Friday, March 30, 2001
Terps' rally gives coach new respect
By Mike Lopresti
Gannett News Service
MINNEAPOLIS — Six weeks. That's how long it has taken Gary Williams to get smarter, gain friends, lose enemies and shut up the talk shows.
Gary Williams (center) and his staff dispute a foul call during the West Regional.
(Ernest Coleman photo)
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Six weeks. No more boos. Only backslaps and smiles and congratulations by the admirers, who have dropped out of the sky like the 82nd Airborne.
Just think. Six weeks ago, Williams was a chronic near-miss. Not up to the crisis control Maryland needed. A sure tournament washout. Always has been, always will be.
“It's funny how it works,” he said this week. “I'm not sure I did anything different. Things have to be right for you. We hit it right this year.”
His ship has come in at Maryland.
The same ship from which only six weeks ago people were calling for the lifeboats before it sank.
There are three national championship coaches here this weekend.
And one Gary Williams, who until now usually was noted for what he hadn't done. But he is the one who took his team through a furnace to get here, the one who did the best job.
Midseason meltdown
It was called an instant classic before the final horn had faded.
A Duke masterpiece, back on Jan.27. What else to call it, coming from 10 points behind in the last 54 seconds against Maryland to force overtime on the road, then winning by a basket?
The highlight of the regular season. Well, except for the losing team with glazed eyes and shattered spirits.
“The whole team,” guard Steve Blake said, “just kind of collapsed.”
Four days later there was a 21-point loss to Virginia. Then a win against hapless Clemson, and three more defeats, the last at home against bottom-rung Florida State.
This was no slump. This was a plummet. Maryland in meltdown.
The coach faced a crumbling team in the days after the Florida State loss. Williams could rant and rage, as sometimes has been his habit.
Or he could do what he did: soberly tell his players it was up to them. They could circle the wagons to save themselves. But it had to be quick.
“If you've coached in the game a long time,” Duke's Mike Krzyzewski said, “you know you're the guy who can never get down.”
That was then, and this is now. Maryland has gone 10-1 since and has made its first Final Four.
“What we did was just talk about how it was just us,” he said. “How we had to stay together, and we weren't going to get help anywhere else.
“We were all devastated by that (Duke game). You don't lose many games like that. But we stayed together. There was never a point, even before we finally won, that we split.”
Repaired reputation
Williams is 56 and has coached three different schools into the NCAA Tournament. But his reputation had a gaping hole, left by too many premature exits in March.
The same questions, fair or not, would be out there. Always. Until he landed in a Final Four.
Now he has, with honors. To repair a team's psyche, to patch together its confidence, and to do it all in a hurry while the fans are booing and the media is calling for heads — that can test a man.
“I don't coach to get vindication,” Williams said.
But he has it, whether he wants it or not.
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Terps' rally gives coach new respect
