber. But we have some new guys and we are trying to get everything together. It is a tough game to play this early -- not many practice days this time of year. I thought we did a good job overall. Pitt's good, we made some mistakes. You don't convert what you have to convert; they make you pay. I think our guys figured out when we go hard, we are pretty good, we can play with most teams we have to play with. The problem we have, which is the same for everyone, is there is just not enough time to prepare so you have to really do a good job off the court in meetings and what you have to do to get ready."

On Pittsburgh
"To give Pitt credit, they made some shots coming out to start the second half. They took it out and we had to work hard to get it back. They took a lot out of us, but at the same time I was proud of our guys and they are working hard. We had some guys where this was their first big game, and it happened to be at Madison Square Garden. I thought they did okay with everything. We will see where we go from here."

On Talib Zanna
"He shot the ball well from the line which really helped their team. He plays with energy that's his job, he does all the dirty work that some guys just don't want to do and that's why he starts. He just has great effort out there all the time."

On Jordan Williams
"Jordan was fine. We couldn't get him the ball quite enough. He had 9 shots, but they were doing some good things. What has to happen, some other guys have to step up, stretch the defense a little bit. We knew it would be different tonight, there is just a different level of play. Pitt did a good job against him, but he still had rebounds and 14 points, that's pretty good quality with someone like Pitt."

Pittsburgh Head Coach Jamie Dixon

On tonight's game:
"I think what you saw tonight was two really good teams getting after it and playing hard early. I think neither team was as good as they're going to be later in the year. But (Maryland) is going to have a great year. They're a great program, great team. And that is exactly what we wanted to play against when we fought and battled to get into this event. It was a great performance by our guys. All 11 of them gave us something and played hard. Our execution wasn't as good as I wanted it to be, but we'll get there. But we played hard and we did what we came to do on the boards. I think that was important. I'm proud of how hard we played, but we have room to improve and we understand that."

On team's balanced scoring:
"I think that's something that is going to be a strength of our's. I think some games we'll have it and other games we'll have some guys score big for us. Obviously tonight we had some guys in foul trouble so we had to adjust. They defended a couple of our guys well. But I think we have a lot of good players; we know that and they continue to improve. They are young guys but they are good. They compete and they get better in practice."

On Maryland's Jordan Williams:
"He was in foul trouble; that had a lot to do with it. That's why Brad (Wanamaker) didn't get to his normal game. We double teamed him early, tried to get him out of his rhythm. But we didn't want to do it for the whole game. We talked about his scoring. He's really good; he may be the best low-post scorer in the country. Obviously I haven't seen everybody and its early in the year, but he's really good. But we thought he could really hurt you on the offensive glass, that's where he got his points, and in transition. He got a couple in transition, but he only got one offensive rebound. And I think that was key for us. Again, we can't take away everything from a very good player, and he's as good as anybody out there, but we did a good job of keeping him off the offensive glass and that was the thing we were really concerned about."