Feb. 12, 2010
Head coach Gary Williams
On Duke:
"Duke's an interesting team this year. If you look at what they've done at home and on the road, they're shooting 10 percentage points higher overall and from the 3-point line at home. They're one of the bigger teams in the league in a year when the league is very big in terms of inside players. In the [North] Carolina game they shot 31 percent and still won the game because they had 23 offensive rebounds. They really hurt Carolina on the glass. It's a very physical team on the inside and they have three great players on the perimeter in [Nolan] Smith, [Jon] Scheyer and [Kyle] Singler. All three of those guys are averaging 18 points per game basically and playing 38 or 39 minutes per game. Then they have the people they can bring inside."
On 3-point shooting:
"Even if you're open you still have to make shots. So you have to have good shooters. We've gotten open and we've hit shots. We're running our offense well in terms of making the extra pass. Most 3-pointers come off an extra pass. In other words you get the ball inside, teams collapse to stop you inside and if you make the pass out and then one more a lot of times it's an open three. What Duke does a great job within their offensive rebounding is when they get one you'll see them kick it out to the 3-point line. They'll put Scheyer, Smith and Singler right around there and they just kick it out. That's when teams are most effective hitting the three because you're not in your defense. Your defense is messed up because everybody is in there rebounding."
On Maryland holding its last six opponents to under 40 percent shooting:
"You look at your team and you try to see what's best. We're not the biggest team I've ever coached so we've had to use the double-team out of necessity, and it has worked OK. We've got smart players; Greivis [Vasquez], Landon [Milbourne] and Eric [Hayes] know how to play defense and know how to stop people. So you build from there. Jordan Williams has done a really good job of being a presence in the middle and we really didn't have that last year. Dave [Neal] was more of a natural forward playing inside for us. That's all helped us, and Dino Gregory is a great person to have coming off the bench because he has experience and he's big enough and strong enough to play most big guys. And James Padgett has helped us a little bit. So we're a little deeper inside this year. Adrian Bowie and Cliff Tucker come into the game and give us quickness on the perimeter defensively. That's helped us too. Adrian is very difficult to play against - ask Eric what it's like to play against him in practice. Those guys have helped us be a good defensive team."
