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CLEMSON

F/C Ray Henderson
"Being that we've played together, going into our fourth year, (Edward Scott) knows my game, and I know his game. The tricky pass he might throw, I can see it coming. And that's the same with (Chris) Hobbs and Thomas (Nagys). Also, I know where Ed likes the screen. If I screen for him right here, I know when and from where he's going to shoot it."

"Everybody's going to leave one day, so you have to step up. Every team has new leaders now, and that's a good thing."

Edward Scott

G Edward Scott
"Unfortunately, my freshman year, I broke my foot early and had to overcome that. And to be playing against skilled guys like Ed Cota and Jason Williams my freshman year, I was taught a lot of valuable lessons. It's a learning experience. I don't think you can come in and try to dominate the point guard position in this league unless you are a really special athlete like Jason Williams."

Coach Larry Shyatt
"Well, there are a lot of things that have caused (renewed) hope. One, more than any, are the five young men who are now seniors who have bled for this school and been through some tough times but never once challenged their dignity, challenged what they were doing, and now they're in leadership roles and doing it the right way. All five of them will graduate. Now what we've got to do, and it always comes back to it, is win."

"There are some teams in this league that have questions to be answered for the first time in a few years, and it will be important for a lot of us to get off to good starts ... November and December are going to be very important."

"We're a pretty good team down the middle, meaning we've got four quality interior players. Perhaps no other (ACC team) would exchange one of theirs for one of ours, but maybe a lot of them would if they could have all four (of our guys). We're a pretty good committee inside, and I think our guys are proud of that."

"Edward Scott possesses many quality traits of a great point guard. Although he's not a great talent, he's a great point guard, and that's a starting point for us. I'm sort of anxious to see what we'll be like on the wings because Christie and Babalola are probably two of three or four of our most talented players on the team, but they're only sophomores."

ACC 50th Anniversary Team member Wayne "Tree" Rollins
Saying NC State's David Thompson was the best ACC player he ever played against: "I went up to block David's shot, and he jumped again while he was in the air. I had no clue what to do after that. David could score, David could shoot it, he could take it to the hole. Obviously, dunking wasn't allowed then, but he could take it to the cup and finish."

"In the 10th grade in high school, they refurbished the playground. They put in all these new trees that were all tall and skinny. At that time, I was about 300 pounds lighter. [Laughing.] I was skinny then, and had a (huge) afro. I reminded the guys of one of those trees, so that's what they started calling me."

DUKE

G Chris Duhon
"(Our freshmen) are going to have to play a big role if we're to be successful, so they're going to have to learn quick and be willing to take the bumps and bruises, learn from it and come back stronger. The guys are already showing improvement and showing signs that they are going to be reliable."

"Being a leader, you always want to make sure your guys are well-prepared. So anything that I see that they're not doing, I'm going to let them know that, hey, 'We don't do it this way here at Duke.' But they'll also know that if they have any questions or problems that they can come to me and that I'll be open to hearing what they have to say."

"We didn't know who was going to be the leader, and that kind of hurt us last year. This year, it's my responsibility to be there every day, to where there's no doubt who's captain of this team. That's what I'm working on right now."

F Dahntay Jones
"It was different not seeing Jason (Williams) and Mike (Dunleavy) and Carlos (Boozer) out there, but we've got some very special players. They're going to be stars one day, it's just going to take them a little more time. They bring it every day, and it's just great to be out there."

Mike Krzyzewski

Coach Mike Krzyzewski
"We have more depth on our team because we have more players. We just don't have the established star or superstar that we've had over the last few years. We've had three of the last four national players of the year, so we've had star guys. Will anyone emerge to be at that level? I don't know. We'll see. We have good players, they're just young."

"A college practice for them is so much harder than a high school practice. One is that they're not the focal point of attention, two, the level of talent, three, the fact that they're 18. So as a result of that, there will be more of a variance in performance."

"Shelden (Williams) has shown thus far in practice that he's our best rebounder, a consistently excellent rebounder. Because he's physically mature in strength and he can defend the post pretty well, can score inside and can hit free throws, it's a good thing. He's not a center, but he can play one of those positions. Shavlik (Randolph) is just a really good basketball player at 6-11. He's just keeps getting freer, more loose in his movements and more comfortable in what we're doing."

ACC 50th Anniversary Team member Mike Gminski
"It would be interesting to get feedback from the current players of how they look at us because I remember at Duke when some of the former players would come back that had been 20 or 25 years out, I thought they were older than dirt. [Laughing.] I thought, God I hope I don't look like that when I'm 45 or 50. It would be interesting to see what their perspective is now."

"When they made the announcement that (my jersey would be retired), it was a home game against Clemson. I was a vegetable for the first 10 minutes. I have no recollection of the first 10 minutes of that game. I was able to regroup, and the game went into overtime, ironically enough, so I got five extra minutes to play in my last home game."

FLORIDA STATE

F Michael Joyner
"Nigel (Dixon) transferring was a big thing for us at first because we were like, 'Who's going

"I only talked to one situation, and that was Florida State. For whatever reason, I found the job extremely intriguing, and I really felt that they were making a commitment that they really wanted basketball to be successful. You could just feel it." FSU coach Leonard Hamilton

to clog up the middle?'. He was a big guy. Opponents couldn't match up with him. But with our style of play, we want to show our athleticism, we want to run up and down. So it's a big loss, but in the end, for him to have kept up with our offense, it was something he would've had to have worked really hard to do."

Coach Leonard Hamilton
"I was contacted by a lot of people, in some indirect way, you know how that happens, but I only talked to one situation, and that was Florida State. For whatever reason, I found the job extremely intriguing, and I really felt that they were making a commitment that they really wanted basketball to be successful. You could just feel it."

"A lot of work needs to be done ... Florida State is in a good conference, I love the location, Tallahassee is a great college town, and it's also the state capital. It's just a great atmosphere that youngsters want to be a part of and find exciting."

GEORGIA TECH

G Marvin Lewis
"I'm going to take this team and be a leader. Last year, I tried to lead by example and Tony (Akins) did a lot of the vocal work. This year, it needs to be me. I've been here the longest, I've played the most, I've been in all the situations, so I should be the one who communicates ... I accept that challenge. To some degree, you miss it because when you're in high school, you're the man and everybody looks up to you. To have that again, I enjoy it."

"Because of the talent that we have and as deep as we can be, there will be a lot more pressing and a lot more excitement because we're interchangeable, we have different guys that are more versatile. With that, you're going to get a lot of shots and a lot of points. One of the coaches goals was to average 80 to 85 points, and with that, you've got to play great defense, and it's going to be exciting."

Coach Paul Hewitt

"From a physical standpoint, we're getting closer. We're going to be able to play, as long as everything goes well and everyone stays healthy, nine guys, 10 guys a night." Paul Hewitt

"The best players in college basketball come through this league. People want to make quick comparisons between my first year and this year. What I want to tell those people is that that team went to the NCAA Tournament. That was a veteran team that knew how to play basketball and did the things it needed to do to be successful. They beat a bunch of ranked teams. The biggest part of my job, when you have a young team, is to say, 'Look. I don't care what you did in high school. You've got to come here and play with more intensity and more intelligence in order to be successful.'"

"We certainly don't have the leadership. Losing Clarence Moore is something we're going to have to deal with early in the year, until we grow up a little bit. But from a physical standpoint, we're getting closer. We're going to be able to play, as long as everything goes well and everyone stays healthy, nine guys, 10 guys a night."

ACC 50th Anniversary Team member Mark Price
"My favorite Bobby (Cremins) story is during the recruiting process. When he recruited me, his assistants had to talk him into coming and seeing me play. He didn't think that, with me being from Oklahoma, that anybody played basketball in Oklahoma. He shows up in the ugliest green suit I've ever seen and this white hair, and he's only 30-some years old. I had never talked with anybody from New York at any length before, and we just sat around and listened to him for two hours straight and then tried to decipher what he said after he left."

"Winning the ACC Championship my junior year, and on top of that, beating Carolina for the third time that season, that was memorable for me. With the power of the conference at that time, to go from last place to first place, which was pretty unheard of, and to really beat the power of the league three times in one season, that was definitely the highlight."

"I was fortunate enough to play in one of the ACC's heyday, in the 80's, when every single team was loaded coming in. It seems like every point guard I played against played in the NBA eventually. That's the kind of talent level you were facing every single night. The whole college game, not just the ACC, has changed so much, just with the fact that with the majority of those teams you were seeing juniors and seniors, and now the majority of the players are freshmen and sophomores."

MARYLAND

Drew Nicholas

G Drew Nicholas
"In college basketball today, I think there are maybe 10 to 15 teams that have the real makeup and chemistry to possibly put together an NCAA Championship run, and I feel that we're one of those teams again. Knowing that Coach Williams is going to be able to jell all of our young guys with our old guys, and our experience is there, we have a shot. We're starting four seniors, and there aren't a lot of teams around the country starting four seniors, so we'll see how things work out."

"We have a target on our backs. We're the ones coming in here with the national championship, and we're the only team with that. For us, that feeling last year was so great of an accomplishment, but we want to prove to a lot of people that we can be the ones to step up and be the leaders of the team and do it for ourselves."

F/C Tahj Holden
"I worked on my post moves, I still shoot the ball pretty well. I'm just going to have to focus more on being a low-post presence because Lonny and Chris are gone. Those guys did a tremendous job for us inside -- between Lonny's wide shoulders and Chris' athleticism, we lose a lot on the low post. Myself and Ryan Randle are going to try to take up that presence in the post."

"I think we have the athletes and the depth to press this year. The guys we have coming in are very athletic and very talented players, so the team that we have, we can be a very effective, pressing team."

Coach Gary Williams
"Yeah, we have good young players, but we have some seniors that we want to make sure have the best possible year we can have. Tahj Holden, Ryan Randle, Steve Blake, those guys certainly were a big part of our team last year. In other words, we played eight guys every game, and the semi-final game, Ryan Randle played 22 minutes. Tahj Holden played a ton of minutes. So we have some guys that have played quite a bit of basketball in big games. Now, we need more players than that -- we need numbers like we had last year. That's going to be a key. Obviously you don't lose guys like Juan Dixon, Lonny Baxter, Byron Mouton, Chris Wilcox, you just don't replace those people. But as a team, hopefully you can replace (their loss)."

"We would like to get Steve (Blake) in situations where he can score more, but he still has to get the ball to the right people....He's had the ball for three years for us, and he'll keep

"It's always a kick to watch, and yeah, if I'm not broadcasting a game, I'll throw something at the television if guys don't do it they way they're supposed to, regardless of which team it is. But at the end of the day, we're still talking about kids, many of whom are teenagers and are truly learning and understanding this game for what it is,and you can't beat that." Len Elmore

doing that this year, but Steve is funny. He would shoot more in pressure situations than he would when there was no pressure, and he's always made big shots for us. So now, we just want him at the start of the game to be looking. When it's there, we want him to take it and not pass off like a point guard."

"We're still big. Tahj Holden is 6-11 and Ryan Randle is about 6-9, and they're both over 250. So we're not small, it's just that Lonny was automatic. If we could get him the ball in the right place, he was going to score. We haven't shown that we can do that yet with people as consistently as we did with Lonny, so that's something we can work on during the preseason, where we have that confidence that if we go inside, we can score."

"The first three or four years here, when we had sanctions against us, we were playing the really good teams in our league with a couple of walk-ons in our top seven guys. You might appreciate things more because of that, because you came from a situation that was very difficult and we had to work our way through that. It was a gradual thing ... You preach that to your players all the time, 'If you work hard, good things will happen.' And we worked hard to get where we are."

ACC 50th Anniversary Team member Len Elmore
"This game has the ability to have guys who may not be as physically talented to still prevail. That's the beauty of this game. You can still prevail if you're not the biggest, fastest or strongest if you understand how to play."

"My comparison to the NBA game, I'll take the college game any day. It's because of the purity and unpredictability ... It's always a kick to watch, and yeah, if I'm not broadcasting a game, I'll throw something at the television if guys don't do it they way they're supposed to, regardless of which team it is. But at the end of the day, we're still talking about kids, many of whom are teenagers and are truly learning and understanding this game for what it is,and you can't beat that."

NORTH CAROLINA

F Will Johnson
"Jawad (Williams) was frustrated at times last year, kind of felt like he wasn't doing what he was capable of doing. This year, he's relaxed. At practice, he's competing hard, but at the same time, he's enjoying himself. He's not overwhelmed by any means. Plus, he's improved as a player. He's shooting the ball better, putting the ball on the floor better, rebounding the ball better. It's just that freshman/sophomore transition."

"(Coach Doherty) knows we have a young team, and that he's going to have to be patient at times. He's a fiery guy, and that's difficult for him. He's trying to teach, and he is. Guys appreciate that and play harder because of it."

G Jonathan Holmes
"We obviously went through a lot. Every time you turned on the TV or looked at the newspaper, it seemed like we saw something negative about the team. It just seemed to snowball. It seems like from January on, there were a lot of lonely plane rides and bus rides home. For some reason, we didn't jell, we got off to a poor start and I think after a while everything snowballed and it was tough to handle."

"You can't ever forget about the past, but at the same time, we're trying to move forward and move on. There's no pressure on us because all the streaks have been broken. We're trying to establish our own identity and start our own era of Carolina basketball."

Coach Matt Doherty
"Point guard is the most important position in basketball. We have a talented one (freshman Raymond Felton), but not experienced ... Raymond's been exposed to more than the (incoming

Matt Doherty

freshman) point guard was 20 years ago. They travel more, there are more national events, he's played on TV before. One of your concerns is when these players hit the floor and play, we had like 14,500 last night (at the Blue-White game), how are those guys going to react in front of a crowd. Raymond, Rashad, David Noel, they all looked pretty comfortable."

"There are three things high school players really need to adjust to. One is shot selection, because any shot in high school by your best players is a good shot. Two is defense, getting in a defensive stance, seeing man and ball, defensive principles. And three, the intensity level of a college basketball game."

"Last year's group was thrown into the fire amidst tremendous expectations. All of the streaks were in tact. This group, since the streaks have been broken, I think there's less pressure, and some of these kids are a little better equipped to handle that pressure because I think they've had some more worldly basketball experiences than maybe last year's class did."

ACC 50th Anniversary Team member Phil Ford
"My teachers in grade school always used to use (Charlie Scott) as an example, not only being a good basketball player but a good student as well. He was the first African-American to play at a predominantly white school below the Mason-Dixon line, and at that time, I went to a predominantly African-American junior high school and elementary school, so he was an example for all of us kids that wanted to be athletes and wanted to play some sport in college.....It's always said, if you get a guy in a fast break or you get him in a fox hole, you don't care what race, creed or color he is. If he's got your back in that fox hole or when you're coming down the middle on a fast break, you don't see what color the guy is running down the lane. You just want two."

"I was with Scott May last week. He was in Chapel Hill watching Sean practice, and we were reminiscing about (our Olympic experience). What coach (Dean) Smith and coach (John) Thompson and coach (Bill) Guthridge did is, they really made us a basketball team. Everybody gave of themselves and their individual abilities for one goal, to winning a gold medal. That's the only time in my life I've ever heard coach Smith emphasize winning. At North Carolina, we never emphasized winning. The only thing he wanted us to do and the only thing he wanted our teams to do was to get better and improve every day."

NC STATE

G Clifford Crawford
"It gave us a good taste of winning. We all came from winning backgrounds in high school, and to come to college and win, it's even greater success. It's great to see our fans behind us 100 percent, our football team is doing well, and we're just trying to take that over into the basketball season. Success breeds success, and with the combination of guys we have, we're looking to have a successful year."

"Last year was last year. We can't dwell on last year too much. We won 23 games last year, and we lost Anthony Grundy and Archie Miller. This is a new year, we've got some new faces and we've got guys who are ready to win this year. We're looking forward to facing Mount Saint Mary's November 22, and we're just going to go from there."

Herb Sendek

Coach Herb Sendek
"One adjustment in (Julius Hodges') role this year will be simply that he has the responsibility of more guys other than himself. Last year, Archie and Anthony were able to take that kind of responsibility, and it allowed Julius to be a freshman and benefit from their experience and presence. I have felt comfortable throughout preseason practice (that Julius will take to this role), and even watching Julius in high school, he clearly demonstrated that ability."

"Sometimes Ilian (Evtimov) will try to thread the needle, do something a little flamboyant, and then I just have to have a chat with him again. But in order to make some of the plays that he does make, you do have to have some measure of daring, some measure of confidence, and you don't hit a home run unless you do swing hard once in a while. Just the ones that are completely out of bounds are the ones we need to correct."

ACC 50th Anniversary Team member Tom Burleson
"The first game David (Thompson) and I played together, my junior year and David's sophomore year, I shot 26 times and David shot 25. Coach Sloan calls me in and says, 'That's not going to work. David's the premier player.' And he told me I needed to touch the ball three times before I shot, and that made me an even better player. It made me realize that the ball needed to work through the system ... It just made the team better, and it made me a better player."

"The thing I like about State's (current) offense is that we attack the basket, and by attacking the basket, you get the other team in foul trouble. If you don't get the other team in foul trouble, you don't take away their aggressive play at the end of the game."

"Reynolds, in our place and time, was a great venue. Walking across campus, guys that didn't have tickets to the game would walk with you. Now, of course, you drive to the arena. The kids want that venue, the Hurricanes play there, it's a pro setting ... The RBC Center is what we needed, it's a big shot in the arm. But can you ever take away from the magic and the mystique of Reynolds ... Nah."

VIRGINIA

Travis Watson

F/C Travis Watson
"I don't think we were bad (defensively) last year, but I just don't think the intensity was there. There are five players out there, and if one guy doesn't have the intensity to really strap up on his guy, that puts too much pressure on the other four, and sometimes that was the case."

"Last year, I don't know what happened. This year, we're going to put out a lot of effort, go after everybody, especially on the defensive side of the floor."

Coach Pete Gillen
"We've just got to defend better. Last year, we didn't cause that many turnovers because we weren't as committed defensively as we needed to be. We had talent to do it, but we didn't do it. Guys had different agendas. We had good kids, but we weren't committed, and I'll take the blame for that. We just tried to outscore people last year, and we've just got to be more committed to defend as a group."

"We've got four freshmen that played a lot last year, double-figure minutes. So I think we have decent experience, so it's just a matter of putting it together. We're not cohesive yet because we're just getting to know each other. Having (Todd) Billet and (Nick) Vander Laan practicing last year certainly helped a lot."

"Last year we had a lot of shooters and not a lot of makers. Now we've got a few guys that can make some shots."

ACC 50th Anniversary Team member Jeff Lamp
"Three-pointers really changed the way the game is played. There's a lot of posting, trying to get the double team and kicking it out. A lot of drive and kick, where people are spotting up. Even on the fast break, you've got people running to the 3-point line instead of filling the lanes."

"I think the era of the college-senior based team is over. You've got these talented players that are staying for a year or two and then they're gone ... Back when I played, AUU existed, I guess, but it wasn't anything anybody did as a means to get recruited into college or to develop your career. (During the summer), we'd just find a place where a gym was open, and guys would come and play."

"Last night, we had dinner. You have the different eras, and everybody's got their stories. They all sound kind of the same, the same experiences."

WAKE FOREST

Josh Howard

F Josh Howard
"The conference this year is wide open. We can end up being number one or number nine, it just depends on how we approach this year. Right now, we're appraoching it as being the number one team or competing against the number one team, and we're not going to give up. I'm not going to hold anything back, and I know my teammates won't hold anything back either. I'm looking forward to a big season."

"(The three sophomores) are really key. They can help the freshmen learn a lot quicker too, just by having been here for coach Prosser's first year and knowing what he wants. They can take the information they learned and just pass it down."

G Steve Lepore
"Our freshmen are so excited, so nervous, they want to play so badly that it almost hurts them. When you're on defense and you're going to rebound, you want that nervous energy, you want to be all over the place. But when you're on offense, you've want to have poise, you've got to be able to read situations, take care of the ball. Our (young) guys don't know how important turnovers are right now, but it's something we're working on every day in practice. And, once we've played together long enough, that should improve too."

Coach Skip Prosser
"(Eric Williams) is surprisingly nimble for a person his size. He's an absolutely wonderful kid who really listens and wants to be good, and it's a shame he was hurt because he was making a lot of (improvements in his game in) practice."

"Last year we had a veteran team and a brand new coaching staff, and this year we have sort of a veteran coaching staff and a brand new team. The boys and I are just getting to know each other on a daily basis."

ACC 50th Anniversary Team member Len Chappell
"We never thought about (the fact that only the winner of the ACC Tournament advanced). You just won. If you won, then you went to the NCAA. If you didn't, you went home."