NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOUR

March 30, 2001

Gary Williams

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I want the players to feel this week -- that's part of the deal if you make it to the Final Four. I don't want it to be completely normal. I want them to realize what they've done in getting to the Final Four. So that's been great. There has been a lot of distractions. We left Wednesday night from campus, and it's been better out here in terms of, you know, just being ourselves. That's enough time to get ready to play for Saturday. That's a normal preparation that you get during the season, Wednesday to Saturday usually, to get ready to play a game. So we're fine. We're just looking forward to playing now.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I wasn't going to run all our offense out there for Duke, not that they don't know it already. There's nothing secretive going on. But it's hard to practice in front of a lot of people. It's noisy, the players are distracted. So we go somewhere else and have a normal practice. I think we went about an hour this morning, then came over here and shot. It was a good day for us; it was a lot of fun.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I saw that last night at the Salute Dinner. All those guys knew which steps to go up to get on the stage, all that stuff. I was trying to work my way up there. But, you know, all three of those guys should be given a lot of credit for what they've done with their programs. Tom Izzo was just here, he put in a lot of time as an assistant. He was an assistant when I was at Ohio State and he was at Michigan State. Lute, what he's done with that program at Arizona is just tremendous. It's great to be here with three people like that. I think that makes it special too, this year, is to get in here with three coaches that are considered at the top of their game. So, you know, but when it comes time to play, you just play. I've been fortunate in where I've coached in the Big East, like the Carnasecas and the Massaminos, guys like that, Boeheim, Carlos, Pitino was there. I coached against those guys and the people in the Big Ten and now in the ACC. So for one game, you're not intimidated by who's down at the other end of the court.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: We're confident. We have a lot of confidence in our ability. We lost our confidence for a while; we had to get it back. And to me, that's the best thing we've done this year, is to get it back. A lot of times when you lose it during the season, it's difficult to get it back. But we were able to get our confidence that we could still be a good basketball team. Basically, we've just played. You know, we've played a good style. We've scored a lot of points. I think we're the fourth leading scoring team in the country. We get after it pretty good defensively. So, it's a ten-man effort. We use our bench quite a bit. You know, that's been responsible for us to stay pretty consistent during the last eleven games.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Just to keep playing like he's been playing. I think going into the NCAA Tournament, we made sure our team knew that we were playing pretty well and we could just keep playing the way we've been playing. That's the important thing, not to try to raise your game. And for Terence, he's been a consistent rebounder for us all year. There's been some games where he hasn't scored like you might think he would score. In terms of rebounding, passing, for a guy 6'8" , 6'9", it's been there for us. We need that to be a good team.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I've tried not to say anything more than to the team -- more to the team about the outside stories other than, "Look, we're playing George Mason, we're playing Georgetown, we must focus on the game." I told them I'd take care of all the other stuff around the game. But in terms of what they had to do, it was just like the regular season, just get ready for whoever we were playing against.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I don't know. Part of it's you want to play well against Duke in our conference. You know, there's no doubt about it. They've been, the last decade, probably more now, you know, a great basketball team nationally as well as playing in the same conference as us. We get measured by what North Carolina and Duke do, as all the other teams in the ACC do get measured from that point. So we want to be competitive against those two schools because that means we could probably play anybody if we're competitive against those two schools. I think our players felt this year that we were a good enough team to play against Duke. I think the styles of play, they shoot the ball a lot more from the three-point line. We go inside more. We both get up and down the court. We don't hesitate if we're open. Both teams shoot it quickly. I think that provides for some great games when we play each other.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Well, you know, it's hard to separate yourself as a graduate and a coach. But I know for the university, it's important that they, you know, you look at -- like us playing Stanford and Duke back-to-back, you always hear about model programs and things like that. Maybe we can be a model program now, instead of having to point to other schools. That's the way college basketball should be, or, you know, they're -- they do everything right in their program. Well, we think we do a lot of things right with our program, too. And, you know, I think getting through the Final Four might give that some verification, you know, coming in here this year.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: This is the first time we've played a team four times. In the Big East they had a conference tournament, we never played somebody in the NCAA after the Big East Tournament. As far as our experience with Duke this year, I want our players to understand, you know, what we've done those three games and use that to help get ready to play Saturday. You know, I think you take advantage of the fact that you're familiar with a team just like Duke will take advantage that they're familiar with us, what we do well, what we don't do well. Then, you know, you go play. But when it comes time to play, no matter who you play, we have to play well. In other words, it's up to us to put it out there. You know, we have to take care of our own business first.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Well, constant factor... We've played well probably for -- if there's 120 minutes in those three games, probably 100 minutes we've played pretty well in those three games, which is good against a team that is as good as Duke. Plus, when you look at Duke, you know they're going to come out firing from the three-point line. That's not going to change. You have to gear yourself for playing a team that does that. It is unusual, especially in our league. I think Duke took close to 40 threes the last time we played in the ACC tournament. You don't see that in the year. They shoot the ball further back behind the line than most teams do. Williams and Battier have great range, along with a couple of their other guys. So you have to be prepared for that. But by now, we know they're going to shoot the ball from a great distance.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Juan's a big player defensively. In other words, he looks for steals. He'll get in trouble a little bit sometimes because he loses his man trying to steal, but steals are big plays, and I've always believed that some plays are more than the two points you get as a result from them. Juan's very disruptive out there on the court. The other thing is he's not just a shooter, he's a scorer. He knows how to get to the free-throw line. He can change his arc when he gets into the paint and creates problems for big guys even though he's not very big. So he's a, you know, one of those catalysts that you get every once in a while that can really pick you up if things aren't going particularly well in a game.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Well, the respect, you know, this year has been from the competitiveness of the players. They have really played hard on both teams, and they've been great college basketball games. I think there is respect individually for the matchups, you know, the guys that play against each other. But also for the people on both teams. I think when you see Duke play Maryland during the year, there wasn't much going on other than great basketball. You know, there wasn't any talking; there was no cheap shots; nothing like that. You just come and play, and I think both teams respect that fact.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: One thing about coaching, you don't get a lot of help in situations from guys that you're competing against. No, they're really good guys, I was just glad I didn't go first so I could figure out how to get up there after them.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Yeah, Tahj was really helping us at the beginning of the year. When we came back from Wisconsin, Tahj started to play more, he made us a lot more physical. Then he broke his foot the week we were going up to play Pennsylvania, and he was out for seven weeks. I was very concerned with Tahj, I thought he might have to sit out the rest of the year at that time, but he's really come back and not only given us a 6'10" player inside but also somebody that can step out and shoot the three, but also guard people his size on the perimeter, which, you know, has been a big help to us. You know, we have good depth inside. Our depth inside is probably our biggest asset in terms of being able to use our bench. Tahj has been a very big part of that.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I think if you go through a situation like that where you lose somebody as good as Boozer, then you get him back, you've played pretty well without him, but obviously he's a very good player. So I'm sure you try to, you know, the guys that benefitted from Boozer being out like a Sanders or whatever, that certainly helped his game. They know they can use him now. But they have Boozer back, which is a legitimate inside threat for them. And, you know, if they go through a period where the threes aren't going in, they can definitely go back inside now, which they might not have been able to do before if they were having a bad day from the inside.