The players found out at 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon. Some of his close friends didn’t even know by then, and many of the people he worked with. It was Gary Williams’ little secret he had coached his last game at Maryland.
It’s probably better for this to come as a complete surprise, because this way everybody will forget that final game: a one-sided loss to Duke in the ACC Tournament. Dean Smith went out in the Final Four. John Wooden went out with an NCAA championship. Williams went out getting his tail kicked by Mike Krzyzewski for the third time this year.
Gary Williams chose to retire after 33 years as a Division I coach. (AP Photo)
There was no last NCAA Tournament appearance to crown Williams’ legacy, and there wasn’t likely to be next season now that sophomore center Jordan Williams signed with an agent and is in the NBA draft for good. So perhaps the retirement Gary had been pondering for a while began to seem even more appealing.
He thought about it a year ago, not long after he reached the prototypical retirement age of 65, but decided he still had more to offer. And that extra year wasn’t all a struggle. It is curious the part of his job that had become the greatest burden to him, recruiting new talent, was more successful in 2011 than any recent season. He signed two fine guard prospects, Sterling Gibbs and Nick Faust, adding them to a backcourt that already featured successful freshmen Pe’Shon Howard and Terrell Stoglin.
It may be that being newly married convinced him it was time to spend less time on the road and more time with family. He had a quiet wedding a couple weeks back, one that certainly attracted less publicity than the nuptials for Will and Kate. The travel that comes with chasing games and players across the continent can create a dreadful strain on even the strongest marriage.
It’s not as though Williams needs to apologize, though, for deciding 33 years as a Division I head coach were enough.
North Carolina coach Roy Williams, for one, felt there was nothing for his coaching friend to worry about in deciding to end such a long, successful career.
"I am shocked but yet there comes a time for everyone to make their own decision and move on with their life," North Carolina coach Roy Williams said. "Gary is a great friend, a great coach and one that I will miss immensely in the ACC and in college basketball. He has truly done an outstanding job at every school he’s coached at and has done it well for many, many years. I am happy he is leaving on his terms, but very sad that he will no longer be a colleague on the sidelines."
He didn’t win as many games as Dean Smith. He didn’t win as many championships as Jim Calhoun. He didn’t win as many friends as Al McGuire because Williams’ personal charm was much less overt, though no less profound.
Williams is every bit deserving of a place next to those coaches in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, though it has taken a while for the electors to recognize his merits. Williams should be remembered as one of the greatest college coaches. He won at American, at Boston College, at Ohio State -- and he’d have won at Duquesne if he hadn’t been frightened away from the job by the unrealistic expectations of one of the school’s legendary figures.
Most memorably, Williams rebuilt Maryland from a failed power, drowning under the weight of NCAA sanctions, into the program that eventually won the 2002 national championship.
He never quite was able to revisit the success of that team, although there were brief flashes of glory: the ACC Tournament title in 2004, the regular-season crown shared with eventual national champion Duke in 2010, which the Terps secured with a stirring home victory over the Blue Devils during the final week of the regular season.
There were reasons why Maryland struggled subsequent to that championship season that had nothing to do with Williams losing his touch on the bench. He was as good as ever in terms of preparing a team, scouting opponents, running a game.
It had become more difficult, though, to win without elite talent. The 2002 team was symbolic of both Williams’ greatest successes and his greatest struggles; it was the only championship team since the first McDonald’s All-American came of age to win the title without one of the game’s alumni on the roster. The star players – guards Juan Dixon and Steve Blake, big men Lonny Baxter and Chris Wilcox – had been undervalued by others in the recruiting process. As the assistants who uncovered those gems became head coaches – Billy Hahn, Dave Dickerson, Jimmy Patsos – locating such players became a greater challenge.
Recruiting changed, as well, with the rising influence of summer coaches, AAU coaches, club coaches – whatever you want to call them, Gary didn’t. Call them, I mean. It was best described in a Washington Post story from 2009 headlined, “A Whole New Ballgame That Williams Won’t Play.” It was one segment of a terrific three-part series, but writers Eric Prisbell and Steve Yanda could have summarized the whole project in one quote they secured from Curtis Malone, who runs the popular and powerful DC Assault program: “A guy like Gary, he is not a big AAU guy, and everyone knows that."
There are no AAU coaches in retirement. If Williams chooses to pursue television work or merely to golf and spend time with his new wife, he doesn’t have to worry about the Assault or Baltimore Elite or Team Takeover. He has earned this freedom. He no longer needs to sweat the recruiting process.
