Top Terp
12/14/2000 7:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 14, 2000
By Bob Cohn, Washington Times
This article was originally published on Nov. 26, 2000
Gary Williams is one of the winningest coaches in college basketball and one of the most intense. At 55, the former point guard has the job of his dreams for as long as he wants it, having won everywhere he has gone -- from the top three conferences to American University and a memorable high school title.
COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Visitors to Hawaii, especially the postcard island of Maui, often react with awe and some disbelief to the sheer beauty that surrounds them. Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams also couldn't believe what he was seeing last week, but for different reasons altogether. Unlike the scenery, it wasn't very pretty.
Sweating even more than usual in the steamy, tiny Lahaina Civic Center, Williams watched his highly ranked, highly touted team swallow the big coconut at the Maui Invitational, losing to Illinois and Dayton after a first-round victory over Louisville.
After the Dayton game, Williams chose to be alone with his thoughts, walking the 2 miles back to the team hotel. As nettlesome as the outcomes were, even more maddening to Williams were the Terps' methods of losing. Except for center Lonny Baxter, there was no inside presence. They were pounded inside. They lacked hustle and desire. They were outrebounded and beaten to the ball. In short, they lacked intensity.
And that was shocking, not just to Williams most of all, but also to outsiders who know the truest thing about Maryland basketball: If there is one concept, one way of life associated with Gary Williams, it's intensity. With Williams screaming and sweating during practice and on the sideline, riding herd on officials and players with near-manic fervor, the Terps play hard.
Or at least, they're supposed to.
But they will.
There are no recounts in sports, no replays of defeats, no protests and appeals after the fact. What coaches do after losing, after their long walks, is adjust, adapt to the new realities, refocus. Most likely, Williams will get his players to figure things out well before we can figure out the presidential mess. Wouldn't you have loved to have heard Williams convey his thoughts to his squad? It's safe to say a few dimpled Terps egos were brought home as souvenirs.
"People say a team reflects a coach's personality," said Joe Harrington, a former coach in several programs and Williams' former teammate at Maryland. "He gets right in your face."
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Gary Williams no longer is the young hotshot who built or rebuilt programs at American University, Boston College, Ohio State and finally Maryland. He is 55 now and a grandfather. He is starting his 12th season in College Park, which ties him for second in coaching seniority in the ACC behind Mike Krzyzewski. Locally, he has outlasted Joe Gibbs, John Thompson and, of course, the coach du jour of the Bullets/Wizards.
But you can't call Williams an elder statesman, he just doesn't look the part. You see some coaches and you can't imagine they ever held a basketball, much less knew what to do with it. But you can envision Gary Williams playing point guard for the Terps, harassing opponents and riding teammates, which he did in the late 1960s. He's still the same tough South Jersey kid, still looking young, wiry and sometimes mean enough to get his message across with relevance and conviction, which he will do relentlessly until it all sinks in - and then keep right on doing it some more.
It has always been this way.
"Believe me, nothing has changed in that regard," the voice on the telephone says, with laughter. "When I see him jumping up and down on the sideline, or getting that stare on his face, it's a familiar experience."
The voice belongs to Tyrone Medley, who played for Williams more than 30 years ago. Now a Third District court judge in Utah and the state's first black judge, Medley was Williams' point guard at Woodrow Wilson High School in Camden, N.J. It was Williams' first team as a head coach, and in 1970 it went 27-0 and won the New Jersey Group 4 championship, beating an East Orange team that had won 31 straight. Not only was the game, played at the old Convention Hall in Atlantic City, notable for the outcome, a riot broke out on the court afterward. One of the Wilson players was knocked cold.
"In all the years Gary's been coaching at the collegiate level, I still see consistent themes in the types of teams he's had," said Medley, who went on to play at Utah, one of five Wilson starters to earn a scholarship. "That is, a desire to play defense, which is certainly something he helped us understand. The running game, basically executing the fastbreak. And just an aggressive style of play, initiated by the defense."
Derek Brown, another former Wilson player and now women's coach at Coppin State, remembers a patient Williams who used to bring former Division I players in to scrimmage the team. Williams often played in those games.
"I'm sort of basing my coaching on the way Gary coached us back then," said Brown. "He tried to get us to better ourselves. He didn't make us do a lot of running as far as discipline goes. We disciplined ourselves. He was like a breath of fresh air."
Williams' main influence was his old coach at Maryland, Bud Millikan, a disciple of Henry Iba.
"He was very tough," Williams said. "He made his players tough, mentally and physically. You had to learn the game. Part of the deal playing for Bud was, you couldn't just be a talented player. You had to be a very smart player. He made you play defense. Defense was the most important part of the way he coached.
"I could handle the ball, I could run and I could play defense. That was the only way I survived. I couldn't shoot. But I always played hard. If you respect the game, you give it a certain amount of effort. And so I've always tried to get my players, who have more talent than I had, to respect the game the same way."
Despite Williams downplaying his own talent level, Harrington said in addition to his defense and the feisty nature, Williams could score a little, too, he once shot 8-for-8 in a game against South Carolina. After staying an extra year at Maryland to help the coaching staff while he got his degree, Williams went back home.
But Camden wasn't Collingswood, the blue-collar Philadelphia suburb where Williams grew up, immersing himself in sports. (His father wasn't around much. He worked nights, and then Williams' parents divorced when he was 14.) This was the other side of Route 130, which had become sort of a demarcation line. Camden was predominantly black, predominantly poor, and the demographics at Woodrow Wilson were changing, becoming increasingly black and Hispanic.
Williams, who had spent his Saturdays watching college teams in the Philadelphia Big Five slug it out, got a job as an assistant coach at Wilson. He also had to teach business management to non-college prep students.
"I had to teach so I could coach," he said. "That was a good experience. They gave you these books you're supposed to teach out of, but those books had nothing to do with what I was about. It was a hard teaching situation, but you got some satisfaction when you got a kid to see the light."
When Wilson coach Art DiPatri left in 1969 to take another job, Williams was promoted. He was 24. But DiPatri had left behind five starters, including Medley, Brown and All-American Harold Sullinger. Remember the old TV show, "The White Shadow," with Ken Howard, a white guy, coaching a mostly black team at an inner-city high school? It was kind of like that for Williams. But he had a mature team, on and off the court.
"They had a good perspective," Williams said. "They were very aware of the racial thing. They were very intelligent people. I learned a lot from them. That's what you get from coaching."
Back then, racial tension and the Vietnam War was tearing the country apart. Two months after Wilson's championship, four students were killed at Kent State. Camden was a microcosm of all that. During Williams' first year at Wilson, rioting closed the school for a few days, but the players got into the gym and kept practicing.
"The best thing was, it gave me confidence I could coach," he said of the experience. "At some point along the line, you have to feel you're able to coach. It's like any other profession. The team had good players, but I've seen good players not win, too."
Meanwhile, Millikan had retired at Maryland and been replaced by Frank Fellows. But Fellows lasted just two seasons before he and his staff were fired. One of the assistants, Tom Young, went to American as head coach. Joining him was another assistant, Tom Davis. After a year at AU, Davis took over the program at Lafayette.
Davis and Williams were close. After his eligibility expired, Williams had stayed a year at Maryland to finish work toward his degree. He did some scouting, helped out with the freshman team and made a strong impression on Davis. "It was pretty easy to grasp he was gonna be a good coach," Davis said.
Davis once told Williams that if he ever became a head coach, Williams would be the first one he would call. When Davis took the Lafayette job, he offered Williams a position as the school's first full time basketball assistant. But there was a catch.
"He also had to coach soccer," Davis said.
At first Williams resisted, but Davis talked him into it. Williams took a crash course, reading soccer books and picking the brains of people who knew more than he did. Every year they told Williams a new soccer coach would be hired. Every year he continued to coach. For six years, the basketball program flourished, raising Davis' stock. In 1978, he went to Boston College. and Williams went with him.
By then, Williams' drive and dedication as a coach were fully formed. Everyone who knew him could see it. But Davis had seen it all along.
"Even as a college player at Maryland, he just loved the sport," said Davis, who continued an illustrious career at Stanford and Iowa before retiring in 1998. "He loved to talk basketball and think basketball. If the team had a new play, he wanted to know how it was run. He loved the X and O part of it."
Not to mention the competition.
"We would play squash," Davis said. "The racquetball courts were hard to get, so we played squash because we could get the courts quickly. The only problem was that Gary broke all the squash racquets in fits of temper. I mean it, he would compete. He would compete tooth and nail."
After a year as Davis' assistant at BC, Williams was ready. Young left American and Williams replaced him. After two so-so years, the Eagles went 24-6 and 21-9. Williams' star was in full ascension. When Davis left BC for Stanford, Williams took over, meaning he had directly followed two assistants for whom he played at Maryland. Even a 13-15 record his fourth season at BC didn't wear the luster off Williams' increasingly growing reputation, and he was hired at Ohio State. The Buckeyes' program was down, way down.
"St. John Arena was like a mausoleum," Williams' former assistant, Fran Fraschilla, said of Ohio State's gym at the time. "Until Gary got there."
Williams got the students involved, visiting frats and dorms and moving them courtside. The atmosphere picked up, and so did Ohio State's fortunes. In Williams' three seasons, the Buckeyes won 20, 20 and 19 games. Dennis Hopson, an athlete of modest ability before Williams arrived, was named Big Ten player of the year.
"Gary's intensity just permeated the building," said Fraschilla, now the
coach at New Mexico. "Just having the students move to the court sent a signal that he appreciated their involvement. You got a sense in talking to Gary that he had a great time as a Maryland player, that he always has had a great connection to student life. I think at heart, Gary's still a kid, still a college student. He still relates to his experience as a student."
Rick Barnes, who also assisted Williams at Ohio State, said he was struck by Williams' passion for the game.
"No question, that's the one word," said Barnes, who later became coach at George Mason, Providence, Clemson and now Texas. "He has a great passion for what he teaches. He believes in it with as much conviction as anyone I've ever been around."
The passion and intensity of which so many speak had taken a toll, however. By now, Williams' marriage was a wreck. During his third year in Columbus, he and his wife, Diane, whom he had known since high school, separated. The split was public and painful, not just for the immediate parties, but also their daughter Kristin, a student at Miami of Ohio.
"I will tell you this: It was hard on him," said Barnes, who shared occupancy with Williams at a motel in Columbus. "I know how much he loved his daughter. I can only imagine what he went through."
Williams' personal life eventually would level out and a somewhat contentious relationship with his daughter would improve. But his greatest professional challenge was still ahead. During the 1989-90 season, then-Maryland athletic director Lew Perkins was looking for a coach. The program was in shambles because of Len Bias' death in 1986, Lefty Driesell's departure, and the ill-fated hiring of Bob Wade, which set things back even further and eventually led to NCAA probation and sanctions.
Perkins knew who he wanted. The choice was simple.
"No. 1, he was a Maryland graduate," he said of Williams. "He was familiar with the Washington, D.C., area. He knew who he had to recruit against. And it was a fact that Gary had been a very successful coach at Ohio State and Boston College and American. Then what really put me over as I talked to people around the country was, no question about it, he knew the game of basketball."
Perkins, now AD at Connecticut, said he recalls feeling an instant chemistry with Williams. For his part, Williams had always dreamed of returning to his alma mater. Even now, facing huge obstacles, he knew this was the time. But less than a year into the job, the penalties turned out to be greater than expected (no postseason appearances for two years, no live TV for one) and Williams began to have second - and third and fourth - thoughts.
"Very few people knew the extent of the situation here," he said. "I didn't know when I took the job. If I did, I wouldn't have taken it. . . . I had my doubts for a couple of years. Then I said, `The hell with it, we're gonna make this happen somehow.' "
Williams' first two teams won more than they lost, then the effects of probation sank in. In 1992 and 1993, Maryland had its only losing seasons under Williams. But during this time, which marked a crossroad for the program, good things were happening. Williams sold kids on the chance to play right away and landed a top recruiting class that included local products Duane Simpkins, Johnny Rhodes and Exree Hipp.
Just as important, the one player of real star quality, Walt Williams, decided to stay and tough it out. He could have transferred and played immediately because Maryland was on probation. But Gary Williams assured Walt Williams that even though he stood 6-foot-8, he would be allowed to play guard (which might not have happened elsewhere), thereby heightening his chances for a pro career.
Walt Williams stayed, maintaining legitimacy and credence, keeping things afloat. Eventually, he was the No. 6 pick in the draft and remains active. Gary Williams and his program emerged from the storm, and it's been relatively smooth sailing ever since.
Joe Smith and Keith Booth followed that first notable recruiting class, advancing the program to yet a higher level. The Terps have exceeded 20 victories in six of the last seven seasons. They've gone to seven straight NCAA tournaments and made the Sweet 16 four times. Terps fever is so intense that an unscientific poll of ACC players conducted by Sports Illustrated named Cole Field House as the toughest arena in the league for visitors. Now a new, larger facility, the Comcast Center, will be completed in 2002, and it isn't a reach to call it the House That Gary Built.
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And yet . . . Williams is dogged by critics who point to those Sweet 16 appearances and wonder why the Terps have never advanced any further, who wonder why, if Gary Williams is so good, how come he is starting his 23rd season as a head coach without having taken a team to the Final Four?
Williams is tired of the question, but he never tires of responding. He points to where the program was before he arrived compared with where it is now, to the number of winning seasons and how it's so hard to get to the NCAAs consistently, yet he's done it. Consistently.
"I know what I've done," he said.
Said Fraschilla: "People have short memories. They forget how far Maryland basketball has come since the late 1980s."
And Harrington: "He's done so much not only to bring Maryland basketball to the heights it once was, he's drawn back all the ex-players. Golf tournaments, Midnight Madness, he's really worked hard to bring a lot more to Maryland basketball than what you see. He's brought that tradition back."
Perhaps most important for Williams is that, despite the appearance of turmoil the public sees, he's a man at peace. He is close to his daughter again, and the birth of his grandson last year was a revelation. He's making more money than he ever imagined he would and has what amounts to a lifetime contract. In other words, he will coach as long as he feels like it, which might be for a long time. He still loves to coach. He is respected by players and peers. And last year, he said, he didn't get whistled for one technical foul. Not one.
"I like being here," he said. "I really do. I've coached at some great places, but coaching here is different because I went to school here. I know this place. I know this area. I like living in this area. I'm very happy here. . . . I love where I am now. I mean, [from] Collingswood, New Jersey. How did it happen? How I did I get here? I've had some breaks. I can't complain."
