March 8, 2007

2007 ACC BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT
GAME 2: #12 Miami v. #5 Maryland

MIAMI Quotes

Frank Haith
On two Florida teams advancing:
Well I don't know about the first game. I'm sure ours wasn't expected, but obviously I can't speak in terms of what it does for Florida, I just feel like it was good for our program and what we're trying to do. We've had some tough times this year. I'm really proud of our kids, how we hung in there, and McClinton gets four fouls, Harris gets four fouls, we got one point guard and our kids found a way.

On the importance of second chance points:
I think we weren't shooting the ball particularly well and we emphasized rebounding the basketball and that was the key. I thought we got a lot of extra shots, we had a couple of plays where I thought if we just threw them back out we (would) end up turning them over but we didn't have a clear look at the basket. We had a lot of guys on the glass particularly early in the ball game when we weren't shooting the ball and we got a couple of second shots and I think that got us going.

On injuries and success in last couple of weeks:
This team's had to adjust so many times and adapt, we had to change the way we played a little bit. I think when we started the season out we wanted to be a post-oriented team. We lost Anthony King early, that hurt us, we lost Adrian Thomas early, our best perimeter defender. We had a big win at Maryland and then we lost Jimmy Graham, we really relied on our perimeter guys. Then we had Denny Clemente playing very well and all of a sudden we lose him, so this team has really found a way, I really truly believe there's going to be some good things happening to this ball club, whether it be this year or next year because of all the things we had to go through.

On playing in Florida:
It wasn't easy, I don't think it was easy. I think that when you play a high level team like Maryland, who's the hottest team in our league, maybe one of the hottest teams in the country, I'm just proud of our kids, we came out and we competed. I don't know if it had anything to do with where we're playing at, I truly don't believe that, but this is tournament time.

Jack McClinton
On injuries and success in last couple of weeks:
We never gave up, we knew that we might have had a bad season, but we knew we had a tournament to play in and we just wanted to come out and play hard and good things would happen.

Brian Asbury
On injuries and success in last couple of weeks:
We knew we went through a lot of changes, we just had to stay together and play as a family and play strong.

On what win means:
It means a lot to us because we prepared, we got together as a team and spoke about it, and we needed to start off on a good note, and Maryland was the first game so we felt that we needed to start off with a win over them.

MARYLAND Quotes

Gary Williams

I give Miami all the credit; they played a great game today. Defensively and on the glass - they basically did the same thing they did in the first game they played us. They outrebounded us and made us shoot a poor percentage. Our defense was okay, good enough. We just couldn't stop them from getting some second shots, which they used to score and to run a lot of time off the clock. When they would get the second possession off the missed shot, it would be another 25-30 seconds when they kicked it out. They were able to control the tempo of the game. We were very impatient in the first half. We're good when we go inside out. We looked for the jump shot first today, in the first half especially. We shot overall 3-18 from the three-point line; we missed some big free throws when we had opportunities on the line. With that combination, we got ourselves down in too deep of a hole, obviously, to come back, even though we made a good effort in the second half to get back in the game. We just couldn't get over the top there.

On the effectiveness of Miami's zone:
Shooting jump shots without going inside. That was it. We had no patience whatsoever to attack their basket.

On not being able to tie it up near the end:
Not necessarily. Miami was playing hard; I'm sure they would have made every effort to win that game if we did tie it up. We had once down two; we didn't get a shot off. We had our opportunities to tie the game up; to put ourselves in that situation where we might have found out. Miami played hard; they were going to come right back at us. It would have been a great last two minutes for us if we could have tied it up, in terms of having a chance to win the game.

James Gist
Possible lack of team confidence today?
We definitely thought we were going to go a lot further. I don't think it was a confidence issue. I think we know how good we are and how well we can play; we've just got to go out there and do it.

On Miami's rebounding efforts:
They crashed the boards real hard, with every chance they got. Unfortunately, they got more rebounds than us.

On Miami's key rebound off a missed free throw:
That's the play that really hurt. When plays like that happen, when you play hard defense and you get them to miss a shot, and they end up getting the rebound. That really hurts. It's like a blow to the body; it takes the wind out of your defense for a second. You just have to be able to come back and keep fighting. That was a really key rebound that we needed to get.