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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

January 24, 2011

Gary Williams

THE MODERATOR: We have with us now Maryland head basketball coach, Gary Williams. If you could, a few comments about your team.
COACH WILLIAMS: Well, we made a nice comeback Saturday after playing a nine o'clock game Thursday. We had to come back at 2:30 and play Clemson, and Clemson is playing very well. They are a good team, and they really came after us.
So it was a good win for us. We hung on at the end to get the win. I think it's in our league now, you're seeing there are some teams that have gotten better the last couple of weeks, and you know, you look at games nationally, across the country, and I think we have some teams that can play with teams that are ranked in the Top-25 in the country.
So hopefully we can find a way to get that respect where we get some more teams ranked, teams like Florida State, beats the No. 1 team in the country and has the one after that, certainly; one of the Top-25 teams. Hopefully that will show up in the very near future.
You know, our league is like all good leagues where you're going to lose some games, and it hurts you from that aspect when you're not starting from a Top-25 position. So hopefully we can just as a league hang in there and just show by the way we play how our league has improved.

Q. If and when the NBA decides to revisit the 19-year-old age limit rule, what would you hope happens with that and would you foresee them leaning one way or the other with that going forward?
COACH WILLIAMS: I would like that personally, I don't get a vote personally, but I would like to see kids be allowed to -- directly coming out of high school to go into the NBA draft, if they are not drafted or whatever, or if they are not satisfied, they should be allowed to go back to college even though they have gone through the direct process. I know that's contradictory to what a lot of people think.
You know we all make mistakes when we are 18, and you know, some advice isn't good advice that these kids get. So I would like to see that take place.
And if a kid decides to go to school, I would like to see the baseball rule where they have to stay three years and really get their college development, not just as basketball players, but by what you get by being on a college campus for three years. So to me that would be the best of both worlds.
Right now in other sports, you can play right away. So I don't know why basketball is restricted, why they are treated differently than, say, basketball, tennis, golf, whatever the sport might be.

Q. When the pipeline was open for players to go from high school to the pros directly did, that change recruiting significantly or in any small way?
COACH WILLIAMS: Well, there's not that many players every year that do that. So sure if you are recruiting one of those players, he obviously is a great player but most of their schools involved with those great players have other players that will be really good college basketball players.
So if they don't get that one particular kid, I'm sure it might affect them, but at the same time, they are still going to be a very good basketball program.

Q. Wondering if you could talk, Nolan Smith is on pace, anyway, to become the first person to lead the ACC in both points and assists. How rare is that, and how impressed I guess are you with all of the things that he's doing?
COACH WILLIAMS: Well, I haven't played against him. I'm really impressed because it's tough to be both. In other words, it's tough to have a scorer's mentality, but yet, do what's best for your team in every case, and I think no one has developed the ability to think like a point guard, but not lose his ability to score. And that's very difficult to do and he deserves a lot of credit for that.
I don't think there's a guard in the country playing at such a high level in both areas as a point guard, as a shooting guard. I don't think anybody is doing better than what Nolan Smith is doing in those two areas.

Q. How strong is he defensively?
COACH WILLIAMS: Well, I think that's part of the mix, where he must be in great physical condition, because he has the ability to play really good defense for 40 minutes, and yet, still not be effected to any extent in terms of his offense. I think he's a very good defensive player. I know he was tough on our team in terms of what he had to do. And when you're a guard, you play more feet of defense. In other words, if you pick up at halfcourt, that's 46 feet or whatever, 47 feet.
You know, so he's playing quite a bit of defense every possession of the other people, which takes a lot out of you when you're a very good offensive player.

Q. You mentioned the quick turnaround between Virginia Tech and Clemson last week. How beneficial was it to the team to not have a long wait between ballgames, especially after Thursday's loss?
COACH WILLIAMS: Well, it worked out okay. It was very difficult to do. You know, the players get back to their dorms at one o'clock after a nine o'clock game, and we had to do some things differently obviously against Clemson than we did against Virginia Tech. They are both good teams so it wasn't like we could do anything to get ready for Clemson before we played Virginia Tech. Both those teams are good.
I was proud of the team. I was proud of the fact that within 36 hours we could go play and do a pretty good job. That was a good win for us, but it wasn't a good situation going into it. It turned out to be a good situation since we got the win, but it was very difficult for the players to come back like that and play as well as they did.

Q. You changed the starting lineup, Paulson got his first career start; should we expect more lineup changes this week?
COACH WILLIAMS: We just tried to shake things up. Sean Mosley is great player who has been starting for us for a while. I think it helped Sean, he played well. We'll see what happens. We have three days to practice now getting ready for Virginia, so we'll see how that goes.

Q. Just looking for some initial impressions of Virginia on your part.
COACH WILLIAMS: Well, they play every night. And by that, I mean they don't make excuses. They just go play. They have had some injuries and they come out every night playing hard and they are a very difficult team to guard because of their ability to control the tempo, plus really shoot the ball well from the three-point line.
So if the shot clock is running down, they have three or four people on the court usually that can make a big shot for them in that situation. They play good defense. They are a consistent defensive team. They can make you work very hard to run your offense and they don't give up many easy scores. You have to work for what you get. It's a very difficult team to play against, especially in Charlottesville.
THE MODERATOR: Thanks for taking time to be with us today. We'll hear from you the same time next week.

End of FastScripts

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