Jan. 14, 2011

Head Coach Gary Williams

Opening statement:
"Villanova is really a good team in that they have really experience guards. They play multiple guards in [Corey] Stokes, [Corey] Fisher and [Maalik] Wayns, and they bring in [Dominic] Cheek off the bench, which gives them a four-guard set a lot of the times. Cheek is about 6-foot-6 so he's really not that small, but it gives them a four-guard set. Their two big guys that they play mostly, [Antonio] Pena has improved his game say from last year where he can make the 15-footer now. [Mouphtaou] Yarou is really a good, tough, physical inside player at about 6-foot-10, 6-foot-9 for those two guys. So they can play a couple different ways. They can play a big team or they can go four guards and still not be that small because one of the guards is 6-foot-6."

On beating Wake Forest despite Jordan Williams' struggles:
"I think it was important maybe for outside the team, for public perception to see that we felt we can play [without Jordan playing his best]. If a guy has an off night, even though it's Jordan, we can play. His off night still got us double figure rebounds... I thought Jordan was struggling in the first half of that Wake Forest game. Maybe it was from the [physicality] of the Duke game, but he was struggling in the first half. Somehow he managed to heat it up in the second half in terms of his aggressiveness and things like that. When they made that run to get it to six, when we took it out once again he was a dominating player during that stretch."

On facing Villanova:
"It's just like any other game when you play a ranked team, a top-10 team. You go in knowing you have to play well. In other words there is no compromising how you play. You either play well or you don't win. So it's ok because I kind of like knowing that. In other words, I do a lousy job coaching - we can't win the game. [If] the players don't play well - we can't win the game. I've always liked that kind of pressure on teams because if you're good you like that. You enjoy these games if you're good."

On Terrell Stoglin's struggles the last two games:
"He's fine. You go through [that] when you're a freshman; it's very rare that you're consistent. I think that's the hardest thing for freshmen to do is be consistent. Because they're not used to, no matter where you played in high school, you're not used to playing a tough player against you every game. And at the point guard position, once you get into league play especially, most teams have a good point guard. I mean there's very few teams without a good point guard. So he's going against good players every night and he never had to do that before. Hopefully he can handle it. Pe'Shon [Howard] had a great game against Wake Forest, quietly. Just a great game. That's what we need - good point guard play from Pe'Shon and Terrell."

On Pe'Shon Howard:
"He's not afraid to work. Like when he's on the second team in practice defensively he's tough to play against. He makes Terrell better, does things like that. He tries to learn more about being a point guard. Pe'Shon was known as a guard, he wasn't known as a point guard; pretty good ball handler, pretty good shooter, that was his "M.O." coming out of high school. We're featuring him playing the point guard now so he's trying to become more of a traditional point guard."