Hungry Terps send State packing
Mar 12, 2009
Gary Williams knew what it would take. Having led Maryland to 11 straight NCAA tournaments at one point during his tenure, Williams told his team it must advance at least to the semifinals in the 2009 ACC Tournament to merit selection this season. “I said, ‘I’ve never done this before in my coaching career, but we’ve got to go down there to play and we’ve got to win two games,'" he admitted.
The first obstacle in the path of the 7th-seed Terrapins was N.C. State, still shuffling the deck of playing options as time winds down on its season. “Just so you know, nobody’s going to be excited after we win the first game,” Williams warned his players.
He meant no disrespect to the Wolfpack, which Maryland defeated 74-69 before 26,352 fans at the Georgia Dome. Rather, he recognized that his team’s resume remains incomplete pending its quarterfinals matchup with No. 2 seed Wake Forest.
N.C. State coach Sidney Lowe was left describing his team as playing “a pretty good game,” which proved insufficient for the 14th time in 30 games this season. As has often been the case, the Pack matched a supposedly-superior opponent stride for stride for an extended period, only to falter down the stretch. This time there were 21 lead changes and six ties before Maryland pulled away, abetted by repeated N.C. State failures to execute defensive assignments or to solve the Terps’ zone alignment.
The oddest aspect of the game from the perspective of 10th-seeded N.C. State was the sudden return to prominence of point guard Julius Mays.
Lowe said that Farnold Degand, an erstwhile regular at the position, didn’t play for disciplinary reasons. That didn’t quite explain the 24 minutes accorded Mays, who played a single minute in the previous 10 games, scoring one point. Against Maryland Lowe employed the freshman for 24 minutes.
The choice was inspired to a degree, as Mays led the Wolfpack with 18 points and two assists. But teammates must adjust to the styles, strengths and temperaments of different playmakers. Doing so on the fly is the basketball equivalent of rotating quarterbacks; few squads prosper for long with such an arrangement.
The tactic, and Mays’ success, left an impression not unlike the perplexity caused by No. 12 Georgia Tech’s upset of No. 5 Clemson earlier in the day. “People say our talent level is better than our record,” conceded Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt after his team improved to 12-18. “They’re right.”
Lowe has far less talent, and has engineered a better record. Yet the Pack, like the Yellow Jackets, are one game removed from concluding the season without apparently discovering their comfort zone, or figuring out what works best.
Williams, too, is still searching, dusting off the hoariest of coaching clichés to motivate himself and his team. “We were picked last in the league by all the pundits,” he declared at one point. This despite the fact the ACC media predicted a seventh-place finish for his squad, one of its more accurate forecasts.
Maryland has now won at least 19 games for 13 consecutive seasons, best in the ACC. That consistency has been overshadowed, though, by missing the NCAAs in three of the past four seasons. Intensifying the negative attention, Williams recently feuded publicly with an assistant director of athletics at the school, and his recruiting was the subject of a critical three-part series in the Washington Post.
No wonder he admitted getting to the NCAA tournament this year “would probably be the second-best” visit of his 20-year tenure at College Park, after the 1994 trip that followed three years of an inherited probation.
