Gary Williams (born March 4, 1945 in Collingswood, New Jersey) is the current head coach of the University of Maryland, College Park's men's basketball team.
In his tenure at his alma mater, Williams has engineered an unbelievable reversal of fortune for the men's basketball program. The 1968 Maryland graduate began his coaching career at the high school level in New Jersey, where he won a state title at Woodrow Wilson High School in Camden in 1971. Working under his good friend and former teammate Tom Davis, Williams served as an assistant basketball coach, as well as head soccer coach, at Lafayette College starting in 1972. Shortly thereafter, he joined Davis' staff at Boston College. Williams scored his first head coaching job in 1978 with American University. He accrued a 72-42 record at American, setting the single-season record for wins with 25 during the 1980-81 season and leading American to a pair of NIT appearances. Prior to his arrival, the school had never made an appearance in any postseason tournament; since his departure more than twenty years ago, they have to yet accomplish this feat again.
Williams scored his first major-conference head coaching job when he returned to Boston College in 1983, succeeding best friend Tom Davis. His first year produced 25 wins, a Big East regular season title, and a run to the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA tournament. Interestingly, his second round opponent in the NCAA's that year was none other than future nemesis Duke and coach Mike Krzyzewski. Williams would guide the Eagles to another NCAA tournament appearance as well as an NIT appearance during his four-year tenure in Chestnut Hill. Following a 13-15 record in 1986, Williams left for another major conference job, Ohio State. In Columbus, Williams recorded a 59-41 record over four seasons, took the Buckeyes to the NCAA's once and the NIT twice, and notched a few marquee wins: in 1987, his Buckeyes team upset a top-ranked and undefeated Iowa team, coached by Tom Davis.
Williams was announced as head coach of Maryland on June 13, 1989. The basketball program, and the athletic department on the whole, was reeling from the aftershock of the death of Len Bias. 1 Williams coached the 1989-90 squad to a respectable 18-13 record and an NIT berth. However, the following year saw the beginning of NCAA-imposed sanctions on the school for actions committed under previous coach Bob Wade. Maryland received a three-year postseason ban and a television ban, punishments that hampered the rebuilding process. With the immeasurable help of highly-regarded local standout Walt Williams , Maryland stayed competitive through a sobering low-point of the program. 2 On the recruiting trail, Williams was able to attract highly-touted forward Keith Booth from Baltimore, hostile territory for the campus primarily due to the school's firing of his predecessor. Shortly thereafter, Williams landed a lightly-regarded big man from Virginia named Joe Smith . These two were key players during the 93-94 season, one that saw Maryland upset a top-15 Georgetown team in November, finish at .500 in the ACC, and capture the school's first NCAA berth in six years. Maryland, seeded tenth, beat seventh-seeded Saint Louis in the first round and upset second-seeded UMass in the second before falling to a powerhouse Michigan team in the Sweet Sixteen. The following year saw preseason top-10 rankings, a shared ACC title, and another Sweet Sixteen, this one bittersweet in light of preseason expectations.
During this time, Williams was able to make Maryland a mainstay among the top four in the ACC and a frequent NCAA participant. However, Maryland squads either had unceremonious early exits or abrupt Sweet Sixteen exits, making him the subject of much scorn among fans and the media. He was also criticized -- and in some circles still is, especially on the internet -- for what many rabid fans perceived as "lazy" recruiting: it was felt that he was not bringing in the quality, or quantity, of blue-chip recruits that many of the "elite" teams had, settling for lesser (in the eyes of the recruiting services, at least) recruits. Williams, however, quickly began building a reputation as a developer of talent, taking those lightly regarded recruits and molding them into more-than-capable players. His method received a measure of validation when he began compiling marquee wins against those very same elite teams: during the 1997-98 season, Maryland beat a second-ranked Kansas team that boasted Paul Pierce and Raef LaFrentz; later, in February, they defeated a top-ranked North Carolina team that had no less than four future first round draft picks. Maryland successfully landed some star power of their own when they signed junior college transfer Steve Francis. His lone season in 1998-99 saw the Terps ranked as high as second in the nation and, due in large part to Francis' acrobatics on the court, frequently showcased on SportsCenter. The season,
which began with buzz about a possible Final Four appearance, unfortunately ended with a physical Sweet Sixteen loss to St. John's. The following year saw Williams rebuilding: despite the youth of his team, he managed to finish second in the ACC, pull off an upset of a top-five Duke team on their homecourt and earn the school's seventh consecutive NCAA berth. But a shocking 105-70 blowout loss to UCLA in the second round saw criticism reach epic levels, to the degree that many began to express a desire to see Williams removed.
The 2000-01 season, Williams' twelfth, began with Maryland receiving their highest preseason ranking in nearly three decades. The fourth-ranked Terps returned all five starters, including senior All-American candidate Terence Morris, point guard Steve Blake, and a pair of junior playmakers in power forward Lonny Baxter and, especially, shooting guard Juan Dixon. After a jarring 1-3 start, then a streak where they won thirteen of fourteen, Maryland entered a January 27 2001 game against highly-ranked Duke with a chance to make a statement. The game, which has since been repeated ad infinitum on ESPN Classic, saw Maryland put on a mostly dominating show for fifty-nine minutes, six seconds. In the last fifty-four seconds, Duke managed to erase a ten-point deficit and force overtime, where they eventually prevailed, 98-96. The game sent Williams and his team into a period where they lost five of six, with a home loss to last-place Florida State serving as the nadir. The Duke game, known as "Gone In 54 Seconds" would wind up to be the first of four meetings between the two teams, with Maryland winning only once, a 91-80 decision one month later, on Duke's homecourt. The fourth of the matches, in the National Semifinals in Minneapolis proved to be the most devastating. Williams had finally moved past the third round of the NCAA's and had engineered an upset over top-seeded Stanford in the West Regional. Maryland was in the Final Four for the first time in school history, and they were facing a Duke team they were very familiar with. Maryland held a 22-point lead, only to see Duke erase that lead to advance to the semifinals. The Terps used the loss as motivation, and the following season, they captured the ACC regular season title and a number-one seed in the NCAA's. After surviving the toughest road possible from the second round to the National Semifinals -- Wisconsin, Kentucky, UConn, and Kansas, all past national champions -- Maryland defeated another past champion, the Indiana Hoosiers, 64-52, on April 1, 2002, in the schools 2002nd basketball game to win their first national championship. Williams became the first coach since Norm Sloan in 1974 to win a national championship at his alma mater (the feat was repeated one year later by Williams' good friend, Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim.) Williams, who had built a reputation for playing up the underdog angle with respect to his team, finally had gained a measure of respect from his critics.
Williams added another piece to his resume during the 2003-04 season. That team, his youngest ever, beat top-15 Wisconsin in College Park and upset top-ranked Florida in Gainesville, but had trouble in a very competitive ACC, limping to a 7-9 regular season conference record. Playing in the last ACC Tournament of the round-robin era, and in the shadow of league headquarters in Greensboro, Williams directed Maryland to upsets of third-seeded Wake Forest, second-seeded North Carolina State, where they overcame a 19-point halftime deficit, and top-seeded Duke to win the school's first ACC tournament title since 1984. It was a victory considered every bit as monumental as the national championship two years earlier.
As of March 2005, Williams has a record of 541-306 overall (.639), 334-178 (.652) at his alma mater. He has an overall NCAA tournament record of 26-13 (.667, ninth among active coaches), 22-10 at his alma mater. Williams has coached Maryland to eleven NCAA tournament appearances, nine seasons of twenty wins or more, sixty-two wins over ranked opponents, two ACC regular season titles (one outright), an ACC tournament title, two Final Fours, and a national championship. Williams also leads active coaches with six wins over top-ranked teams, the most recent coming against Florida on December 10, 2003. A home victory over Virginia on January 19, 2005, moved Williams into a tie with former Virginia head coach Terry Holland as the fifth winningest coach in ACC history. Williams also earned his 134th ACC win that night, which tied him with former Georgia Tech coach Bobby Cremins for fourth place all-time in terms of conference wins. Williams recorded five more wins during the 2004-05 conference campaign, and is just three wins shy of moving into a tie with former Carolina head coach Frank McGuire for third place in that category.
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