Quotes from Gary Williams
3/1/2011 7:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 1, 2011
Head Coach Gary Williams Quotes
Opening Statement:
"This is one of those teams that has been involved in a lot of close games this year. Some they've won, some they've lost. It's a team that really starts four 3-point shooters, four guys that can shoot 3-pointers in their starting lineup and has very good athletic ability; they get up and down well. Both their guards [Durand] Scott and Malcolm [Grant] are difficult covers for everybody who plays against them. So interesting team, they'll play both man-to-man and zone, so you have to be ready. I think this time of year the most important thing for us is for us to be ready to play. Just put out there what we have and play up to our level and take it from there."
On bringing up the NCAA tournament with players:
"If I thought it would help our team it would come up. But it doesn't help your team because the way you prepare, the way you get ready to play is to really focus on the team you're playing against and so that has nothing to do with anything. Really every year is the same. I'm pretty realistic. You watch, you see what's out there. You're pretty realistic about your team so you know what you have to do and what we have to do is win the next game right now. That's what we have to do."
On playing at Miami:
"We haven't had a lot of success there but there's no reason for it other than they did a good job against us. They're well coached. They played well. In terms of hard places to play, I think tough places to play sometimes make you play better. I've said this before, I'd much rather play at any crowded noisy team on the road than in front of a half-empty building. It's a lot easier to compete for me. I'm sure it bothers some players, maybe it bothers some coaches, I don't know, when a crowd is crazy, but I kind of like that. That's the way college basketball is supposed to be... Once the game starts, personally, I don't hear anything. Once the game starts I hear very little. So whether it's noisy, not noisy, people tell me this happened, that happened, I don't even know it happened."
On Miami's Reggie Johnson:
"He's amazing. He's very mobile for a guy that weighs 300 pounds and he's a great screener obviously. How would you like to run into him if you're guarding the ball? He's a very good screener because he is wide. He makes it very difficult to get over the top, and with the shooters they have you have to get over the top of their screens, you can't go underneath... You smack into him a few times it shakes you up no doubt about it."
On Terrell Stoglin as a point guard:
"I'd like to think he's just worked hard learning what we're trying to do. I think the hardest thing for a point guard is to come in and figure out what the coach wants him to do because he was successful before in AAU, high school, and things like that. So it's about not losing your ability to score and yet having to run the offense I think is toughest for a point guard. I've had a lot of point guards that played like Terrell did, that have scored a lot of points. I had Dana Barros, Michael Adams up at Boston College. I had Jay Burson at Ohio State who led the Big Ten in scoring until he broke his neck his senior year; and then Steve Francis here. I like point guards like that that can score. But still they have to be able to run the offense for you. We've got a pretty good inside player that needs to get the ball and Terrell's done a good job with that in addition to his scoring."
On Maryland's progression this season:
"I think compared to where we were in November and December, playing some of the good teams we played, I think we're a much better team now just in terms of the way we run our offense. There aren't many teams scoring as many points as we are. So there's progress there. Part of that is we're shooting better free throws so we score more points because some of those games we lost early could be directly attributed to our free-throw shooting. So I think we're a better team now. Some of the freshmen have proven to be pretty good players. Both Pe'Shon [Howard] and Terrell [Stoglin] have really stepped it up since then. Hopefully we can be a good team here for the last regular season week and going into the ACC Tournament."
On Terrell Stoglin's progression throughout the year:
"I knew he had the characteristics you need to be successful as a freshman, especially as a freshman point guard in terms of toughness. In other words, you can't shake him in practice. In other words, he makes a mistake, you get on him and he comes back just as tough as he did the play before. I saw that early on with him. Now he's been able to kind of get the feel for what we're trying to do and that's been his progression. He had the toughness when he came in. That's not something new."
