- Mar 13, 2004
- 21,151
- 37
Anyone check these articles in the WaPo over the past couple of days?? It's a 3 part series, and the third will be in tomorrow's paper.... it's aGREAT read...
For 30 seconds on the first day of April in 2002, there was no better view in college basketball than through the eyes of Maryland Coach Gary Williams. As the final minute of the NCAA tournament final ticked down inside the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Williams's team held a double-digit lead over the Indiana Hoosiers.
The national championship capped the remarkable revival of a program decimated by scandal in the mid- to late 1980s, and Williams had done it his way: with players who hadn't been highly coveted coming out of high school and without resorting to the schemes that were becoming increasingly prevalent in recruiting.
Seven years later, the view through Williams's eyes isn't nearly as appealing. The adoring fans have been replaced by angry skeptics. The Terrapins have reached the round of 16 only once since winning the title and are in danger of missing the NCAA tournament altogether for the fourth time in five seasons.
[font=Arial,Helvetica]The Future Seemed Bright
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From a personnel standpoint, the future of the Maryland program appeared incandescent on the night it claimed the national championship. The incoming recruiting class consisted of a McDonald's all-American power forward, a two-time All-Met shooting guard, a point guard who had been named the Virginia AAA player of the year as a junior and a small forward who was Maine's Mr. Basketball.
No one knew then -- not Williams, not his staff, not Terrapins fans -- that the program would have been better off with some of the recruits it had rejected.
Deron Williams, a point guard prospect in the recruiting class of 2002 out of The Colony, Tex., led his team to the Class 5A state semifinals as a junior, and Maryland was the first school with which he arranged an official visit.
However, Deron Williams's mother, Denise Smith, said neither she nor her son ever spoke to Gary Williams. Smith found it odd that Gary Williams was not involved at all in Maryland's efforts to recruit her son, especially considering how hands-on head coaches such as Paul Hewitt at Georgia Tech, Bill Self at Illinois and Buzz Peterson at Tennessee were in courting Deron.
A review of NCAA tournament records shows that no national champion in the past 18 seasons has regressed so quickly.
How did this happen? Interviews with more than 50 coaches, players and others knowledgeable about the program reveal many explanations, and Williams, 63, is central to each of them.
Some say his disdain for under-the-table recruiting tactics has left him out of touch with the influential summer league circuit; others say he has grown complacent, delegating most recruiting duties to an ever-changing group of assistants. Clearly, Maryland has been hurt by landing highly touted recruits whose potential was never fulfilled and by failing to identify less-heralded future stars, many of whom attended high schools within short drives of College Park.
Williams argues that his 412-223 record at the school, including 11 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances from 1994 to 2004, proves his coaching acumen. He says he is as involved in recruiting as any coach in the nation and that the occasional recruiting misstep is to be expected in such an ephemeral task. "Well, you miss kids," he said. "This is not a perfect science."
Regardless of cause, the effect on the court has been clear: A program located amid arguably the deepest pool of high school talent in the country is fading. And Williams, in his 20th season coaching at the school where he played point guard more than four decades ago, could face pressure to step down after the season. Williams has three years left on a contract that pays him about $2 million annually in salary and benefits, but with another March looming with limited postseason prospects, even he admits "because of the bar we set, [that] is probably
"I heard [Gary Williams] was like that," said Smith, who noted that assistant coach Jimmy Patsos was Deron's only contact from Maryland. "But then it got me thinking. Deron grew up without a dad. Gary is, like, standoffish, not involved with the players. I don't think he would have been the right coach for Deron. Deron needs somebody who is more involved and communicates with him and really takes an interest in him personally."
Smith said Maryland "eliminated" Deron from consideration after the program set its sights on another point guard, John Gilchrist. She said Maryland canceled the visit shortly before it was set to commence.
Gilchrist attended Salem High in Virginia Beach and was the Virginia AAA player of the year as a junior in 2001. Gary Williams said he could only take one point guard that year and that Maryland got the one it wanted.
"A lot of people thought [Deron Williams] would be too heavy," Gary Williams said. "I didn't know [Deron] Williams was going to be that good. I don't think many people did, from what he was in high school. He was good; he was solid. But John Gilchrist was right here. Easier to recruit. Okay, so I recruited" Gilchrist.
In December 2002, Maryland hosted Florida in the first marquee game at newly opened Comcast Center. The Terrapins lost their first nonconference home game in 13 years, 69-64, in part because of the efforts of another recruit Maryland let slip away. Florida freshman forward Matt Walsh made 5 of 6 free throws in the final 23 seconds to secure the Gators' victory.
Walsh, a native of Holland, Pa., said in a recent telephone interview that he "never felt a connection with Maryland." He took one unofficial visit to College Park and found Williams to be "an introverted guy."
Maryland assistant Billy Hahn, who left after 12 seasons at Williams's side to become the head coach at La Salle following the Terrapins' appearance in the 2001 Final Four, was the point man on Walsh's recruitment. Had Hahn not departed, Walsh said there was a good chance he would have chosen to play at Maryland.
The losses of Walsh and Deron Williams caused no alarm. In addition to Gilchrist, Maryland had in its freshman class all-American Travis Garrison, All-Met Chris McCray and Nik Caner-Medley, Maine's high school player of the year.
Moreover, the Terrapins -- with Steve Blake, Drew Nicholas and Tahj Holden among those remaining from the championship team -- reached the round of 16 in the 2003 NCAA tournament. Meantime, Maryland used its recent national championship to attract highly touted players such as Mike Jones, a McDonald's all-American from Dorchester, Mass., and D.J. Strawberry, Williams's first recruit from California since he was hired at Maryland in 1989.
Rest of part I
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/11/AR2009021102722.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost...2/11/AR2009021102722.html
Part II
When Gary Williams considered Rudy Gay in 2003, the Maryland men's basketball coach saw his chance to win a second national title in a long and athletic forward who could help keep the Terrapins at an elite level after reaching back-to-back Final Fours.
When Gay considered Maryland, the emerging star at Archbishop Spalding High saw a group of players he had grown up rooting for, a new arena in which he could excel and a rabid fan base that might one day view him as an icon.
But when it came time to select a college after a fierce recruiting battle, Gay chose Connecticut, ignoring the dozens of signs posted at his high school urging him to sign with Maryland.
It was merely one player, one recruiting battle lost by Williams amid hundreds that coaches routinely lose throughout their careers. But those closely familiar with the veteran coach's recruiting say Gay's decision was a turning point. Gay's recruitment, so scrutinized that it appeared to be the impetus for an NCAA rule change in its aftermath, cemented Williams's belief that signing the most sought-after recruits in the current climate often depends on practices he is unwilling to undertake. As a result of that experience, they say Williams has steadfastly avoided pursuing relationships with many of the most influential power brokers in the recruiting world.
If he needs validation for such a stance, Williams can point to a display case on a concourse at Comcast Center that holds the 2002 national championship trophy. After all, it was won by Williams with a cast of players who mostly were unheralded out of high school.
"If [Gay] wanted to come here, and we recruited him, and we offered him a scholarship, why didn't he come here?" Williams said during an hour-long interview last week. "It had to be for another reason, right?"
Williams's detractors argue that it's still possible to follow NCAA rules and recruit successfully. They say his stance is one reason Maryland has regressed faster than any national champion in the past 18 years, according to NCAA records.
Said Curtis Malone, whose talent-rich D.C. Assault summer league basketball program garners national attention, "A guy like Gary, he is not a big AAU guy, and everyone knows that."
[font=Arial,Helvetica]The AAU's Growing Influence
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The recruiting scene has changed markedly since Williams began the second half of his 20-year tenure at his alma mater. Like today, shoe company-sponsored summer camps and tournaments were part of the landscape, but the ability to woo parents with promises of diplomas and strong education still mattered. As the money involved in basketball increased exponentially -- in 1999, CBS paid $6 billion for the rights to broadcast the NCAA tournament through the 2013 season, and shoe company endorsement deals can extend into the tens of millions -- the search for the next LeBron James has intensified the recruiting game, as parents and coaches aim to put players on a fast track for stardom. Recruiting analysts now rank 10-year-olds, and organizers conduct national tournaments for 8-year-olds, some of them so short their shorts reach their socks.
Long ago, summer basketball was under the auspices of the Amateur Athletic Union, and even today, many people use the term "AAU" to refer to competition by independent travel teams that are sponsored by major shoe companies. In reality, it has been well documented that the teams face no oversight from any national governing body and are free to behave almost any way they see fit. Many of the top teams are set up as nonprofits, whose financial disclosure rules are rarely policed, making it very difficult to uncover violations of NCAA rules on improper inducements to players.
In recent years, attempts by the NCAA to control the summer league teams have largely failed, and their power has only increased. In recruiting, the independent travel team coaches are now viewed as being more influential than most high school coaches. Without strong AAU ties, recruiting at an elite level becomes difficult, if not impossible, according to college assistant coaches.
"The last five or six years, I would say that was the dramatic change," Williams said. "With the change in the AAU has come incredible influence over the player, even the players with parents there. The AAU in the last five years has gained a phenomenal foothold with a lot of families in terms of directing their kid where he winds up going to school."
Rest of Part II
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/12/AR2009021202299.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost...2/12/AR2009021202299.html
