Gary Williams Good Quotations

Percentages can be misleading. We weren't good with the ball. We had 23 turnovers. You have that many against a team as good as Gonzaga and you're in trouble.

There is no bottom feeding in our league. Everybody is really strong from top to bottom. They are all good basketball programs, and you don't have that four to six wins built into conference play like some leagues do.

What you have to try to do is put yourself in as good a position as you can put yourself into. Probably, we didn't get into a real good position this year with some of the things that happened. Hopefully, the younger guys on the team benefit from that and the seniors get a little different resolve as they leave.

Historically, if you get to .500 in league play, you're in a pretty good position. Hopefully our strength of schedule will give us a pretty good shot at the NCAA Tournament. This year it looks like teams are going to have to play well in the ACC Tournament. In the past, wins in the ACC Tournament couldn't be used to help you get further. Now, you have to play well there to help your chances.

Hopefully we learned a good lesson tonight. They made us pay until we got it turned around. I'll just remember we didn't play well in the second half.

Hopefully, we can go from there. That was a very good effort overall for us. If we can play with that intensity, we'll be OK.

When they're on their game, they're very good because they play good defense, they can control the tempo of the game pretty well and when they make shots they're as difficult as anybody.

Hansbrough deserves all the attention he gets. When they get the ball to him seven feet from the basket, they feel pretty good that they are going to score.

Just to get that thing to six at halftime took a lot of effort. I've seen that before. You're almost in a trap in a situation, where their best scorer (Grier) doesn't play, they lose a game probably everybody in Minnesota thought they should have won. ... Good teams come back after a situation like that, and we happened to be the next game.

I thought we had a great stretch of basketball early in the second half. We played well enough to keep the lead. Hopefully this is the start of becoming a good basketball team.

I thought we had recruited a very good class.

I thought our defense wasn't good enough. Whether we doubled down or didn't double down, it just wasn't good enough.

I think so. We got up 25 (points) there. We played pretty good basketball.

I was very pleased the way we came out and the way we played. A lot of good teams don't do that.

You don't expect a game like that going into it, and our guys did a good job of being ready to play but also being ready to play at the start of the second half. It was good to see, especially at this time of year.

We're like a lot of teams this year on the road, and hopefully we'll have a good performance. A lot of that comes from your defense. You can't get into a scoring contest on the road and expect to win very often. Most teams play better offensively at home.

We knew their guards were good coming into the game. We didn't stop them in the first half; they scored at will. We were flat.

We keep telling him how good he is and what he's capable of doing.

Thornton's really tough to guard when he puts it on the floor. He's just a good player.

Well, he's a good player, number one. Number two, we're not defending anybody from the three-point line right now. So he's no different than anybody else.

We gave ourselves a chance with this game. I'm proud of us tonight and I think we'll get a good effort at Virginia. I feel like with our strength of schedule, we can get to .500 (in the ACC) and give ourselves a chance.

You go through periods where you start to rush and all the sudden it shows up. You have to work on it, get that under control and wait for the next thing to pop up. You think you can score taking shortcuts. You don't just take your time and run your offense and be patient. Patience usually leads to really good shots.

There's more good teams out there now, so you have to do everything right to make sure you're one of those good teams. If you slip a little bit, you're not going to be one of those good teams. We have to do a better job of making sure we do everything right so when it comes time to play you earn the right to be a good team.

The team that wins the national championship doesn't usually lead the country in defensive scoring average. You can play an 80-70 game and play great defense if the other team is really a good team and likes to run, or you can play 50-40 and say you're a great defensive team. That never bothered me. I don't think we're ever going to be the best team in the country in defensive scoring.

Our defensive intensity was really good to start the game. I had to sell the idea that if you play really good defense most of the time and you're struggling a bit offensively, the defense will break some things loose.

This is the first time in 28 years I've been in this situation. It's something I take personal responsibility for. He'll be missed because he's a four-year senior who has played on some really good teams.

This is the first time in 28 years as a head coach I've lost a player halfway through the season. It's something that I personally take responsibility for. I feel bad about it. My job now is to make sure that Chris does a good job in school this semester and is successful with whatever he wants to do after school is out.

This is special. This university has had so many good teams, but it never quite worked out. Tonight it did.

You don't gloat about it. You just feel good because you beat a good program. They never let you win. You have to win the game. Some teams give it to you once in a while ? not Duke.

It's kind of a thank-you type of thing for our fans. It's all about practice tomorrow. Tonight, it's just a good time for everybody.

It's a tough thing because I thought our guys did a good job this year to win 19 games. A lot of times 19 wins are rewarded by going to the NCAA.

It was a really good team effort tonight. Obviously, this has been a tough week and it's been pretty hard to keep my focus, so it must be for the players also.

Everybody's been saying they want to see how good Mike Jones is. Well, he's a pretty good player.

I know what it takes to win, and it's up to each individual player to make that happen. We have to earn the right to be a good team. We have several returning players that got a lot of experience as sophomores and juniors, and we have four new players coming in that want to get things done. Hopefully, that will be infectious.

If you're going to be a good basketball team you have to play every play. I preach that all the time. And I kind of coach that way to back up what I say.

Interesting. What makes them better than us? I don't know. For whatever reason, our 19-12 wasn't as good as Arizona's record or Wisconsin's record.

I know I've worked hard, and I know the players have worked hard this year. We've had to overcome some things, and I hope that's good enough. We're going to be just like everybody else: we're going to wait and see what happens Sunday. That's all we can do.

I really respect the way they play. They share the ball, and when your best two guys do it, it becomes contagious. If you're a good passing team, you have an advantage on a lot of teams. B.C. gets you every time you make a mistake on defense.

In the second half, we didn't give enough help on a couple of screens. They were able to get good looks, and you still have to make the shots.

In the second half the bench played really well. That was good to see, that they were able to come out and perform and get some significant minutes.

I am proud of our guys, because we were in it until the end. N.C. State is a good team, with lots of veterans, and we stayed tough and I am very encouraged about that.