Jan. 14, 2012

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Quotes from head coach Mark Turgeon in advance of Sunday's game with Georgia Tech.

On how Pe'Shon Howard and Alex Len have affected practices:
"I think practices have been much better obviously since we added those pieces. It's more competitive. Just when Alex started practicing it helped the [scout team] because it was a guy around the rim that could block shots. We can do more things, go a little bit longer, rep it a few more times. It's helped. It's pretty obvious we're a better team and yesterday we had a great, really competitive practice. I wouldn't say it was a great practice but it was a very competitive practice. That's what we talked about after the North Carolina State game, we just have to get a lot more competitive in everything we do. I thought we were really competitive yesterday."

On if Terrell Stoglin was more intense when coming off the bench against Wake Forest:
"He's pretty intense on gameday every game. That's what I love about Terrell, he brings it. He's competitive, he brings it especially at one end. We're working on the other end a little bit but he's better, I'm telling you. The kid has come a long ways, he just has to keep doing it. His whole deal is he knows he should've been coming off the bench so he attacked it when he came in there. I don't see any difference, I thought he was really good the other night. I think he got a little tired in the game and missed shots he normally makes. Hopefully he'll be fresh and ready to go tomorrow night and knock down some shots for us."

On Mychal Parker and Nick Faust's length and quickness:
"Mike has really played well. I tell those two all the time they can be great defensively because of their length. They're hard to screen because they're skinny and they can get through screens, and they're fast. They have good feet. I feel very confident when they're guarding guys as long as they're making the good decisions that they're going to be able to handle it. Mike's taken it on as a challenge, he wants to guard their best player and Nick does too. That's good when guys start thinking that way. Nick's played really hard defense he just hasn't played smart the last two games, that's why he's gotten in foul trouble. So we've really watched film with him and talked about playing smarter so hopefully tomorrow afternoon he'll be able to help us and help us longer than he has the last two games.

On Georgia Tech's Glen Rice Jr. and whether he is similar to Terrell Stoglin with his ability to score:
"Yes and no. If you watched [Georgia Tech's] last game against North Carolina State it was a great team effort. The point guard is really good, the wings played well, the big kids are playing well for [head coach Brian Gregory]. [Gregory is] playing 10 guys. [Rice] is averaging 14 for them. He's a big part of what we're talking about, no question, because when he gets hot like he did the other night they're really hard to guard. He demands a lot of attention but I want to have great team defense. They're all Division I players, they're all good players, but Glen Rice is definitely a guy for them that can get it going in a variety of ways so we talked about him a lot today."

On what they need to improve upon defensively:
"Well there are a lot of things: discipline, want-to, you have to want to be good defensively, preparation, knowing what to do and doing it every time. Sometimes we're a really good team defensively and sometimes we're not. The next time we might be good individually defensively but we're not the next time. So it's a lot of things; we don't rebound, we don't box out, we don't limit them to one shot nearly as much as we need to. So it's frustrating because I think we have the ability to be a much better team defensively than we are. We're much better than we were a month ago, we'll see where we go from here. I hope we can get a lot better."