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Coach Williams' postgame comments
after Maryland 86, Kansas 83
courtesy of Jack Alden

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"(During the 20-5 WKU run to open 3rd quarter) I turned to our bench and told them if somebody offered me a million dollars I wouldn't have called a timeout because you've got to learn and grww as a team, and we were stinking it up out there. It's partly my job to solve some of those things, but if you want to be really good it's up to them to solve some things, too. That's what the crap we practice is for. We put them in situations where they've got to step up, and we didn't do it defensively. That first six minutes of the third quarter I think we got one stop out of their first nine possessions. I think they scored every time except one, and you can't have that. Then we're turning it over at the other end because we've lost our poise a little bit. And you can't do that and be the kind of team we want to be. I never threw my son or daughter in the water before we gave them some swimming lessons, but I think that's imporant to a basketball team, that you've got to survie out there. I made a couple of substitutions because I was mad at two of our seniors. They weren't guarding the referee or anybody else out there. But that bunch I put in there the last two or three minutes of the third quarter, all of a sudden we got three stops in a row and then things looked a lot better.

"I think rebounding was big. Raef, offensively, was still big for us. But early in the game I thought we shot too many threes, and I said we cannot continue doing that. If you look at the stat sheet of the game, the one thing that stands out is the number of times we went to the free throw line. Because after Billy and Paul stopped shooting threes every time they looked at it, we started getting fouled and went to the free throw line. I'd like to have shot a better percentage than we did, but if we get the basketball inside, with our size and with our ability, we're going to be fouled, and then at the end of the game we've got a chance for the other team's best players to be sitting over there, and we should make free throws.

"The whole second half was better for Paul than the first half. He was 0-6 at the half, he was 3-6 the second half, but he was more involved. It looked like the first half he was struggling and then all of a sudden thought he ought to get his shots up. That's one of the ways Paul Pierce is one of the better players in the conutry, and I told him at halftime to just play your game, don't go looking for anything. Play basketball and it'll be there. And I think he did that much better in the second half.

"They were controlling tempo so much and they didn't have Joe Harney in the game--he's their best shooter--so we went to (a zone defense) a couple of possessions and got lucky. They got a couple of misses, and I guess it went back from seven points to 12 or 13 at that point. But that gives coaching too much credit, too.

"I told Matty (Kilcullen, WKU coach), and I really meant it, I said, 'You outplayed us tonight. You didn't win, but you outplayed us.' I didn't say that to make him feel good, I said it because I believed it.

"What we really need is some practice time. We've had so many games, we haven't been able to practice, and we've slipped a little bit from where we were defensively. We're getting better, not making some mistakes that we did before we started. But we need practice time. We do need game situations. That last play before the half was the dumbest any Kansas team has ever played, that last 18 seconds. They get a score, and we go down and take a quick shot which was the wrong shot at the wrong time. Then they get it and we give up a layup at the end. we were very fortunate: one official was calling a foul and the other official said no, the clock ran out. No Kansas team should play that dumb. We're not dumb, we've got intelligent kids, and we've go to play that way."

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