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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

February 14, 2011

Gary Williams

THE MODERATOR: We have with us now Maryland head basketball coach Gary Williams. Coach, if you could, a few comments about your team, then we'll open it up for questions.
COACH WILLIAMS: Well, I just heard the end of Steve's talk there. A guy that played on a practice team against a woman had two threes against us, so I better work on defense before we go to Virginia Tech.
Boston College did a great job of doing what they had to do to win that game. We had a couple chances down the stretch that we didn't take advantage of. It was a tough game. I thought we did a pretty good job of competing, especially when we got behind a little bit. Hopefully we can take that and get ready to play against Virginia Tech, who is playing very well right now. They had a great win against Georgia Tech. Hopefully we'll get down there and play well.
THE MODERATOR: We'll open it up for questions.

Q. What things do you need to do better against Virginia Tech this time than you did in the first meeting?
COACH WILLIAMS: Not let them get up 12-0 would help.
Virginia Tech is interesting in that they don't play a lot of people. Everybody knows about their injuries. At the same time with the TV timeouts now, with the six or seven players, I think most teams can get by in those situations.
They have very good players at each position. I think that's the tough thing when you play against them. What we have to do better is score, be smarter in the way we run our offense, whether it's man or zone. We just have to be smarter. We missed some looks where we could have gotten the ball for some easier shots and we settled for tough shots. Hopefully we can do a better job of that this time.

Q. After the last game, you were talking about the zone defense. Will that be a big focus of emphasis for this game?
COACH WILLIAMS: It will give us trouble if we attack it the same way we did up there. We didn't see very well against the zone. Against the zone defense, you have to see where open areas are and get to those areas. We have to do both of those things this time.

Q. Talk a little bit about Pe'Shon Howard.
COACH WILLIAMS: He's given us a lot of energy. I think on this year's team, we needed a guy that's a little vocal, a little tough out there on the court. He's given us that.
I think especially at the point guard position, that's important, when you have somebody that can kind of pick up the other guys, do that type of thing. As a freshman, that's asking a lot out of anyone. But Pe'Shon is capable of doing that.
He's really helped us. He's starting to gain confidence in his shot, starting to see the offense better. In our league, with some of the guards, like Smith at Duke, it's very difficult as a freshman to come into the league and go against people with that four-year experience or whatever. That's the adjustment you have to make. Pe'Shon has worked very hard as we've gone through the year and he's gotten better.

Q. When you look back at the tape of the Boston College game, particularly your team's second-half defense, did you see a lack of emotion and effort or was it tactical things?
COACH WILLIAMS: Jackson is a great player, first of all. He's done that to other people. So you have to give him credit. We did some things wrong in trying to defend him, which we have to correct. That's been what we've tried to do in practice yesterday and we'll try to do today. You go from a guard like Jackson to a guard like Delaney, so you don't have any time there. Delaney is coming off a 33-point game. He's one of the better guards in the country, just like Jackson.
Sometimes I think just because this year the ACC has gotten hit a little bit about how good the league is, people forget how good Jackson is, how good Delaney is. They're really good guards. There are very few teams that have guards that good nationally.
We have to really do a great job of defending and we have to do a better job than we did against Boston College.

Q. Can you talk about what defenses are trying to do against Jordan in terms of packing it in or denying him? What's he trying to do to adjust?
COACH WILLIAMS: Well, I think in college basketball there's no rules like there are in the pros. You can stop anybody if you want to. You can put five guys on one player.
He's getting a lot of attention inside. When you're an inside player, it's different than a guard. A guard, he has the ball coming up court and we have to get the ball to Jordan. We have to do a better job of that. Plus he is getting banged around a little bit in there. He's got to be tough enough to be aggressive with the basketball.
It's the process you go through. In other words, he got a great deal of attention early in the year with the double-doubles. People started to figure out what they want to do to play against him. We have to adjust, he has to adjust to that. Part of the adjustment is we have to make shots. We get open looks on the perimeter because of what the defenses do with Jordan. It's up to our players to step up and make those shots.
THE MODERATOR: Coach, thanks for taking time being with us today.

End of FastScripts

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