When I found out on my phone that Gary Williams would be retiring, I just kept staring at my phone. That’s all I could do. The only Maryland men’s basketball coach that I had known was retiring. I refused to believe it was true at first; my friend called me and we both thought it just had to be a false rumor. And then the minutes passed by and it became clear that Williams was in fact retiring and he would be sent off via public press conference the next day.

It was a shock to the system. I root for primarily four teams – the Orioles, Ravens, Capitals and Maryland men’s basketball. The O’s, Ravens and Caps had gone through a combined 20 coaches in the period that Williams was the coach at Maryland. Williams became the head coach at Maryland before I was even born. While the other teams in the area were in flux, Williams was always on the television when I turned it on for Maryland basketball.

Part of the reason that people love sports is that no matter what went on during a particular day, their team will always be there for them at 7 p.m. that night, even if said team is lousy. With Maryland basketball, it wasn’t just the team that was there for you. It was that the rescuer of Maryland basketball, the one who brought the program back to prominence and built a NBA-like arena was there. Maryland basketball was Gary Williams. (And it will still be Gary Williams.)

My father moved to the Baltimore area a little before Williams got started at Maryland and he watched the Maryland basketball program become enveloped in sanctions upon sanctions under Bob Wade. And then he followed the Maryland basketball program during Gary’s tenure – it all leading up to the 2002 national title. As long as I can remember, my dad would shout one thing in particular at the television during Maryland basketball games.

“Gary!”

And then Williams would be shown on television cursing at officials, yelling at his assistants and players on the bench, and sweating profusely as he straddled the sidelines.

“Gary!”

And then the game would be coming to a close – more often than not with a Maryland victory.

“Gar-ry!!! Gar-ry!!! Gar-ry!!!”

And I know my dad wasn’t the only one to do it. Every time I went to a game at Comcast Center, well, everyone yelled out coach’s first name. Because that’s just what you did. It had become so instinctual over the years for anyone associated with the Maryland basketball team – whether you’re a fan or a student at the school or whatever the case may be – you were a part of a place called Garyland. Even when Williams was spotted at the Orioles’ home opener a year ago, the sellout crowd chanted his name.

But Gary Williams wasn’t just the Maryland men’s basketball team. He was the foremost individual for the University of Maryland – period. When outsiders think of the school, they think of Gary Williams. They don’t care who the athletic director is. They don’t know who the president of the school is. They might not even know who the football coach is. But they sure as hell know who the men’s basketball coach is, and it was Williams who made it that way.

When I decided to attend Maryland for college, the primary reason for this was the journalism program that the school had, but the national title-winning basketball program was a damn good secondary reason. I’m sure it was like that for a lot of students on campus – it’s no secret that success in revenue sports spikes applications to the school and therefore makes the school a little harder to get into and a more desirable destination.

And when I went to my first game at Comcast Center as a freshman, there it was: The Fist Pump.

Then the game would start, and watching Williams work the sidelines was as entertaining as the game itself.

A player on the court commits a turnover. Williams turns to his bench and berates assistant coaches and players. Since he can’t yell into the player’s ear who just committed the turnover, he is damn well going to make sure that everyone on the bench knows what went wrong on the play.

Then the five Maryland players on the floor work their transition game very well for an easy two points. Williams motions wildly for his players to get back on defense and stop patting themselves on the back for the nice play made in transition.

The first half ends, but Maryland just lost the momentum – the opposition had a good run at the end of the half. Williams huffs off to the locker room with his players, obviously not pleased with the way the first half ended. Actually, Maryland could go to the locker room up 50-5 and he’d be upset about something and visibly show it just by the expression on his face.

The second half begins. Williams is enraged by a non-call by one of the referees and lets the official nearby know about it. Williams looks so upset that his head looks like it’s in danger of being detached from his shoulders. He’s on the verge of being given a technical foul throughout the entire verbal exchange, but escapes the rather one-sided conversation without being given a technical.

The second half is beginning to come to a close. Maryland is hanging on by a thread. Williams looks like he’s coaching the NCAA title game with the way his emotions are left out on his sleeve. Maryland manages to hang onto the victory, and Williams looks as if the weight of the Comcast Center was lifted off his chest. He appears to take a deep breath, and trudge on over to the scorer’s table to talk with Johnny Holliday for a radio interview that will be blasted throughout the arena as fans headed towards the exit.

I loved those interviews after wins. It was pretty predictable what Williams would say – he’d congratulate his players for a job well done and give kudos to the opposing team, probably saying the other squad was a well-coached bunch. I don’t know how many other people enjoyed those interviews considering he said pretty much the same things over and over again, but I loved them. I always tried to stick around for their entirety.

So when I see Mark Turgeon roaming the sidelines for the first time next fall, it will be strange. It will be Bizarro World. But when I walk into Comcast Center, I’ll be thinking about one thing.

“Gary!”

When I first heard that Maryland sophomore center Jordan Williams would be testing the NBA draft waters, it made no sense to me, even if he hadn’t hired an agent yet. I thought that Williams was very obviously not ready for the NBA and was not a solid first round pick by any means. And if Williams were in the fold, Maryland basketball’s future would certainly look brighter the next two years than the results on the court this year might indicate (granted, it’s harder to have a bleaker future than missing the NIT).

But I thought about this a little more before writing anything about it. And you know what? The decision still makes very little to no sense to me.

Just starting with the very basics, Williams is just not ready for NBA-level competition at this point in his development. Williams is currently projected as a second rounder at best by Chad Ford of ESPN.com (ESPN Insider account necessary for the link). The biggest problem being a second rounder or an undrafted player is that the only guaranteed dollars in the NBA Draft are in the first round.

It doesn’t matter that Williams may have been the best big man in the ACC when it comes to his potential at the highest level of competition. NBA teams are looking for athletic tools that Williams probably will never have and polish that Williams has yet to develop.

First off, Williams isn’t really 6-foot-10 – he’s probably more like 6-foot-8. And there’s not much, if any, projection left within that 6-foot-8 frame. Williams pretty much is what he is – a 6-foot-8 big man with no room left to fill out, as he’s not exactly a lanky kid. NBA teams would be betting on how Williams’ current body type plays in the NBA rather than betting on what a super-athletic, long and lanky player could do in the future. That 6-foot-8 frame, which includes less than ideal length, probably wouldn’t end up playing very well in the NBA, especially considering that Williams won’t wow anyone with his jumping ability. NBA players play above the rim.

Mike Wise of the Washington Post during the season wrote in a column about the future of Maryland basketball that Williams’ build might be a deterrent for Maryland fans wanting Williams to stay rather than a positive thing. At the time of the column, though, it appeared Williams was a possible first rounder and not a possible second rounder like he is now. Still, Wise raises an interesting point:

“So much of the Terrapins’ immediate future rests on whether Jordan Williams stays or goes. The 6-foot-10 Maryland center is projected as the last pick in the first round by NBADraft.net. If he stayed another year, given his size and frame and skill, he would still most likely be a late first-round pick.”

Given that Williams is a possible second rounder (or possibly an undrafted player), would his size and frame mean that he’d still be a borderline draft talent after his junior or senior years? I don’t know. If Williams has NBA people telling him that given those factors, he might only be able to help his draft stock minimally over the next couple of years, it could have perhaps influenced his decision to test the draft waters.

But as far as physical tools, it’s not all bad for Williams. After all, you probably don’t get named First-Team All-ACC without some skills. What Williams lacks in size and length, he can partially make up for with quickness, as we saw Williams time and again sneak around bigger and longer players on the post as he made his way towards the rim. Williams, wrote Wise, uses that quickness get his shot off against bigger and longer bodies, too.

But what appears to be quickness in the college game might not look like quickness in the NBA – in fact, it might not look like anything. Williams is also a strong kid, and can overpower some college big men in getting to the rim. But again, he’ll never be able to do that in the NBA.

One of Williams’ best tools is his how soft his hands are, as very rarely did I see Williams awkwardly fumble entry passes to the low post. And, of course, his soft hands are critical for rebounding.

As far as the polish on Williams’ game, he’s a force down low on the blocks in the college game. He gets to the rim consistently and gets to the line a lot. He runs the floor well for a big man, best illustrated during the Duke game in College Park a year ago when Williams ran the floor on a fast break, took a pass from Greivis Vasquez and dunked over Jon Scheyer.

Williams usually competes well for rebounds, and was a double-double machine during his sophomore year at Maryland, averaging 16.9 points and 11.8 rebounds per game. Williams broke Len Elmore’s school record of consecutive double-doubles of 12 by stringing together 13 in a row at one point during the season.

But there’s significant portions of Williams’ game that still needs polish, too. He gets to a line a ton, but he can’t make free throws (57.5 percent this season). He struggles with mid-range jumpers, and those would be a necessity for him in the next level because he surely wouldn’t be able to do damage on the inside anywhere nearly as consistently as he would have in college hoops.

His defense on the post leaves a lot to be desired, too – Williams was picked apart during the Duke game in College Park this past February by the Plumlee brothers. It’s hard to imagine a defender that struggles with the Plumlee brothers being an effective NBA defender on the post.

At least to me, Williams needs to clean up those three areas – free throw shooting, his jump shot and post defense, in no particular order – in order to make a successful jump to the NBA. I think he can make the jump from a borderline second rounder to a borderline first rounder in next year’s draft if he markedly improves upon those three things in a possible 2011-’12 season in College Park. Since Williams will never be the most athletically gifted big man, he has to be as polished of a big man as possible.

Granted, I’m a student at Maryland and I realize that the basketball team could have a ton of issues next year (more on that in a bit) if Williams decides to hire an agent and go through with the draft process, which could be clouding my viewpoint on Williams’ situation. If I weren’t a student at Maryland and hadn’t been following the team since 2000(ish), I might have a different outlook on Williams’ impending decision.

Maybe Williams can receive higher-quality coaching in the pro ranks than in college, which would polish the parts of his game that need it most and improve upon his strengths. And the NBA being a full-time job could put a player like Williams with a lot to work on in a better position to improve his game, too.

Even so, to make it worthwhile for a sophomore in Williams’ position to go into the draft, the guaranteed money has to be there for the taking. And with Williams, it’s just not there at this point. If the guaranteed dollars were probable for Williams, I wouldn’t have an issue with declaring for the draft because all it takes is one injury and that money can be lost forever.

There are also external factors that could be pushing Williams to test the draft waters. I’m just speculating on this, but academic considerations could be a factor (how are his grades?). Williams hasn’t been in class in awhile, but I’m not quite sure if this is an indication that he’s completely mentally checked out of College Park already — after all, if you’re declaring for the draft, why would you be in class? You’d be working out for the draft elsewhere. But I don’t know how his academic standing would be affected if he came back to College Park after missing so much time in class.

(Most schools bend the rules academically for athletes that produce revenue for the schools to begin with, but I don’t know how much a school can help a player if that player is close to, say, failing out.)

Also factoring into Williams’ decision to test the draft waters are the wrong people possibly giving Williams advice on whether to go pro or not, and the lure of money, even though the guaranteed money doesn’t appear to be there for the taking, might also be a factoring into Williams’ decision.

My guess is Williams hears straight from NBA people that he’s not a first rounder and may struggle to even get drafted and Williams will return to Maryland, assuming his academics are in order.

Another factor that could help push Williams back to Maryland is the labor uncertainty in the NBA. But I’m largely unfamiliar with the logistics with the labor situation in the NBA, so I don’t know if how large of an effect it would have on draft prospects on the fence between college and pro (if it has any effect at all).

But if Williams does decide to hire an agent and go pro, I’ll hope that the studs of college basketball drop out of consideration for the draft and it has a trickle-down effect on the rest of the draft and Williams therefore becomes more of a lock to be drafted. And I’ll hope that Williams impresses teams enough in workouts and on film in order for Williams to get serious consideration as a first round pick. NBADraft.net has Williams as the 25th-overall pick of the draft right now, which seems really off-base to me.

As far as a 2011-‘12 Maryland squad without Williams, it would have nothing of substance at the four and five spots. James Padgett, Berend Weijs, Martin Breunig, Ashton Pankey and to a lesser extent, Hawk Palsson and Mychal Parker, would be the best options at the four and the five. You don’t need to be a basketball expert to figure out what issues would crop up for a roster such as the one that is looming for next year.

Padgett (6-foot-8) is as awkward of a big man as you’re going to see, and to this point hasn’t shown anything in his first two years with Maryland. Weijs (6-foot-10) has a ton of length, but doesn’t have any basketball skills aside from shot-blocking. Breunig (6-foot-9) is basically an unknown quantity and will probably be a long-term project for Gary Williams. Pankey (6-foot-9) is coming off an injury that kept him out for most of the season, so it’d probably be unfair to Pankey to expect anything out of him.

Palsson (6-foot-6) and Parker (6-foot-5) are undoubtedly talented players. But Palsson is the only one of the two that produced this past year, despite Parker being Maryland’s most highly touted recruit in the 2010 recruting class. Defensively, Palsson is a tweener because he’s not big or strong enough to compete down low for rebounds, but he’s not quick enough to keep up with ACC guards. Palsson and Parker are more suited for the three spot, at least for me.

In short, without Jordan Williams, it might actually be hard for Maryland fans to envision an immediate future for the team that’s significantly better than the year that Maryland just had.

From 1994 to 2004, not once did Selection Sunday pass by without the Maryland men’s basketball team being announced as a being a part of the NCAA Tournament field. In the middle of that 11-year NCAA Tournament run, making the NCAA Tournament was a given and the Final Four was the goal. Just making the tournament wasn’t a goal like it is today. Maryland was a legitimate national power, and to this day, some of the games that Maryland played against Duke during the middle of that run remain the most intense, enthralling basketball games I’ve seen.

This year, Maryland not only failed to make the tournament, but it failed to make the NIT, and 2011 marks the fourth year out of seven that Maryland has not made the NCAA Tournament. Failures of any college program can often be traced back to one thing: recruiting, and that the program did not have a consistent supply of talent year after year. The Maryland men’s basketball team is no different.

A good portion of Maryland fans have and will complain endlessly that the program didn’t recruit and land the big in-state talents of the past decade or so. Maryland saw stud five-star recruits like Carmelo Anthony and Michael Beasley left the state for other programs before bolting to the NBA. The fans’ mentality is understandable. College Park is located in one of the best breeding grounds of high school basketball – Prince George’s County. And College Park is a hop, skip and a jump away from another basketball breeding ground – Baltimore.

The truth is that these in-state five-star studs were never going to come to Maryland. Williams doesn’t particularly care for the recruiting game. Williams is not at all a fan of the AAU scene, where Williams, a national championship-winning coach, has to pander to AAU coaches and handlers in order to have a shot at landing a recruit that might only stay at your college for a year or two.

To get some of these big five-star recruits — and I have no hard evidence backing me up on this, but it’s a fairly well known part of big-time college athletics — you have to cut corners. In regards to football in the SEC, it’s considered that “if you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.” This isn’t particularly uncommon elsewhere in big-time college sports.

Williams just isn’t going to cut corners like some other coaches. He’s not going to do anything that leaves him in any way susceptible to NCAA sanctions. That’s understandable, especially since he took over a program in 1989 that had to be dug out of a massive hole created in part by all sorts of NCAA sanctions left in the wake of Bob Wade. He’ll sometimes take not-so-subtle jabs at other coaches who do cheat. And Williams isn’t one to involve himself with the one-and-done types, not only for the aforementioned reasons, but also that he probably feels that those types of players aren’t the ones to build a program around. That, too, is fair.

With all that being said, recruiting is still the life-blood of any college program. When a basketball program in a major college conference basically has a two-year gap in recruiting and doesn’t have the elite one-and-done players to make up for it, missing both the NCAA Tournament and NIT is what happens. When the fruits of Maryland’s 2007 and 2008 recruiting classes are Adrian Bowie, Cliff Tucker, Dino Gregory and Sean Mosley, you’re damn right the team will have problems in the years that the seniors and juniors would typically be carrying the load. Because there sure aren’t any elite one-and-done players at Maryland to carry the load for them.

Now, don’t get me wrong — I’m not railing against Bowie, Tucker, Gregory and Mosley. I can’t criticize four college kids, all of whom have given a ton of time and energy to the basketball program, for the team getting passed over for the NIT. Hell, Gregory developed into a really nice jump shooter and defender on the post. Others have come and gone from those classes for various reasons, including Gus Gilchrist (who never really even got to Maryland), Steve Goins and Jin Soo Kim.

Even though some players just didn’t pan out, Gregory’s smooth 18-foot jump shot doesn’t cut it for a program that thrives on having quality upperclassmen lead the way. The 2010-’11 season will be remembered as the season that Maryland got passed over by the NIT due to the upperclassmen not being able to lead the way and the underclassmen not being able to carry the load yet.

The head coach of any college athletic program is the one that’s ultimately responsible for everything that goes on with the program, and that includes the overall quality of the recruiting. Even though his assistants do most of the recruiting for the program, Williams is responsible for the quality of the players on his team, which includes the seniors and juniors on the team this year. I’ll say it once more — Williams is ultimately responsible for anything involved with recruiting.

So Maryland fans’ collective blood probably boils when they read that Greg Whittington of Oakland Mills just committed to Georgetown over Maryland, and that Williams wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to go see him play. Per Josh Barr of the Washington Post:

“While Greg Whittington had no intention of committing to Georgetown during an unofficial campus visit Sunday, the Oakland Mills star forward said he knew that he wanted to play for the Hoyas – even though he had never stepped foot on campus previously.

“I had my mind set,” Whittington said. “Georgetown, it’s close to home. Maryland is too. But Georgetown was something different.

“Put it like this. Their head coach and his dad were in there, their whole coaching staff came [to Oakland Mills’ playoff victory over Douglass], not just one or two” coaches.

When it was pointed out that two days later, Maryland Coach Gary Williams and assistants Keith Booth and Bino Ranson attended the Scorpions’ playoff loss to Gwynn Park, Whittington replied: “Yeah, after. It took him longer. It took him pretty long to get here.”"

Did Maryland miss out on some players in their 2007 and 2008 recruiting classes because Williams didn’t work hard enough to get players like Whittington? I don’t know. But Williams being outworked on the recruiting trail is hardly new.

This isn’t say that Williams should be fired because his suspect recruiting classes in 2007 and 2008 led to a poor year in 2010-’11. If there’s any coach that can recover from this, it’s Williams. And if there’s any coach that deserves multiple opportunities to figure it out, it’s Williams. How many coaches have won a national title in the past decade, after all? It can’t be ignored that over Williams’ tenure, the program that has most often challenged Duke and North Carolina for ACC supremacy has been Maryland.

As an aside, I’m sure there are some Maryland fans who want Williams gone. But I ask you this: Is your wish of Williams being fired reactionary based upon this season? Or would you have thought that Williams needed to go even after last season because you saw the inconsistencies of years past and where you thought the program was headed? It’s too easy to be reactionary.

Also, if Williams were to be fired, then what? Who are you hiring? Are you confident in Kevin Anderson, the man who made a fool out of himself during the Ralph Friedgen firing, would hire someone better than Williams? Actually, we’d be wasting our breath to talk about this because Williams isn’t going anywhere right now. I will say that at some point, Maryland has to start wondering about Williams’ future because the man is 66 years old. At some point, you have to figure out, realistically, how long Williams can keep putting in however many ungodly amounts of hours of film study and coaching he puts in for the basketball program.

Anyway, if a coach is more apt to recruit the four-year types over the one-and-done’s, like Williams, that coach can’t have what essentially amounts to a two-year gap in recruiting. Williams recruited Greivis Vasquez, Eric Hayes and Landon Milbourne in the team’s 2006 class, which has to be universally considered a successful recruiting class even though those players never made it past the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The next quality recruit was Jordan Williams in the 2009 class. The 2010 class looks very promising, with Terrell Stoglin, Pe’Shon Howard and Hawk Palsson all getting significant minutes this year.

Next year, the frontcourt will be extremely thin due to Maryland’s inability to recruit a legitimate forward in this class to pair with Jordan Williams down low. To think that Maryland next year will trot out a rotation of James Padgett, Berend Weijs, Martin Breunig and maybe Ashton Pankey is plain scary. Padgett and Weijs just aren’t ACC players. We know nothing about the incoming freshman Breunig and Pankey was out for almost the whole year due to injury. I don’t even want to know what will happen when Jordan Williams gets into foul trouble. You know a program has problems consistently recruiting when Gregory’s departure leaves a gaping hole in the starting five.

Mychal Parker and Palsson are more swingman types, at least for me. Parker, the highest-rated recruit of Maryland’s 2010 recruiting class, has physical gifts that rival that of any Maryland player in the past decade. But he didn’t get much playing time all year, especially not in conference play. Sometimes, it’d be shocking to see him in a game.

There’s no doubt Parker has the tools to play in the ACC, but it’s a matter of actualizing those tools into basketball skills that match up to fellow ACC players. I also see Palsson as more of swingman type. In Palsson’s case, he clearly was ready to compete at the offensive end of the court in the ACC this year, but seemed to be a tweener to be on defense. He wasn’t quick enough to keep up with guards, but wasn’t big or strong enough to compete down low for rebounds.

Maryland, though, should be deep in the backcourt, with Nick Faust and Sterling Gibbs joining a backcourt already consisting of Stoglin, Howard and Mosley. None of those current three are particularly great shooters, so one has to hope that Faust and Gibbs can shoot well right away against ACC defenses in order to shore up what has long been a problem area for Maryland — three-point shooting. With the three-point line being as close as it is, college teams have to take advantage of it. There’s no other option. Because if you don’t take advantage of it, the opposing team will. It gives teams a margin for error, because if you can shoot well, you’re never out of a game. Even if you’re getting thoroughly outplayed, if you have a couple of deadly shooters, you can hop right back into the game.

As for what’s in store for the Maryland program next year, I have no idea. I’m not pleased that Jordan Williams will be the only force down low to score in the paint and compete on the glass for rebounds. I’m looking forward to the continued development of Stoglin and Howard — I think Stoglin, in particular, can be really special. I’m looking forward to the infusion of more young guards. But can I confidently say that Maryland will be able to be a solid NCAA Tournament team when the same problems that plagued them this year — production from the seniors — could plague them again next year? No, I can’t confidently predict that.

And what does happen if Maryland doesn’t make the field of 68 next year? Do the university and its fans have a legitimate case for Williams to be removed? I don’t know, but I don’t care to find out.

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.

When Korie Lucious sunk his three-pointer to eliminate the Maryland men’s basketball team from the NCAA Tournament, an era passed in Maryland basketball.

An interesting era, a unique era, an emotional era, and sometimes, a bizarre era.

It’s the Greivis Vasquez era. For four years, Maryland basketball was Vasquez.

I came across this blog post by Kevin Van Valkenburg of The Baltimore Sun, as Van Valkenburg attempts to define the legacy of Vasquez shortly after Maryland elimination in the second round of the tournament.

Van Valkenburg, near the top of his blog post, gives us a proper introduction that must be examined before we look further into Vasquez’s legacy:

“Vasquez passed Len Bias on Sunday to become Maryland’s 2nd all-time leading scorer behind Juan Dixon, but years from now, when we think about him, stats are never going to accurately paint a proper picture of what his career was like. He’ll likely go down as one of the most interesting college athletes to ever pass through College Park, and if you followed his career, you likely ran the gamut of emotions. He was erratic and emotional, fabulous and frenetic, courageous and captivating, sometimes all in one game.”

Second-all time leading scorer, even better than the legendary Len Bias.

Second.

Vasquez also became the first player in ACC history to score at least 2,000 points and record at least 700 assists and 600 rebounds in his career.

One of the most interesting athletes to ever pass through College Park? Heck, Vasquez is probably one of the most interesting people to ever pass through College Park. Erratic and emotional? Fabulous and frenetic? Courageous and captivating? Yeah, that sounds about right.

Van Valkenburg is absolutely correct when he mentions that these kinds of emotions for fans could be experienced in one game. How many times has Vasquez gone on a great scoring run, pumping up the Comcast Center to insane levels, only to throw up a 35-foot three-ball a possession later for, well, his heat check.

How many times has Vasquez been ice cold all game, seemingly forcing all of his three-pointers and drives to the lane, only to get hot at exactly the correct time late in the game?

Now, Van Valkenburg gives us a little perspective:

“I’m not sure anyone can ever understand how hard it must have been for him to enroll at Maryland with only a limited grasp of English in 2006. The pressures of college are hard enough without having to juggle athletics — plus academics in a language that’s not your own — and think of what it must have been like at times for him. Thousands of miles from his home and his family, struggling at times to find his role in Maryland’s program, only vaguely understanding the frequent criticism half the fan base is throwing at you.”

Awesome points here from Van Valkenburg. As a student at College Park, I can tell you how demanding and difficult collegiate academics can be as a freshman. People who were formerly freshmen, like I am now, can probably tell you about the sometimes very difficult academic transition from high school to college. And I can’t even to begin to imagine how hard it must be to go to a different country to go to college for your freshman year, especially when you have no idea about the language and culture of that particular foreign country.

Throw in big-time, highly pressurized ACC basketball, which is essentially a 24 hour a day job. As a freshman, Vasquez averaged 28.8 minutes per game. In other words, it was learning on the job. There was no comfortable transition – Vasquez was thrown right into the fire.

Perspective enough for you?

Anyway, Van Valkenburg continues, as he writes about Vasquez’s unusual antics and personality, and how it translated to his playing style:

“It was sort of a learning experience for us too. Gary Williams had to explain to people countless times that Venezuelan culture was expressive, flamboyant, unapologetic and emotional. That’s why Vasquez was the way he was, and he wasn’t changing. His antics still rubbed some people the wrong way, as did the way Vasquez played — launching ill-advised 3-pointers, throwing one-handed passes, driving the lane without much of a plan. When it worked, it was beautiful chaos. When it didn’t, it felt like one man trying to do too much.”

Some athletes are calm off the court, but once they step onto the court, they’re intense as anyone else on the court.

For Vasquez, his personality equated to his play on the court. Crazy and unique personality, crazy and unique style of play. That unique style of play frustrated the fan base to no end when the 25-footers with 30 seconds left on the shot clock clanked off the rim, but when those same shots connected, it pumped up the fan base like no other Maryland player could in the last four years.

Vasquez’s personality was never going to change. His style of play was never going to change. It was what it was.

But that same personality got him into some interesting situations, too. Writes Van Valkenburg:

“When Vasquez was booed by a small group of his own fans after a late-season victory over Georgia Tech last year, he told his fellow students, in not so subtle terms, to go to hell. Williams defended him. And when Williams was under fire from Maryland fans, the media, and his own athletic department last year, it was Vasquez who had his coach’s back, lashing out at reporters.”

Do you honestly think Vasquez would have brushed aside his own student section talking bad about him and his team? Do you honestly think Vasquez, who is extremely close to his coach of the past four years, Gary Williams, would have ignored media openly questioning his coach?

No.Vasquez responded. That’s who Vasquez is. That’s what he does. There was no changing that.

After dabbling with the idea of the NBA Draft and finding the waters murky at best, Vasquez came back to Maryland, where expectations for this year’s team were relatively low. Vasquez responded with by far the best season of his four years at Maryland, averaging 19.6 points, 6.3 assists and 4.6 rebounds per game, and led Maryland to an ACC regular season co-championship with a 13-3 conference record. Key in Vasquez’s conference performances was his increased maturity from previous years, as he became the true senior leader on Maryland this season.

Vasquez was obviously the key cog for Maryland during conference play after a less than ideal non-conference performance. Against North Carolina, Vasquez dropped 26 points and had 11 assists. Against Virginia at the Comcast Center, Vasquez scored 25 first half points (30 for the game) and had eight rebounds. On the road at NC State, Vasquez sparked a big second half comeback victory.

Against Clemson at home, Vasquez dropped 15 points and had 13 assists, while helping to spark a 12-0 second half run that all but won the game for Maryland. Vasquez won the double-overtime battle at Virginia Tech for Maryland by scoring 41 points.

Against Duke, Vasquez essentially won the ACC Player of the Year award by out-dueling fellow candidate Jon Scheyer and helped Maryland beat Duke with 20 points and five assists. In the last game of the regular season at Virginia, Vasquez clinched the victory with three three-pointers in four possessions towards the end of regulation despite being ice-cold all game.

But the big game was against Duke. For Vasquez, it seemed like validation. Maryland had beaten Duke on Senior Night at the Comcast Center. After embracing his coach during the pre-game ceremony as he would never let go, Vasquez won the game with a play that typified his entire college career:

A drive to the lane followed by a crazy 12-foot floater by Vasquez as he is falling towards the right corner? To clinch the victory against Duke? On Senior Night?

A perfect way to end for Vasquez, whose penchant for taking (and making) crazy shots became a trademark of his.

Yes, this is all great, the saying will go. The ACC Player of the Year award and the ACC regular season title are both great. But what have Vasquez’s teams done in the NCAA Tournament?

It’s a fair question. The answer is that his teams haven’t done much in the tournament. His freshmen, junior and senior years ended during the second round of the NCAA Tournament, while Maryland was NIT-bound during Vasquez’s sophomore year.

Will Maryland’s lack of postseason success during his four years taint Vasquez’s legacy? Sure it will. But it certainly won’t define Vasquez’s legacy.

What will is that Vasquez was Maryland basketball for four years. If one takes away Vasquez from Maryland’s program for his four years, is Maryland even the least bit relevant nationally? Heck, is it even relevant within its own conference?

The answer is no.

That’s what Vasquez’s legacy will be when No. 21 is raised to the rafters of the Comcast Center.

Yes, it all came to a bitter end.

The best Maryland men’s basketball season of recent memory, complete with an ACC regular season co-championship, came to a crashing halt.

This Maryland basketball season might have been the most fun I have had watching a team come together and play. Never before have I had the opportunity to go to the vast majority of a team’s home games. This being my freshman year at Maryland, never had I experienced the in-season excitement that comes with being associated with a big-time college basketball school when the basketball team is doing well.

Long story short, never have I felt so attached to a particular team.

Maryland gave me the three most intense sporting events that I’ve ever attended, starting with the Cliff Tucker buzzer beater against Georgia Tech, then onto the comeback against Clemson, and finishing up with the best sporting event I’ve attended, the wild game against Duke.

The Tucker buzzer beater:

Vasquez makes it a 10-point lead late in regulation against Clemson with a steal and subsequent dunk:

Vasquez drops the ball off for Jordan Williams on a fast break early in the game against Duke, and Williams finishes with authority:

This team gave the entire Maryland campus, including myself, a lot of thrills.

Much of those thrills were because of the three seniors on this year’s squad: Greivis Vasquez, Eric Hayes and Landon Milbourne.

The seniors deserve the utmost amount of credit for this season, and for their efforts throughout their four years at Maryland.

There’s Vasquez, the emotional leader for Maryland, who also led by example with his performance. There’s Hayes, known as the calm and cool backcourt complement to Vasquez. There’s Milbourne, an equally cool customer, who perfected the art of the 15-foot jumper.

This senior class had its ups and downs for the first three years of its tenure at Maryland, but it all came together during their senior year.

For the seniors’ efforts for their four years at Maryland, and for the entire team’s efforts this season, the entire Maryland campus thanks you and wishes you well in your future endeavors.

I just couldn’t manage to talk about the Maryland loss right after the game. I felt like I had my heart ripped out.

Then I had to catch up on all of the schoolwork that I didn’t do over spring break, which brings us to today.

The loss was probably the toughest loss that I can recall from my years of following my hometown teams. Never had I experienced such a swing of emotions in such a short period of time during a sporting event, with such a heartbreaking end. Not only was it the end of the season, but also an end of an era — the Greivis Vasquez era. Does it qualify as it the toughest loss in Maryland basketball history? I’m not in a position to talk about if it does or not, but this 85-83 loss to Michigan State certainly has to rank right up there with Maryland’s most painful defeats.

Certainly what will be remembered about this game will be the final two minutes and Korie Lucious’ dagger into College Park:

One can criticize Maryland’s defense for not getting a hand in the face of Lucious. One can criticize Maryland for not sticking with the full-court press that enabled them to come back in the final minutes.

(But please, no one should ever criticize Vasquez for taking his go-ahead shot with six seconds left on the clock. The primary concern for Vasquez in that situation is to get a good look. He got a good look, he took the shot and made it. The clock is a secondary concern in that situation).

But in the end, Lucious just hit the shot of his life. It’s the NCAA Tournament, when buzzer beaters occur at an seemingly alarming rate. Lucious hit the shot. Tip your cap to him for making the shot in such a high pressure situation.

It’s the NCAA Tournament. One buzzer beater and you’re done for the year. Maryland’s not the first team to have this feeling, and certainly won’t be the last.

Looking at the play, though, one can see how close Draymond Green gets to hitting one of his own teammates in the head with his pass that eventually makes its way over to Lucious for the game-winning shot.

Also remembered in this game will be Vasquez’s gritty efforts in the last two minutes, scoring 10 points in the last two minutes of the game after struggling all game with his shot and having trouble getting to the hoop off of the bounce. In his four years at Maryland, even if he was having a bad shooting day, not once would Vasquez stop shooting. He’d want the ball at the end of the game in every single close game that Maryland played during his time in College Park. And in the final two minutes of his Maryland career, Vasquez showed the kind of winning player he developed into.

What won’t be remembered is how thoroughly Michigan State was handling Maryland for the first 38 minutes of the game. Michigan State’s inside-out offensive balance was troubling Maryland’s defense, as was Michigan State’s significant advantage over Maryland on the boards (35 rebounds to Maryland’s 21 for the game). It also helped that Michigan State was shooting the lights out from three-point range, led by Durrell Summers’ 6-for-7 three point shooting effort on the day. With 8:42 left in regulation, Michigan State had stretched its lead to 15 points with a Lucious three ball.

Really, what kept Maryland in the game at all was Eric Hayes’ performance, as he was the only Terrapin to have a good shooting day. Hayes went for 18 points, while going 4-for-7 from three point land.

For 38 minutes, Michigan State looked handily better than Maryland, even with its best player on the bench, Kalin Lucas (who would have been a very useful, calming presence for Michigan State in those last two frenetic minutes). For 38 minutes, it looked like this might be the anti-climactic end for one of the most unique and interesting chapters in Maryland basketball history.

So quickly, all of that vanished.

It’s part of the beauty of basketball — one team can dominate another team for most of the game, but with one quick run, boom, it’s a tie game.

Maryland just happened to be on the business end of what the NCAA Tournament is all about.

Some other tidbits on the game…

-Starter Sean Mosley only played 14 minutes, while Adrian Bowie played 27 minutes off the bench and Cliff Tucker, 14. Gary Williams seemed to prefer the quicker Bowie and Tucker over Mosley against Michigan State as the game wore on, especially when Maryland went to a full-court press. But, I believe Mosley is Maryland’s best defender and could have been used in a bigger role during the game, especially in the case of slowing down Michigan State’s three point shooting (10-for-18 on the day).

-For the first 38 minutes of the game, Maryland was in a tough situation regarding its full-court press. The only time Maryland could get easy points was off of a successful press, but when Michigan State broke the press, it often found three-point shooters like Summers wide open for three pointers. At the end of regulation, though, Maryland’s press worked to perfection.

-For the game, Vasquez scored 26 points on 9-of-20 shooting. Jordan Williams had 10 points and 10 rebounds, while Landon Milbourne went for 11 points on 5-of-10 shooting.

-Williams, though, will be remembered in this game for sitting on the court in disbelief after Lucious’ shot connected.

Sorry, I just can’t muster any words for this Maryland loss at this point. Maybe I can get some of my thoughts down at a later time. When that ball went through the hoop, it felt like someone had ripped my heart out.

So, I was a bit off in my prediction that Villanova would make it to the national title game.

There’s always next year, I guess.

I cited a friendly draw given to Villanova by the selection committee as a big reason that Villanova could make it to the title game. I figured that as flawed as a two-seed as they may be, they should be able to handle their first two opponents and fight out a victory against Baylor. I also thought Villanova could beat the South region’s No. 1 seed, Duke, by a comfortable margin because I thought Villanova matched up really well with Duke. In the Final Four, I liked Villanova to match up with Big East rival West Virginia, a team that Villanova could have easily beaten twice in conference play, but went 1-1 against.

So much for that.

Robert Morris out-played Villanova in the first round despite losing in overtime. Then St. Mary’s sound offensive concept and presence of a good big man did Villanova in. St. Mary’s ran a patient, disciplined approach on the offensive end, leaning on their big man, Omar Samhan.

Samhan dominated the paint all game, going 13-of-16 from the field and putting up 32 points. Villanova’s absence of a big man to contain a player like Samhan troubled the Wildcats all year, and was a huge part of their final demise this season.

Also interesting was how Villanova failed to, well, run an offense. It looked like five guys thrown out onto the floor, playing together for the first time in their lives. No consistent cutting, not much movement without the ball, and certainly no big man to rely on when the jumpers aren’t falling. No consistent presence underneath the hoop to help out with the offensive rebounding effort and nobody that can post up effectively.

The only time Villanova made any type of offensive run was when their pressing style of defense was immediately converted into points in transition.

But hey, if Scottie Reynolds (2-for-11 against St. Mary’s) and Corey Fisher (3-for-13) shoot decently, Villanova probably gets away with everything and is onto the Sweet 16.

Here’s where I’ll give credit to a previous commenter, who simply refers to himself as “KA.” This KA fellow was not at all pleased with my prediction that Villanova would go to the title game:

“Glad to see the Morgan State shout, but I saw no love for Baylor and too much love for Villanova. Mr. Reynolds is a great player, and yes they have an array of good guards, but what are they going to do on the interior? Who are they going to feed? Who is going to bring the defense in, and then muscle up for rebounds? No one. That is where Nova will have their problems. Someone is going outrun them, outshoot them, and/or outrebound them. Whether that is Duke, Louisville, Baylor, Richmond, or any other team from that bracket, it’s going to happen.”

KA was right on.

Northern Iowa is officially the cinderella of the NCAA Tournament.

Northern Iowa defeated overall No. 1 seed Kansas, 69-67, on Saturday night. Ali Farokhmanesh, who scored 16 points on the night for Northern Iowa, buried a wide-open three-pointer to put Northern Iowa up by four points with 35 seconds left in regulation after Northern Iowa swiftly broke the Kansas full-court press.

After struggling to even in-bound the ball against the Kansas full-court press in the closing minutes of regulation, Northern Iowa finally broke the press and Farokhmanesh nailed the three-ball:

Farokhmanesh ended up hitting two free throws to seal the deal later on.

It was the first time in 48 years that a Missori Valley Conference team had beaten a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

I’m still baffled as to why Kansas didn’t put on their full-court press more often in the game. When they put on the press, Northern Iowa struggled mightily, for the most part. With that press, Kansas would be able to ignite their offense with easy points off of turnovers, and would tire out Northern Iowa in the process. It’s quite fatiguing to have to break a quality full-court press on a consistent basis, and that where’s Kansas’ depth would come into play. Kansas can roll fresh players onto the court to work the press, while Northern Iowa’s lack of depth would be exposed.

Nevertheless, Northern Iowa pulled the stunner and deserves the utmost credit. And this directly affects Maryland.

If Maryland beats Michigan State on Sunday, then Maryland would not have to face Kansas in the Sweet 16, but they would face Northern Iowa. Many took one look at the bracket and figured Maryland could go no further than the Sweet 16 because of Kansas’ presence, but no longer is that the case.

But I’ll start talking about a potential matchup with Northern Iowa if Maryland takes care of business tomorrow.