NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOUR

March 31, 2001

Lonny Baxter

Terence Morris

Gary Williams

GARY WILLIAMS: Well, I'd like to congratulate Duke for their efforts that they made today to win that game. I thought we came out playing really hard and did a great job to get the game started and get it going our way. Obviously, they came back and, you know, were able to pull it out in the second half. I can't say enough about our seniors. Terence, also Mike Mardesich and La Ron Cephas for what they gave us this year. If you only see the games, you really don't see what seniors contribute to a team, and we had three great seniors, and I'm sure they're as responsible as any reason for our being here this year. We have great competitors on our team, guys like Lonny Baxter, Terence, Steve Blake, Juan Dixon, Byron Mouton, Tahj, right down the line, our whole team played together this year to get us here. It's a great feeling as a coach to coach a team that has ten guys that really care, first about winning and not who plays how many minutes or whatever. Every player wants to play, but we were really into our team, trying to get it as far as we could this year. It really hurts to lose today, but at the same time from my perspective as a coach, there's certain years when this settles down, and you get away from this a little bit where you look back and you really appreciate the type of team that you were able to coach this year. That doesn't happen every year. So, you know, today it really hurts. I give Duke all the credit to battle back like they did. They have a couple of great players that are really tough in tough situations, and they won the game. But at the same time, I think our team this year proved some things to our university, to our state, where we can be as a basketball program and we're going to try go from here.

TERENCE MORRIS: Yeah, of course I picked up my fourth foul early in the first or second half. I thought I was playing pretty good defense on Shane Battier, but I think it really hurt us when I came out of the game, and, you know, it was -- just feels bad to lose and end your college career with a loss the way we did.

LONNY BAXTER: All they said was it was a hold on me. I was trying to post up as I usually do, and, you know, he made the call and that was it.

TERENCE MORRIS: It means a lot to us because we were against all odds, you know, this year. A lot of people didn't think we'd make it to the tournament late in the second half. But, you know, we got ourselves together; we pushed. We tried to make a run and tried to prove to people that we're a pretty good team ourselves.

LONNY BAXTER: No, I mean we felt, you know, we're in a pretty good position when we went up -- we were leading by 11 at the half. I just thought we were really going to come off of that and really just try to break the game loose from there. But, you know, Duke, they chipped away slowly at the lead, and they came back and got the win.

LONNY BAXTER: Well, you know, I was doubled sometimes. There were just so many people at me. I just had a tough time, you know, posting up inside, getting my shot up.

LONNY BAXTER: Of course it's a major step for the university, you know. I mean we wanted to win the national championship bad, but we lost today. But at the same time, you know, we still made history, you know, for our university. You know, it's just really a great accomplishment this year, you know, knowing that we're the only team that has made it this far. And, you know, the previous teams, all the great players that have been through Maryland and everything. So I mean, at the same time, we're very proud of ourselves and what we did this year.

GARY WILLIAMS: He didn't lose the touch. You need looks. We didn't get great looks for Juan the second half. Our offense wasn't as good; Duke had something to do with that. They took us out of some things. But, you know, you have to be consistent for 40 minutes, and we were struggling defensively. I think we got a lot of things in transition early but we were unable to keep them from scoring in the second half so they took away our transition opportunities where Juan is really effective when he gets out in transition. So there were a couple of things there. Our defense wasn't as good. We had a lot of guys in foul trouble. It was difficult to play as aggressively as we like to in our defense.

GARY WILLIAMS: Duke's a great team. Nobody's going to beat them by 22; you know that. So you know they're going to make a run. They got it to 11. Juan hit a big shot right before half time to make it 11. They had eight really at the end of the first half. We weren't able to score. In other words, you get a lead like that, even if you don't play great defense, if you keep scoring, you're going to win the game. We didn't score consistently in the second half like we had the first half, and I thought that hurt us as much as anything. They got some big plays from some great players, you know, they have two All-Americans in their starting five. They're really great players.

GARY WILLIAMS: Let's see... He shot, I think, for the game he shot 7 for 19. He was 1 for 9 from the three-point line. I think for what he had done previously in NCAA tournament games, I thought we did a great job. Jason Williams is a great player. He's going to get some at some point in the game. Great players usually step up at some critical times. I thought he played well in the second half. That doesn't take away from our guys, how hard they played against him, when you look at the numbers.

GARY WILLIAMS: I thought with Boozer looking like he did before he got hurt, they were able to have an inside weapon. They didn't shoot the ball particularly well today, but they were able to counter that by going inside. I'm not sure they could have done that before Boozer came back and healthy. So we didn't stop Boozer inside. We did stop their three-point shooting pretty well, but they had another way to go today which, you know, hurt us obviously as the game went on.

GARY WILLIAMS: There's a lot of respect out there; that's for sure. Because you have, I think, teams know how they play against each other, and the competition's certainly there this year between the two of us. You know, if you look at the games, you know, before today, you know, we probably blew it in College Park. We won at Duke, the NCAA Tournament Game was a great basketball game. That could have gone either way. Today we had it going early, they came back. I thought we had a chance to win that game late with about three minutes late, and some things happened and we didn't get the win. But, you know, overall, it's one of those things when you have a great team in your conference, you know, you do the best you can against them.

GARY WILLIAMS: I can't comment on the officiating.

GARY WILLIAMS: Well, having been here for twelve years and having watched it very closely as a graduate, hopefully the season, the players that we have, those things, show people that we also have a model program, a program that can be emulated by other schools. We always hear about some other schools being model programs that we should look at. Well, hopefully now our program is at a point, both in terms of how good we are, in terms of what we do both on and off the court, that people feel that way about the University of Maryland. I know we get a lot of attention nationally in those areas; we appreciate that. Hopefully it will continue for us.