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Feb. 19, 2005

Recap | Box Score

MARYLAND COACH GARY WILLIAMS

That’s why Pete Gillen is a good coach. I’ve seen his teams at Providence, Xavier, and that’s how they play. They never give up. We could have won regulation, we could have won very easily, but that’s what he puts into his players. They’re not going away. I wasn’t surprised at all that they came back in both of those situations.

Our guys don’t quit either. We stayed tough. They hit a couple of great threes. We were trying to play the three-point line, but we couldn’t do it. To Virginia’s credit. They got looks – they weren’t easy looks – but they were tough enough to hit them. It hurt, but we never quit. We kept running our offense, kept running our offense. We ran our best offense the last five minutes of regulation and both overtimes. Travis Garrison was getting open, and we were finding him when he could score.

We’re not a good outside shooting team. We were one for 11 from three-point range in the first half, and we weren’t going to win that game unless we could go inside with the basketball.

VIRGINIA COACH Pete Gillen

We played as hard as we could play. We showed a lot of courage coming back, fighting back. Sean playing with a twisted ankle. Guys digging down. It was a great college game. We shot 12 of 27 from the free throw line. As hard as we played as courageous as we played, you gotta make free throws to win. You gotta rebound, make free throws, take care of the ball. Twelve for 27 – if that’s how poorly you shoot, then all the good things unfortunately are hurt by that stat. That and we didn’t get the ball inbounds once. That was a big turnover.

Very tough loss. I’m proud of our kids. They’re bleeding now because they really wanted to win, but only one team can win.

(Sean Singletary) He was unbelievable. Playing with a gimpy ankle, hitting threes, and as you know to shoot threes you really have to use your legs. He was spectacular, and he played against a great player in Gilchrist.

We couldn’t get a big rebound, once on a foul shot and once when we played zone.