NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOUR

March 31, 2002

Gary Williams

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: The obvious thing is you have to really get up hard on them. When you do that, you open up Jeffries in the middle there. We had the same problem last night with Boschee and Hinrich. If you go too hard, there's Gooden and Collison in the middle. Indiana's inside players, with their bench playing so well especially, have really stepped it up. I think sometimes 3-point shooting gets a lot of attention, but I think it was against Duke they hardly made any three's, yet they still won that game. They're just a good basketball team. Hopefully, like us, that has ways to score. We don't have to make 3's to score a lot of points all the time. I think Indiana is into that now where they realize maybe better this time of year they do have a lot of weapons they can go to score.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Well, I don't think anybody is ever a team of destiny. You make things happen; you make your own breaks. I think we've really become a better defensive team over that period of time. Defense takes a long time to get good at. Fortunately, we've had a lot of guys together for a couple years now. So we're probably a better defensive team than when we started. When we're playing well, our defense creates a lot of offense for us. We break a lot of balls loose, then hopefully we shoot the ball well. Your defense always has to be there if you want to be successful.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: That's a lot. That's a lot (smiling). I went to the Texas, Western Kentucky game at Cole Field House. I think I was a junior in college, snuck in the back door. Knew the ushers, because they were the same guys when we played. They used to encourage guys to come in because they never got more than 5,000 there. That game became significant as time went by. I don't think I realized exactly how significant it was. The University of Maryland was the first team in the ACC to have a black player, Billy Jones, who played the year before with us. I came from South Jersey in a mixed situation back then, Camden had great players, we would go up there and play in the summertime. I wasn't aware of it until after the game when people started talking about Kentucky as opposed to Texas Western. Some of the things that were said about Texas Western, the fact that they started five black guys, how could they play as well as Kentucky because they had all the splits off the post, how complicated their offense was. You know, it was really a great game to watch as a fan, to see two teams really play well. I think that's how the players in that game felt. I certainly felt that way watching it.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: The first one I went to was 1972. I was Tom Davis' assistant at Lafayette. I believe it was St. Louis. At the time that was as big as it ever was, in '72. I thought it was great. But now, like you said, I've watched it grow. It's just been incredible. I think at BC, we played in Corvallis, Oregon, against Princeton, my first NCAA game. We were there with NC State, Jimmy Valvano won the National Championship that year. It was a great experience for me. I think it's just like anything else: each step of the way, you know, it just gets bigger. The NCAA has grown incredibly to the point where there's 53,000 here last night. I think it's a great thing because it benefits a lot of athletes, not just the basketball athletes, that the NCAA tournament is so successful.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I had just taken the Ohio State job that May. I was out there. Maryland had played at Ohio State. Bias had like 30 points and ten rebounds in that game. Our players were still talking about Len Bias. Then when he died, they couldn't believe it because, like everybody else, he looked like Superman, such a great player. I knew it would really hurt the University of Maryland. I didn't realize how much it hurt not just the athletic department but the whole school till I got there because there was a feeling that the basketball program had hurt the University's academic standing in a lot of things. All those things had to be done before we could be a good basketball program again. No other school had gone through that, so no one knew how to react to that situation. I had to learn myself, just try to do the best job I could to make sure people understood we were going to try to have a good program with good people.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Well, we'd been in nine straight NCAAs - and Sweet-16s. When you're in a metropolitan area with a lot of teams, Skins, Orioles, Cavs, Wizards, you get a lot of competition down there. You get judged sometimes like pro teams get judged. I think we've been good for a while. Getting to the Final Four has kind of emphasized that point. Having coached at Ohio State where you basically own Columbus, which is really a good place, all those things, I see the difference between a cosmopolitan-type place and more of a thing where the whole state is there rooting for Ohio State all the time.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I think Chris has stepped up now. I think he's at a different level the last week or so, two weeks, where he understands. The biggest thing for Chris coming out of high school, I don't think he was ever pushed to really dominate every game. He won a lot of games, won a state championship in North Carolina. But a lot of times, he had to get used to me. He'd go do something great, have a couple great dunks in a game, I'd be on him about his defense, about not going after the ball every time it came off the glass. He wasn't used to that. It took him a while I think to get used to that, what I meant by him playing well. He has so much ability. I would be wrong if I didn't try to get that out of him. Chris, just like any player, you don't always like it if a coach is on you. I think for Chris to get to where he is now and where he can get to from here, he's had to realize that at that point you have to go hard all the time, regardless of your talent.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Well, that's the thing. I looked at Roy Williams yesterday. He was a high school coach. I was a high school coach starting out. Mike Davis certainly wasn't given jobs early in his coaching career. He had to earn his way to Indiana. I'm just jealous as hell that he's in the Final Four two years that he's been a head coach, because it only took me 23 to get here. But Mike, you look at the job he's done. There's a situation where he had to do some things in addition to just being a basketball coach, to be successful. He's taken a lot of pressure on. He's handled it very well. I think that gets through to his team. You can tell they really play hard for Mike Davis when they go out on the court.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Well, back then, it was different because only one team went. NC State had David Thompson those same years, kind of blocked Maryland. They have might have been the second or third best team in the country, but they didn't get a chance to play in the NCAA because only one team went from each conference. You had to win the conference tournament to go. It's not fair to compare. To say which team is best, I don't know, Elmore, McMillan, Lucas, they were great players. But guys change. The athletes are better today. I don't think you can compare styles of play. We play differently than that team played. I watched films of that team. They look like a bunch of old guys running up and down out there. But that's how you played then. That's how everybody played. Maryland was one of the dominant teams back in that era.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: If we win tomorrow night, I think we'll hang it in Cole, then move it. Cole, it's one of those places where if you could just play games there, you know, you'd be very happy. It's got to be used for a lot of things on campus. It's old. There's not enough room in there for the number of people that go in there. The new place, Comcast Center, is one of those great places. We want to hang it in Cole to bring that tradition with it.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Hopefully by this time, you learn from the Oklahoma game, you learn from wins and losses. We found out against Oklahoma, against a good team like that, that we have to play a certain way. Maybe that game meant a lot to us as we went through the ACC season and now in the NCAA. Hopefully we benefited from that game.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: When I was a sophomore at Maryland, freshmen couldn't play varsity, so that was the first year I was eligible for varsity. We were playing North Carolina. Billy Cunningham drove the lane. I saw his shoe up around my eye level. I figured then I'd probably -- college was going to be it for me (smiling). I really started to look at the game a little differently. I played for a great coach, if you ever wanted a coach, Bud Milligan. Played for Hank Iba - fundamentalist, two-hand, no behind-the-back stuff. You had to do everything the way it was supposed to be done. Fundamentally, I couldn't have played for a better coach. Coach Milligan lives in Atlanta now. You have a chance. Frank McGuire, Vick Bubbas (phonetic). We got to play against all those coaches. You learned some things. By the time I was a junior, I was definitely into coaching. I was a business major, taking education courses so I could teach. I was lucky because I learned early. You see a lot of guys drift around with basketball after they get out of school, then they decide they want to go into coaching. I was coaching when I was 22 years old.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Lucky you (laughter).

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Yeah.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: No. I mean, I know what I'm doing there. I mean, I just coach a certain way. I'm not always proud of everything that you do, but you have to win the game at this level. We're down 13-2, I'm going to say a lot of things in there to motivate the team. I've always been that way. We've beaten a lot of teams with guys that just sit on the bench.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: When we were able to recruit at the level necessary to play in the ACC. I always felt there that if you could get up into that Top 3 or 4, you probably would make the NCAA tournament. Then because of the competition involved in our league, you'd be good enough to go play, not that you'd win every year in the NCAA, but that at least you would be respectable walking out there. Until we got those back-to-back recruiting classes there with Joe Smith and Keith Booth, there was probably some doubt in my mind that we could do it.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: It's bogus. I went to Ohio State. We were in a rebuilding situation. Indiana won the National Championship. They didn't just beat us when I was there, they were beating everybody. We lost on a last-second shot when we were at BC. That's the seven games, I guess. I believe four of those games were at Indiana, which is always a nice place to play (laughter).

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: They play great half court basketball. When Knight was there, that's what they're noted for. Mike has obviously incorporated some things, but put his own ideas into the offense quite a bit. They're a tough defensive team. They've always been. It's hard to score against good defense that Indiana plays.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I think Mike is being modest. He had to work hard to get to where he did get to, where he could finally get the Indiana job. Nobody really gave him anything. He's done a great job to get there. You have to be good enough. There is some luck involved, but you have to be good enough to beat the teams they've beaten to get here. He got his team to that point this year. You remember some years that you didn't get here or that you thought you were good enough to get here, when you coached long enough. It just doesn't happen all the time.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I think it was so emotional during that time that sometimes Lefty doesn't get the credit he deserves. When he came there in '70, I just played there. There was no marketing, we weren't a major program. Lefty is the reason why Maryland became a major program. He was the guy that put the seats on the floor. He started Midnight Madness; did so many things to market the program. He was great for the University. He was blamed by some people for what happened with Len Bias, which was totally wrong to put the blame on Lefty. Len Bias signed a contract with the Boston Celtics with Reebok, he had moved on. It was just a shame that whoever the basketball coach was there at the time was going to share in some of the blame.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Parents want what's best for their son, in my case. I understand their feelings. I wish there was patience with players because the college experience I think helps, not just in terms of playing basketball for the future, but I always worry about guys if they haven't had that experience when they're 35, 40 years old, even though they might have a lot of money by that time, what do you do? You can't play golf every day. That gets old. You want to have friends that you made as you were growing, which you do in college. Sometimes they miss that cycle in their life. So I just hope parents really see the benefits of staying in college as long as possible. But, on the other hand, Steve Francis, Joe Smith, making that kind of money, there's very few opportunities to do that anywhere in society. You can't blame them for taking advantage of that situation.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Well, you have to have some luck, there's no doubt about it. When we bring a recruit in, we make sure he gets with the players. I listen to the players. If they say this guy is a jerk, unless he's about seven foot two and can really play (laughter)... No, it's one of those things where we've been fortunate, but we've recruited with these guys in mind, with Lonny Baxter, Juan Dixon, Byron Mouton, to keep bringing people into the program that they can get along with and they're willing to work with because you can get better as a team if you work really hard in practice. When you have guys pulling at each other all the time, I don't think you get better at practice, and you never get past where you are, whatever your talent is, that's it. I think with these guys, they have a very good level of talent, but they've taken the team further because of the way they are.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: When we got back there, we met with the coaches, went over what tapes we had, what we had to do to get ready for Indiana. I tried to get a couple hours' sleep at 2:30. I couldn't. I got up, watched tape, went over scouting reports. We got together with the players kind of mid-morning. I really haven't had a chance to get back to my phone and see who's called. I really haven't answered it, to be honest. Probably want tickets anyway (smiling).

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Yeah, I like our team next year. We'll have Ryan Randle, Tahj Holden, Steve Blake, Chris Wilcox, guys like that. That's three seniors out of that group. Those guys are good players. Hopefully they can help the younger players as they come into the program, like the seniors did this year. It's their turn. I've always felt that way, that it's the seniors' team. No matter how good your underclassmen are, it's always the seniors' team. This group of seniors right here will certainly be a model for me to try to get future senior groups to be like they were.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Right.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: It's hard to say what would have happened. I know -- I'll tell you how smart I was. We signed Jimmy Jackson in November. I left in May. But I was happy for one thing. My assistant coach, Randy, got the job out there. That was a good thing. The players really like Randy. They were very successful for the next couple years there. You can't look back. I made that decision. Nobody forced me to do that. You have to deal with it if it's not quite the way you think it was before you came.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I must have missed that. I didn't hear him say anything about issues. We were coming out of a ten-day layoff while we were in exams. We hadn't played for ten days. You think you practice well, but unless you have that game competition, especially against a team like Oklahoma, that's so quick, you can't duplicate that quickness in practice all the time. I think that was our biggest problem out there. There weren't any issues.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I've grown older. I've grown in that I've let other things become important to me, where before, maybe because I was a young coach or whatever, trying to work your way up, I didn't have time for some things that I should have. Hopefully I'm a little more willing to listen to some people, trust other people.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Well, we play a certain way, we run, we press some, not as much as we used to, but we still press some. I think you have to get certain types of players. Juan Dixon, when you open up the court, probably is a better player than if he played just strictly halfcourt. We look for guys like that that maybe other schools, "He's not big enough," whatever. For us, he might be a really good player, even though he doesn't have the All-American label or whatever after his name. Plus, as you're in coaching, you're a teacher. You like to get guys that are willing to work. Me personally, I do. The greatest thing this year is not the -- obviously, the Final Four is great, playing for the National Championship is great. But to walk down every day in practice and have guys willing to listen and to work hard to get better, that's pretty special. I know some players that are more difficult to coach than what I have. We try to look at that when we recruit. There's always that list of players out there that if you don't recruit them, you're a bad recruiter, no matter how many games you win. There's people that care more about recruiting than they do about how many games you win. I've never figured that out. Especially those guys on the Internet, they're really tough when they can just put a little nickname down there after their article.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: That's the way it's supposed to work, but it very rarely ever works that way. If anybody's earned it, certainly those two guys have earned it. They've given so much. The way they've handled themselves, along with being great basketball players, has been a good story back there in DC. Lonny's from DC; Juan is from Baltimore. We sit right between those two areas. It's a great thing to see how they are with people off the court, how they've grown in the four years they've been there. So it is special. Like I said, they deserve to have this, but it doesn't always work out this way.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I think it's definitely important. We get along really well. I'll yell at players. If I yell at a player at a game, people don't see practice, they don't see me one-on-one with the player in the office, having fun with the players, things like that. You get judged sometimes on a very small part of your job. The way I coach, I certainly open myself up for criticism sometimes. You know, I try to do the best job I can. I don't think anybody cares more about their players than I do.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Well, Steve has high standards. I mean, he was a great high school player. He started every game since he's been at the University of Maryland. He judges himself very -- he's very tough on himself. Sometimes I think he hurts himself a little bit by being so tough on himself. He's played so well in so many big games for us, he's made big shots like the Connecticut game. Before we played in the ACC tournament right here in this building last year, we were three down do Duke with 15 seconds left, he hit a three from 25 feet to tie that up, too. He's done that consistently in his career. He'll make a play that looks really bad, whatever, doesn't look like he's playing well, then he stepped up for five minutes last night, made that run, played really well. During that period, he made a couple good passes, one to Wilcox for the dunk. That's Steve. He's a winner, is the best way I can describe him. As these seniors leave, hopefully next year Steve will be a senior and he'll take over that leadership position, along with Tahj Holden and Ryan Randle.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Well, I just do what I think is best for our team. When we got down 13-2 last night, there's nothing to hold back then. You've got to go all out. That could have been 20-2 the way that thing looked. I was just trying to shake up the players. Sometimes people, if they sit behind a bench, you say something that they don't like, you do it for effect. I don't talk like that. I have a gym language and I have a language here. I never cross the line with those two things. Nobody ever mentions that, because I've heard coaches not cross the line in these situations. I do what I do as a coach. Certainly they'll tell me if that's not good enough. I just do the best job I can. I'm not perfect.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: As long as I'm healthy, I want to keep coaching because this is what I do. I've never done anything else. I've been fortunate to always have a job since I got out of college. I want to continue to coach. But I don't want to cheat the game. Having coached so long, I have a great deal of respect for the game of basketball and for being able to coach. That's not necessarily wins and losses, that's helping these guys that are up here and your players and your team. As long as I can do that and do a good job, I think I want to coach. But if there's ever a drop-off health-wise or whatever, I hope I'm smart enough to leave in a good situation, at the right time. But it's just something I really love to do.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I don't know. I hope part of the legacy is the fact we were able to get the program to a point where it is now from where it was when I got there. Then the other thing is, if we did not have a good basketball program for the last nine years or so, we wouldn't have been able to build the new arena. We're proud of that, that we were part of being able to open up this fall the new Comcast Center.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I'm a good friend of Steve Robinson, the former Florida State. Michael Joiner, you mean the Florida State player?

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: It was Andre Herring, the little guard, that jumped on the scorer's table. You don't know me this well, but that was really a tough loss, toughest loss of the year last year, didn't look like we were going to the NCAA. I was happy for Steve Robinson and for his kid because they were like 2-9 coming in there, I know how that felt. They showed genuine emotion. Steve grabbed him off the table right away. That didn't bother me at all. It's nice for players to be able to get excited in those situations.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Well, I really believe that coaching is a very difficult job, especially nowadays. You don't begrudge each coach anything they might get, that they may have gotten quicker than you. That's just the way it works. I've always been lucky. I've always had a job. Whatever happens to anybody else -- I know really good coaches that haven't always had jobs. Here I am. I'm sitting here having coached for 34 years, since I got out of college. If somebody hits it quick, that's great for them because this has been very good to me, I know that. Hopefully it's good for the next guys that come along.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Well, I think it's -- I hope it's an advantage to have three seniors like that. When you have juniors in your program or whatever, Steve Blake has had a great deal of experience, too. That gets overlooked sometimes just because they're seniors. If you had guys that played a lot of games their first three years and are still there, you can't get much more experience than that.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I'm fortunate that we were able to keep them together. They wanted to be there. They've realized that they can get better each year in the program. For themselves, this was probably the best thing for them also.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: I think that's the key for our team all year. Dixon and Baxter get a lot of attention. Everybody has had games. Our first probably seven guys anyway have games where they've been close to 20 points, at least. We have that flexibility, where a Drew Nicholas can step up and get double figures, wouldn't be a surprise, or Chris Wilcox score 20 points instead of 10 or 12. That's probably why we're pretty tough to play against, because we have different ways to score if Juan does have one of those rare off-nights, then we can still possibly win a game against a team because of that.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: The game I remember, I saw him play at Calvert Hall, but the summer between his junior and senior year, I saw him in an AAU situation in Augusta. It was hot. It wasn't a close game. Of the ten guys out there, this happens in the summertime during that recruiting period, because the kids play four games a day, Juan was the one guy on the court still diving, still trying to do whatever he could to help his team. That really impressed me in that situation. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you play a hunch in recruiting and it works out okay.

COACH GARY WILLIAMS: Thank you.