| | March 12, 2000
Reaching the (ACC) final is a big deal, but once you reach it, now you want
to win the championship. That's the next step for us, and we don't want to
settle for reaching the finals. I was proud of reaching the semifinals for
six straight years, not many teams have done that. If we win Sunday, I will
leave very quietly and go back to Maryland and be a very happy man for a
couple of days.
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Inside the Locker Room
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Throughout Championship Week, ESPN.com and FANSonly.com are presenting an inside look into the ACC tournament from some of the league's top players and coaches, including Gary Williams of Maryland. For more on the ACC, visit the conference's official web site.
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I was calm the last four minutes (against North Carolina State), actually
scared is probably the better word. I usually calm down when I am scared.
No, I was just trying keep everyone together down the stretch. What I was
trying to do during the last five minutes of the first half and the first 10
minutes of the second half was get our level of play up. I knew we weren't
going to score a lot against their defense, so it was important for us to
keep up our defensive intensity and we weren't doing that in the beginning
of the game.
We have been seeing the top guys getting knocked off in all of the
conference tournaments this year. That's because I think it's hard to get
players that already know they are going to the NCAA Tournament the same
level of motivation of guys who need one or two more wins to get to the NCAA's. There is so much emphasis from day one on the Road to the Final Four
from the media, that it gets players thinking along those lines. It has
really changed the focus of college basketball.
There will probably be no surprises against Duke. Both teams play a certain
style, and by now there's basically not too much a team can do. It helps
them that they have one of the their better players (Michael Dunleavy) back
playing. But he played in both games against us, so it's not really a
change.
We have had very talented teams here before, but this team, I don't think
they put much stock into anything other than going out and playing. In other
words they don't try to measure situations or anything like that. They just
want to play, put us on the court and we will go play. That's been our
attitude all season and that's the only way we won today. We didn't want to
lose and go home.
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Championship Week
Atlantic Coast Conference tournament
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