Maryland head coach Kevin Willard on the final play vs. Indiana: "I decided to go for the win"

Ahmed Ghafir
Jan 26
3 min read

Everything head coach Kevin Willard said after Maryland secured a 79-78 win vs. Indiana, completing a perfect two-game road trip ahead of Wisconsin on Wednesday:

On the final minute vs. Indiana to retake the lead for the win

“I decided to go for the win. We were going to run a hammer for [Rodney Rice] and rescreen for [Selton Miguel] coming off and being on the road and not subbing, having those guys out there, I was like overtime is probably not going to be our friend. And I think [Ja’Kobi Gillespie] realized how open he was and he thought ‘oh I'm just gonna go lay it up and tie it.’ They got a good deflection but Julian [Reese]…showed how much he's come as a player. He didn't try to shoot it. He just got the basketball, took one drill and just gave in and Rod hit it, obviously, hit a huge shot.”

On Rodney Rice’s game-high 23 points, five threes in the win

“Him and Selton in second half, Selton hit those three threes in a row. Rod hit the big three in the zone against their zone when they went zone. That kind of gave us but give Indiana a lot of credit. Myles Rice comes out of nowhere, shooting 20% and just was like, he looked like Steph Curry. So proud of this team. Bench was great, even though they didn't play. The bench was Chris, I tell you, it was the best bench I've ever had, Because they were giving suggestions, they were pumping the guys up. They kind of saw the flow of the game and understood it and it just a great road win.”

On DeShawn Harris-Smith becoming the first sub in the second half with three seconds left

“We've been on – I think this is our fifth national broadcast game – and the timeouts are so long forever. And so second half substitutions, I've said this forever…if you sub one your starters out and it goes and you sit them for three minutes with the timeouts, they sit for a really, really long time. And the way the game was going, the way the flow was, it just was like, am I gonna put someone in there at the nine minute mark? And I asked all the guys. I said, you know, you guys want one? I said, you know, let me know. Like, no, we want to roll this to the end. And made some plays, made some big stops, and then [Ja’Kobi] getting the deflection at the end when Rice shot it. They had Galloway going in there for the for the tip so just everyone made big plays.”

On beating two teams with different styles in Illinois and Indiana

“Especially since we didn't practice. The Thursday night game, we didn't get back to the hotel. And those guys, I don't think – we didn't leave the conference room till like midnight, their time one o'clock this time. So Friday was a wasted day. We didn't really do anything Friday, and then I'm gonna have my hands tied because we didn't practice yesterday. We just did a walk through, we did some shots. And they just reminded me that maybe we don't have to practice as much. And I just didn't know. We got Wisconsin coming in on Wednesday. We got a really good Wisconsin team coming in, obviously only two days. So we got to get back and put the game plan in tomorrow, hopefully, practice a little bit Tuesday and play a really tough Wisconsin team.”

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