Jan. 11, 2011

Head Coach Gary Williams

Opening Statement:
"The obvious thing is the quick turnaround after a very emotional, tough, physical game. I've always felt teams, and a lot of different groups, not just sports, there's a tendency to look for reasons why you can't do certain things. I think one of the things I always try to do as a coach is not allow the players, or myself for that matter, to grab on to anything that's out there like that. In other words you have to be so tough getting ready for Wake Forest because that's our next game. It doesn't matter where it falls on the schedule or the traveling involved, you have to be ready to play. I think that's what we try to do here at Maryland, what I've always tried to do at Maryland, not just this year, is to not allow any room for feeling sorry for yourself. You get ready to play. If we don't play well at Wake Forest, no excuses. It's just we didn't play well and that's the way it goes. I think that's the way you get through a season, just with that attitude."

"I think we have a good team. The thing is, Wake is certainly glad to have an extra day to prepare, and we'll get advantages like that during the season, too. You try to win games maybe because you have an extra day to prepare, that is to their advantage. But you can't worry about it if you're the other team. You just have to come out flying. If you don't, that is on you, that's not on anything else."

"The fact that we competed, that is something you have to learn during the course of the season. The best team you play against, well so far Duke's the No. 1 team so that's the best team we've played against so far, we were able to compete. But it doesn't do you any good unless you can do it the next game. In other words you can't say `wow we've arrived, we competed with Duke.' We have to figure out a way to win that game. That is the next step for us now is to win games. This is a very big game for us at Wake Forest because of that. We need to win."

On freshman forward Haukur Palsson:
"He's becoming a pretty good handyman for us. In other words we can throw him in there at a couple positions. That always expands your bench when you have a guy who can play more than one position. Hawk has done a good job. It is hard for a freshman to learn more than one position and it takes a while. He has worked hard in practice and he has a lot of confidence. He is not afraid to go out there. I was impressed. That's one thing you look at with all your freshmen, when you go play at a place like Duke to see how they handle that. Hawk was good. He really did a good job and the shots he took, they were open. That's a big thing that you really emphasize with your team, when you're open and it is your shot that you have the ability to make, you have to take that shot whether it goes in or not. Because it hurts the team if you don't take that shot. He took his shots. He didn't score but he took his shots."

On the matchups Palsson finds himself in:
"People always talk about matchups like it's always to the advantage of the big guy. But the big guys have to cover you too on the other end of the court. That's the great thing about basketball, you don't sub on third-and-long, things like that. You have to play the game; you have to play the whole game. So mismatches are, sure Hawk guarding a guy 6-foot-10 but then that 6-foot-10 guy has to guard Hawk. So you try to see which side is winning in that situation."

On Palsson finding his role:
"A guy like Steve Blake, he played at Oak Hill Academy and the year before that he played on a team that won the Florida state championship and Frank Martin, the coach at Kansas State, was Steve's coach at Miami. Steve was like [Palsson]. He was considered just a nice player in two very good programs and then all of a sudden he has a NBA career. I think guys that work hard and learn their roles; it is becoming more and more apparent that no matter what the level there is room for people that are willing to accept roles."

On why he thinks Wake Forest has struggled this season:
"That's not for me [to say]. All I know is its never easy walking in to Wake Forest. Any time there's a new coach there's a time element to develop a style of play the way you want it. They lost some really good players the last couple years, guys that were considered great players and they're building a team. You play at home in this league and you're ready to go. They do have some young players. Young players are usually very resilient. They can lose a game, they can come to practice the next day ready to go. They are good guys. They want to learn; they want to get better. All I know is they are shooting 75 percent from the free throw line, which must be nice. And they're shooting 43 percent from the 3-point line or around there. Any time a team can shoot the ball, they have a chance."

On Greivis Vasquez talking to the team after the Duke loss:
"He talked to a couple guys individually and I talked to him for about 15 minutes up in the coaches' locker room. He`s just an amazing person. I look at what he is doing [in the NBA] now. All of a sudden he is averaging 20 minutes per game. He missed the whole preseason with an ankle operation and all that. He just figures out a way. I know for me as a coach, it is just good having him around because he kept things at a pretty positive level. It wasn't easy for him here, it wasn't easy convincing the coaches at Memphis that he should be playing, but he's been able to do that."

On what a win over Wake Forest would do for the team's confidence:
"We're pretty confident. I don't think we need a confidence boost. We need to win just like every other team in the league does. We're not down at all confidence-wise. We feel we can play, so we have to prove it now. We feel like we're a pretty good basketball team if you look at the teams we lost to this year. We're a better team now than when we lost those games in November, but you have to show it. You have to put it out there."

On what Maryland has improved on:
"To be a good team you have to be good defensively. We're a better team defensively. Duke is really tough because they don't take bad shots. They know where everybody is on the court on every possession and yet we were able to hold them to a pretty good defensive shooting percentage and we didn't put them on the line a lot at the same time, which you can't do with them because they're a great free-throw shooting team. We were able to rebound; I think it was like a two-rebound margin at the end of the game. You don't play a bigger team than 6-foot-11, 6-foot-10 and 6-foot-8. I think our defense has gotten better."

On if Cliff Tucker is seeing the game better by starting on the bench:
"He knows he is going to be in. He is going to play starter minutes, he knows that. He'd rather start, like most players would, I don't think there's any doubt about it. But he has played well in his role. He really helps us, when you have a guy like Cliff coming into the game. That's big when you look at the bench and you have a guy that good coming in. That's what he's given us. You never know when a guy like Terrell Stoglin or Pe'Shon Howard comes in, you don't know how they're going to play because they're freshmen. Having a guy there that has senior experience is really good. I wouldn't rule out him starting in the future."

On his expectations before the season compared to now:
"I really tried to put no expectations on this team because I didn't know them very well. I knew the guys we had coming back but I had to see how the new guys would play before I could have any expectations. We were picked sixth or seventh in the league so we'll see how that works. I like what we have done so far in terms of getting the team to a level. Now we have to prove that we're a good team these next two months. That's kind of fun to have that as a goal. The good thing is in coaching, you can prove it by what you do. You don't have to have somebody's opinion to justify what you do. Either you have a good record or you don't. You don't make a lot of excuses, you just play. I've always liked that part."