Jan. 30, 2011
– GEORGIA TECH HEAD COACH Paul Hewitt
On Jordan Williams “He established himself early in the game with all of those offensive rebounds and put backs and put us on our heels. He establishes a presence around the basket that we just didn’t have an answer for.”
On the team’s effort
“I thought the effort was good, but Maryland scored 48 points in the paint and that is what they do. We talked about guarding them off the dribble and not allowing easy baskets around the bucket and in the first half they had 13 field goals and I think every one of them was right at the rim. I look at effort in a couple different ways. Of course there is the physical effort, but then there is the mental effort and gritting your teeth and thinking, `Ok they want to score at the rim, let’s make them do something else’. Forty-eight points in the paint makes it tough to win a basketball game.”
On missing Nate Hicks and Brian Oliver
“Having Nate [Hicks] might have helped, but I thought that we had enough to win this game. I really did. I was very confident because of how we were playing and attacking our assignments over the last few games. But give Maryland credit because it is one thing to talk about mistakes that you make, but the other team has to take advantage of it.”
On Glen Rice, Jr.
“Our guys are playing hard. The effort is great and Glen did give us a great effort with 12 rebounds. There are just some thing that we are capable of doing better. Eighteen turnovers for us, 48 points in the paint for them. There are some things that we can do better.”
Freshman Center Daniel Miller on Jordan Williams
“I just wasn’t prepared tonight. He is a big, good player and I came out and didn’t do my assignment which was to front him and keep him off the boards. I just have to focus and be ready all the time now. There are lots of players like him out there.”
Iman Shumpert on the Maryland defense
“I think there defense is the same as we have been seeing but we just didn’t take our time and run our stuff. We rushed a lot of shots. We just weren’t ourselves tonight.”
MARYLAND HEAD COACH GARY WILLIAMS
Opening Statement
“To Georgia Tech’s credit, when we jumped out to that lead, they kept after us in the first half and had it at a two-point game at halftime and then we took it out again and they were able to bring it back. There’s a lot of credit to Georgia Tech; their press was very good. We stood around, and we should know better than most teams what happens when you stand around against pressure defense. That’s why pressure defense is great. You know that old saying, never press a pressing team? Well that’s not always true. Sometimes when you press a pressing team they give it up just like everybody else. We finally were ok, we got aggressive against it, and our two freshmen point guards hit some big free throws so it was great to see. Jordan Williams, it was a pretty typical game for him up until the last game that we played in terms of his effort out there. He’s got a big top side, and we are working with him to clean things up a little bit. He was tremendous; he was a force on the glass and really helped us. Sean Mosley probably played his best game in a while for us. He was tough at both ends of the court.”
“Georgia Tech is funny. I looked at their stats before we played them. Against some really good teams that are good rebounding teams, they were able to be there, maybe they didn’t outrebound them but they were only outrebounded by two or three. I knew they were a better rebounding team than people thought because they lost some big guys from last year. They are really tough on the glass; they fight for every rebound. We really had to jack it up in the second half to match their intensity and when we did, we were able to get some stuff in transition and that was basically how we pulled it out in the second half.”
On if he was surprised on how easily his team was able to get inside the lane at times
“They hurt us in the first half coming out of half court so we just did a couple of different there in the second half, really just to see if we could back their guards down. We got an extra benefit of being able to take the ball to the basket there in a key stretch of the game. That’s what it was for, to try to take the pressure because we were having trouble running our plays because we weren’t making them back off from us. They did a great job with their guards.”
On matching Tech’s intensity at home
“I think we have to. We are not a team that can depend on style points to win games. We have to bring intensity and that is how we try to play, and our pressure defense helps us with that, just like it helps Georgia Tech. It’s hard not to be intense and press some of the time. That is important. Every team every year has to play a certain way, and that has to be us this year. We have to play with a great deal of intensity.”
On how tough it is to win on the road in conference play
“Clark Kellogg was into today about how hard it is to win on the road in any conference, and a lot of that is true. Fans are usually much more demonstrative in conference games because they know the other team better than some team that comes in and plays one time. For us, we have always stressed to play like you play at home. Some teams I think back off a little bit, might not press if they are a pressing team when they go on the road and things like that. We just try to play the way we know how to play and hopefully that is good enough.”
