Sept. 17, 2002

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Maryland head basketball coach Gary Williams took some time before the start of the 2002-03 season to discuss personal thoughts about the game, his career and winning the 2002 national championship. Here are 20 questions for the 2002 ACC and national coach of the year.

Q: How do you relax away from basketball?

GW: "I relax away from basketball a lot of times by just doing nothing. You get away from the rat race, and just want things to slow down, so you just go where it can get quiet. I do that and play golf. Golf is not always relaxing but it's a different type of game and it's a different type of focus, so the change is good."

Q: Who was the most important influence in your coaching career?

GW: "The most important influence in my coaching career has been Tom Davis. I met him during my senior year at Maryland when I was playing here, and then he became the freshman coach and I was his assistant in my first year of coaching. And then I was with him for seven years as an assistant coach. I probably wouldn't have gotten into college coaching without Tom Davis."

Q: If you weren't in coaching, what would you be doing?

GW: "I don't know. I've never done anything else and I've never really looked into doing anything else. I have a degree in marketing, so it might have been something in that type of field."

Q: Is the NCAA Tournament (at 65 teams) the right size?

GW: "No, it's too small. Football barely has 100 teams which really take it serious, and there are 56 teams in their postseason, which are the bowl games. We have 325 Division I basketball teams and there are only 32 at-large teams. It's not right the way it is. Nobody said 64 was the magic number. When I started there were only 16 teams. I think there should be about 128, but to get that changed would be very difficult."

Q: Other than your own, what is the toughest conference?

GW: "That's hard to say, it changes from year to year. I have coached in the Big Ten and the BIG EAST and those are certainly great conferences. You know, when you look at the Big 12, SEC, Pac-10, they're all very competitive. Nowadays, it depends on who has the most veteran players."

Q: What is the toughest arena you've visited?

GW: "I've been in a lot of them. Obviously, Duke is very tough, but there are places in the Big Ten that are just as tough to play. I always thought Purdue was tough. In the Big East when the Dome is really loud at Syracuse, that can be a very difficult place. There are many that are tough to play in, and it depends on how good the team is during a given year. Last year, in fact, our trip to Oklahoma proved to be as tough as any."

Q: How have early defections to the NBA affected recruiting at your school?

GW: "It's affected things, but not as much as people would think. You still try to get the best players to attend your school. I don't know any coach that would turn down a great player just because he might leave early. At the same time that you recruit the great players, you are still trying to recruit guys who you think will be good program players who will be here for four years. You still try to recruit great players."

Q: Are high school kids much different today than when your coaching career began?

GW: "I don't know if they're much different, but everything around the game is different. The media attention on high school kids today is ridiculous. If you're a good sophomore in high school now, everyone knows about you nationwide, not just coaches, but fans and everyone on the Internet. The Internet has given kids a much greater identity at an early age. Kids today don't play outside much. They play inside and have games setup for them at the various tournaments and leagues throughout the summer. It used to be that you played outside, you got your five guys and if you were good enough you got to stay on the court for as long as you could keep winning. Now, players have their games scheduled for them, so that urge to win isn't there necessarily in the summertime like it is in the winter. I think that's how we learned to play really well when I was playing. In other words, whenever we played a game, we played with the idea that if we won we could continue to play. We would pass the ball and play defense, and do all the things that some players don't do now in the summertime."

Q: What are your biggest worries about recruiting?

GW: "With the recruiting rules the way that they are now, you don't get to know the players as well as you used to, and so I worry about that. Ideally, everybody follows the rules, but that's not even true in every instance in society so you know that it certainly isn't always going to be the case in recruiting, either."

Q: How overblown are recruiting rankings?

GW: "Every coach and all the fans know the top 20 players. The basis of recruiting, just like it used to be, is to find that diamond in the rough that turns out to be as good as any player listed in the top 20. It's nice to get a top 20 player, don't get me wrong, but at the same time it's nice to find guys who prove to be just as good as those ranked ahead of them."

Q: Given the choice, would you rather have an All-America center, or All-America point guard? Why?

GW: "Whether you get an All-America center or All-America point guard depends on the personnel on your team. You need a good combination if you expect to win. I think you could have an All-America center and still not win unless you had a great backcourt. But you could probably get away with a great point guard and a good backcourt, and just a mediocre center and still hope to win. Maybe a point guard might be more important with those scenarios."

Q: Talk about your favorite aspect of coaching: Recruiting? Teaching? Pre-game strategy? In-game strategy?

GW: "My favorite aspect of coaching is teaching. When I started, that's what I always liked to do. I learned that from Tom Davis. You are a teacher when you coach. Everyday in practice when you coach, that's your classroom. A coach probably does more teaching than the average professor because you have five or six, 2 1/2 hour sessions every week, especially during the first month of the season. It's a great opportunity to teach and you really get immediate results and feedback from your team. It is very enjoyable. If you a good job in teaching, it's amazing how good you become in pregame in in-game strategy, because your players play well. Because they've been taught well. Your in-game strategy only works if players can respond to what you're doing. And that comes through with teaching in practice."

Q: What are your top three memories of coaching?

GW: "Winning the national championship (2002), getting to the Final Four for the first time (2001) and winning a high school state championship in 1970 in New Jersey (Woodrow Wilson HS in Camden, N.J.). I'd rather not get into the worst memories."

Q: What current or former head coach would you select if you could have another coach assist you in preparing for and joining you on the sidelines for a national championship game?

GW: "Well, I like my assistants right now. I'd like to have my assistants with me and I think we're a good team. I think we complement each other very well. If I had to choose someone from my past, it would be Tom Davis. I would like to have him with me going into a big game."

Q: How has the game changed on and off the court?

GW: "On the court, the game is quicker. There are better athletes. Every sport has people who have gotten better, bigger physically. The big players are a lot quicker now is probably the biggest change. The individual abilities have gotten a lot better now. In other words, if a guy gets the ball in the right situation, as a coach you don't have to do a lot more because he can probably score from there. But passing and defense are still things that you really have to work on. Those are still the same. Those don't just happen. You still have to put your time in."

"Off the court, there are still self-motivated players. I was fortunate to coach a few last year. As far as staying out of trouble, hopefully you get the right guys that will do that. The players are coachable today. A lot of times they'll fight you more than they did before, but they still want to be coached. The attention given to college basketball nowadays has changed everything. If a player screws up at all, it becomes national news if it's a big program. And coaches are held directly responsible for anything that happens to your players, which is probably unfair, but that's part of the deal with being a college coach. If a pro player gets arrested, it's up to that individual to take care of things, but if a college player gets arrested, it's because the coach didn't control the player. One of the tough things about college coaching is the extra responsibility that you have."

Q: What distracts you the most from your coaching duties?

GW: "Well, there's nothing that's really distracting. I don't let anything distract me. But what takes up a lot of your time are fundraising, speaking with alumni groups and trying to do all of the necessary things for players to do well academically. Those things are certainly time-consuming, but they are part of the job. The thing I like most is on the court, the practices. As long as I can prepare each day for practice, it really doesn't matter. You do the other things so long as they don't get in the way of coaching. And nowadays there is a tremendous amount of media responsibility that you have to deal with. All of those things are time-consuming, but I don't let them distract from what I really like to do, and that is teach and prepare for practices everyday."

Q: If you ran the NCAA, what would be the first three things you would do or change?

GW: "I guess the one thing that I would do is put more responsibility back on individual schools. I think that schools have lost some of their ability to run themselves and even police themselves. I would expand the NCAA Tournament, that is for sure, and probably add different levels in Division I men's basketball. There are probably 324 different schools with various agendas and there could be three different levels, perhaps. There might be a way to split things like in Div. I-A and I-AA football. What is best for us isn't necessarily the best for another school. I think it would present a fair opportunity for everybody, and there would still be a way to split NCAA Tournament revenues among all of the schools."

Q: If you could meet one person and have dinner with them, who would it be?

GW: "It would probably be Lance Armstrong, just to see how he stays so dedicated and so energized. He's proven before this year that he may be the best ever, but then he goes out and does it again. That has to be so hard physically, and plus, I admire him for beating cancer."

Q: How seriously do you and your staff and players take preseason magazines?

GW: "I think they're great for the fans. I really think they stoke an early interest in college basketball and I don't think there's anything wrong with them. However, no matter whether you're ranked high or not ranked, you still have to prove it on the court. It's always interesting to see who overachieves and who underachieves every year. I think it's good. But how seriously do I take it? I don't worry too much about where we're ranked ... but sure it's nice to be ranked. Don't get me wrong. I'd rather be ranked than not."

Q: Where should the Terps be ranked this season?

GW: "As far as this year, I don't know. We lost four starters, sure, but I think we're going to be a good team. I'd say we belong in the rankings, but that's for other people to judge."