There was some great news for the University of Maryland on Thursday night. There was also some, well, interesting news.
The great news? Greivis Vasquez was drafted 28th overall by the Memphis Grizzlies. One of the best players to ever put on a Maryland uniform, Vasquez will have his jersey lifted into the rafters of the Comcast Center and be known for the highly emotional brand of basketball he played, his highly productive years on the court (2,000 points, 700 assists, and 600 rebounds for his career) and his sometimes maddening decisions on the court (bombs away from 35 feet for his heat check). As I pointed out in my piece about the legacy of Vasquez after Maryland lost to Michigan State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament in March, Vasquez will simply be remembered as single-handedly being Maryland basketball for four years.
One thing is for sure regarding Vasquez when as he enters the NBA — he’ll work as hard as he possibly can to be the best player he can be. He didn’t come this far from his days in Venezuela to stop working hard once he signs his contract and gets his money. Vasquez will absolutely be determined to earn his money and be the best player possible. If there’s one thing that I learned about Vasquez in his four years at Maryland, it’s that he will absolutely leave everything he has on the court. Vasquez will empty out his emotional and physical tank in each game, and I don’t expect that to change, even in the NBA, a league in which most players seemingly just go through the motions during a long 82-game regular season schedule.
Maybe Vasquez’s game won’t be an ideal fit for the NBA. Maybe he’s a bench player in his rookie year. Then again, he might be very successful right away. But I guarantee that he’ll work harder and be more prepared than any other player.
Like any Maryland student, I’ll miss Vasquez greatly. When I attend my first Maryland basketball game in the fall, and Vasquez isn’t pumping up the student section, or even throwing up 35-footers, I’ll miss him. It just won’t be quite the same with Vasquez in a Memphis uniform. Oh, and the basketball team also will especially miss him and his production — especially his head coach, Gary Williams.
Later on Thursday night, it was made official that Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow is leaving Maryland and taking the North Carolina State athletic director job. Maryland will name an interim athletic director as soon as next week, according to the Baltimore Sun’s Jeff Barker. The hiring of a permanent athletic director is complicated by the fact that university president C.D. “Dan” Mote is retiring on August 31, so it’s unclear whether Mote or his successor will name the next athletic director.
Under the watch of Yow, Maryland’s debt stemming from the athletic department has decreased from $51 million when she took over in 1994 all the way down to $6.8 million in the present. Yow oversaw the building of Comcast Center the renovation of both Byrd Stadium and the Gossett Football Team House (I’ve been in the Gossett House — it’s quite nice). Yow’s 16-year tenure saw 16 national championships for Maryland’s 27 sports. All of Yow’s coaching hires turned to gold, although the Ralph Friedgen hire doesn’t appear as golden as it once did.
Long story short, the Maryland athletics program is in exponentially better shape now than when Yow took the Maryland job, and NC State has to be thrilled to get a big-name athletic director with previous success. For Yow, the move to NC State is a chance to be around her hometown in North Carolina, although it’s probably a “lateral move” or a slight step down in terms of the current quality of each school’s athletic programs, specifically the big-money sports.
Yow’s most visible time at Maryland was her high-profile sparring match in the media with Williams after his teams had failed to make the NCAA Tournament in three out of four years from the 2005-’06 season to the 2007-’08 season, and appeared in the midst of missing the NCAA’s again in the 2008-’09 season (Maryland did rally to make the tournament that season, though). The athletic department and Williams began bickering in January 2009 over three recruits that were unable to attend Maryland for various reasons, as each side blamed the other for the recruits not being in College Park helping the team.
It’s widely believed that Yow saw Williams’ lack of success with his teams in those recent years as her chance to fire Williams and hire her own coach (Yow didn’t hire Williams to begin with), even though it was never going to fly with the higher-ups at College Park, given Williams’ status at Maryland (he won a national championship in 2002) and that they couldn’t financially afford to fire Williams. Obviously, the recruiting situation and Williams’ tenuous job security calmed down considerably when Williams and his team rallied to make the NCAA Tournament in 2009, and disappeared when Williams’ team won a share of the ACC regular season title this past season. Still, Williams and Yow didn’t like each other one bit from the time Yow walked onto the College Park campus as athletic director. Friedgen didn’t like Yow, either. It’s not particularly uncommon for a high-profile coach and athletic director not to get along, and Williams’ and Friedgen’s distaste for Yow is apparently a huge reason why she’s leaving.
Simply put, Williams and Friedgen are two of the happiest dudes in the world right now.
Apparently Williams wasn’t the only basketball man that didn’t like Yow — incoming senior forward Dino Gregory (@DinoGreg33) tweeted the following Thursday night:
“Debbie Yow leaving MD that’s surprising….not”
Later that night, Gregory tweeted this in response to another person’s tweet directed towards him:
“”@jjterp: @DinoGreg33 maybe our next AD will know who our basketball players are”..lol maybe”
So I think we can safely say that the people in the basketball program were not big fans of Yow. We’ll leave it at that.
Don Markus of the Baltimore Sun had an interesting take on Yow’s departure:
“Debbie Yow’s imminent departure from the University of Maryland is tied directly to her relationship with, and the future of, the school’s most prominent head coaches.
It means that Yow’s long-running feud with basketball coach Gary Williams, which dates back nearly to the day Yow arrived from Saint Louis University in the summer of 1994, is over.
It means that Williams, coming off two straight NCAA tournament appearances, isn’t going anywhere – at least not by his own choosing.
It means that Yow has left Ralph Friedgen without any kind of lifeline and that his future will be in the hands of a new president, a new athletic director and a football team coming off a 2-10 season, the worst in modern school history. It means that Friedgen — and coach-in-waiting James Franklin — are unlikely to be back in 2011 barring an unforseen turnaround.
Clearly, Yow saw that her own 16-year tenure, highlighted by unprecedented overall athletic success with 16 national championships but marred by fractious relationships with Williams and others, was in trouble with this summer’s retirement of school president C. Dan Mote.”
Clearly the most interesting part of this excerpt is that Friedgen and his staff will probably not be back in 2011 due to, at least in part, because he no longer has Yow’s backing, which means Friedgen had the backing of someone he didn’t like. Also, any new athletic director will likely want a clean slate with the football program after this season, so unless Friedgen puts together a plus-.500 record this coming season, he’ll probably not be back in 2011.
Clearly the most interesting part of this excerpt is Markus stating that Friedgen is left with no ”lifeline” without Yow, which doesn’t make any sense to me because Yow wanted Friedgen gone after last season’s 2-10 debacle — Yow even tried to raise the money to buy out Friedgen’s contract after trying the same thing with Williams the year before. How is someone who wants you out a “lifeline?” But it would make sense to me if Markus said that Friedgen and his staff wouldn’t be back in 2011 due to Friedgen no longer having the backing of the same president and higher-ups that kept him on board because of his huge contract (there’s a new president coming in this fall). Yow obviously really wanted Friedgen gone, but in the end, the Maryland higher-ups just had to keep Friedgen because of his expensive contractual obligations. Any new president and athletic director, though, will likely want a clean slate with the football program after this season, so unless Friedgen puts together a plus-.500 record this coming season, he probably won’t be back in 2011.
And in 2011, Williams will still probably be basking in the glow of outlasting Yow at Maryland.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention the $1 million guarantee Yow made to offensive coordinator James Franklin to become the head coach of the football team in 2011. That really leaves the next athletic director hamstrung, because he or she will likely want a clean slate, as I stated before. But do you really want to flush $1 million right down the toilet? Also, I changed my paragraph after Markus’ piece from what I wrote before. I looked into the situation further and have more well-thought out ideas now. Check it out.