Voice of the Turtle.

Gary Williams Loud and Clear from College Park, MD

COACH: When and where did basketball begin for you?

WILLIAMS: As a five-year-old kid living in South Jersey, trying to get the ball up to the rim. I played in my first league game at eight when I was in grammar school. Basketball was clearly my thing, though I also played baseball and football.

COACH: You went on to play basketball and baseball at Collingswood (NJ) H.S. How serious were you about the two sports and how much help did you get from your coaches?

WILLIAMS: Sports were my whole life, and I was fortunate to have two great coaches. My junior high school coach, Neil Thompson, became a father figure after my parents got divorced in my first year there. We would stay in the gym and talk or play one-on-one after practice. I look back and that was an important time for me.

My high school coach, John Smith, did things like feed me at his house and he was always there when I had problems. They probably were the reason I did well enough to make it to college. They were both great people, great coaches, and great role models. I still stay in touch with both of them.

COACH: What made you decide to go to the U. of Maryland?

WILLIAMS: I wasn't a great player, but I could always handle the ball pretty well and play defense. I was quick, but I never could shoot the ball -- as my players remind me every day!

Having grown up in southern New Jersey, I was close to Maryland and I remember being recruited as a senior. Nowadays, they begin recruiting you as a sophomore and junior.

I came down for the Eastern Regionals at Cole Fleidhouse in the middle '60s and I was overwhelmed. Cole was the biggest place I had ever seen, it was probably as large as any campus arena in the country. I decided I was going to Maryland the moment I walked into the fieldhouse and saw that crowd. Maybe it wasn't the right reason to pick a school, but when I was 17 it seemed like a good reason. I was sold right away.

I majored in business and marketing, with a minor in secondary education.

COACH: That's an unusual major for a basketball player.

WILLIAMS: I didn't know whether or not I was going to coach. The truth is, I thought I was going to play in the NBA. But it took only two games for me to realize that it wasn't going to happen.

The marketing thing came in handy years later when I had to market my basketball program.

COACH: What kind of basketball education did you get playing for Bud Millikan? We know he was a disciple of Hank Iba, the ultimate in ball-control and man-to-man defense. How much of your philosophy began right there?

WILLIAMS: He was a great coach. We were so good defensively that we could always stay with better teams. All we needed was one good basic defense. I learned that you could never beat a good team unless you played good defense.

Bud Millikan was a very disciplined coach, a tough guy, and a prodigious worker.

COACH: At what point did you consider coaching and how did you get involved in it?

WILLIAMS: I began thinking of coaching as a junior. After I completed my degree I was fortunate to get a job as an assistant freshman coach at Maryland -- under Tom Davis.

That job gave me a good look at college coaching before I was offered a job as JV coach at Woodrow Wilson H.S. in Camden, NJ in 1969. I became the head coach there the following year.

I inherited four starters from a very solid basketball team. We had a good nucleus and a group of guys who really liked each other.

I was 24, and being close to their age we were able to communicate, work hard, and gradually we got better that year.

We won the state championship in Atlantic City Convention Hall in front of about 12,000 people, beating an undefeated East Orange team that was 32-0 going back to the previous year when they had won the state championship.

COACH: How did you get into college coaching?

WILLIAMS: I was very happy coaching in high school. I had just bought a house when Tom Davis came back into my life. He had been the assistant at American U. under Tom Young and had just gotten the head-coach job at Lafayette. He asked me to become his assistant.

I told him great. But there were a few hang-ups about the position. For example, I would have to coach soccer in order to be paid for coaching basketball!

I turned down the job twice before Tom really got mad at me and told me I was being stupid.

"This is the only chance you have," he said. "If you ever want to be a college coach, you have to give this a try."

I am very fortunate I listened to him. I had a great six-year apprenticeship under him and it prepared me for the good things to come.

COACH: How did you land your first college head-coaching job at American University in 1978?

WILLIAMS: When Tom Davis left Lafayette to go to Boston College, I had to decide whether to stay at Lafayette as the head coach or go to Boston College as Tom's assistant.

Lafayette is a great school, but it doesn't have athletic scholarships and I had never recruited with scholarships. I thought that was something I had to learn, so I chose Boston College.

It worked out well because I was at BC for a year and Tom did his usual good job which helped showcase me as an assistant.

The American U. coach, Jim Lynam, had just left the job to return to St. Joe's, his alma mater. Both Davis and Tom Young helped me get the job at American U.

I was very fortunate to get a head coaching job at the age of 32.

COACH: You took over a .500 club, but went 24-6 and 21-9 in your third and fourth seasons, including two NIT births. How did you turn around that program?

WILLIAMS: It was wild. It was a great learning experience because we didn't have a gym.

We had a little practice "band box" on campus and we played our games at a military base in Fort Meyer, VA. For every home game, we had to pack up vans with water coolers and whatever else we needed for the game.

Our lockerroom was the weightlifting room, with our players having to move the weights to one side to make room for dressing.

There wasn't much heat in the building. The frigid temperatures ended up providing us with a tremendous home-court advantage. The opponents, used to playing in hot gyms, had trouble warming up in the 55-degree chill.

I have to admit: Coaching at Woodrow Wilson and American U. taught me how to make the most out of the resources at my disposal.

I also learned a lot. We were exactly .500 for my first two years. I was learning how to be a head coach and struggling a little bit. You find out during these years whether or not you really want to do it. I think that background really helped me become a head coach.

COACH: After four years at A.U. you jumped to the really big time at Boston College in 1982. How did that happen?

WILLIAMS: Tom Davis had been the head coach up there when I was the assistant and Bill Flynn was still the AD.

I interviewed for the job and it was a privilege to join the Big East. The Big East had just started to take off and there I was in a league with John Thompson, Lou Carnesecca, Joe Mullaney, Jim Boheim, P.J. Carlisemo, and Rollie Massimino. Great teams and great coaches. In the four years I was in the league, Georgetown and Villanova won the national championship.

ESPN came in at that time and we got a lot of exposure, too. It was a great time to be a coach.

COACH: What kind of offense and defense did you use and who were the big influences in your career?

WILLIAMS: We played against North Carolina and Duke at Maryland, and both Dean Smith and Vic Bubas pressed and ran multiple situations at us, which weren't very popular back then.

I had grown up very close to Philadelphia and I had a chance to watch Jack Ramsay's great St. Joe's teams and they always pressed and ran great offenses. I think all three of those situations influenced me when I was young.

When I got into coaching, I saw that Tom Davis really liked zone pressure and I learned an incredible amount about it and about drop-back zone defense, which I hadn't seen much of in college. I had basically played all man-to-man for Bud Millikan.

I think the opportunity to work under Tom Davis for seven years reinforced my beliefs in the pressing defense and it has been a big part of my coaching since then.

COACH: You left for Ohio State after four seasons and two Sweet 16 appearances at BC. At OSU you made the NCAA Tournament once in three years before leaving for Maryland. In short, you have coached in the three most competitive conferences in the NCAA (Big East, Big 10, ACC). What are the differences among these conferences and which one was the toughest to play in?

WILLIAMS: It depends on the year and who's playing. When I was in the Big East for four years, Villanova and Georgetown won national titles and when I was in the Big Ten for three years Michigan and Indiana won national titles. They were equally as good.

The Big Ten has tremendous on-campus arenas. It's almost like every game is state versus state.

Of course, the ACC probably has the supreme conference tradition and the oldest conference tournament. The ACC fans take a tremendous amount of pride in their basketball program. It's very intense.

I look back and I feel very fortunate to have been able to coach against the best coaches in the country.

COACH: With all of the great teams and players you've had over the years, what made Maryland's Final Four team so special last season?

WILLIAMS: I had been close to getting to the Final Four several times. At BC, we made it to the Sweet Sixteen twice and at Maryland, we've done it five times.

It's just that to win that next game you have to be healthy, you have to play well, you have to have the luck of the draw, and you have to avoid playing a hot team.

Our team kept getting better as the year went on. We were playing our best basketball in March, which doesn't always happen with a team.

We had dealt with adversity and gotten very tough. We knew that it would take a very, very good team to beat us in March. And it took Duke, the eventual national champions, to knock us out.

COACH: What do you think about the NCAA's desire to deregulate basketball, making it legal for high school players to retain an agent, and paving the way for universities to pay their players?

WILLIAMS: I think something has to be done. The scholarship in place today is the same as the one when I played.

But things are different now. One thing a scholarship doesn't do is put money into a player's pocket. If you come from a poor situation, you get a free education, but you're still poor.

Yet, college basketball makes a tremendous amount of money that keeps many athletic departments afloat. Our kids are putting in a lot of time and there has been a change in amateurism in this country - Olympic athletes are now paid for medals.

The kids see that and I think it's time we looked at ways to make it a better situation for them. Hopefully, it would also keep them in college for a longer period of time.

COACH: There was considerable talk last winter about poor TV ratings and a deteriorating game, especially among the pros. Do you believe that the game isn't what it used to be?

WILLIAMS: If you watched the Final Four this year you obviously saw that the game is not in trouble. I guess we've lost some great players to the NBA draft, but that's true of every sport. The best baseball players sign right out of high school, Tiger Woods never finished at Stanford, and John McEnroe didn't finish at Stanford either.

I think basketball gets unjustly criticized. If you ever watched Duke play North Carolina, ever watched us play Duke, witnessed the intensity level of a Ohio State-Indiana basketball game, etc., you know that there will always be great games in college basketball. There's a tremendous amount of talented players out there. They might not be NBA level as freshman, but they will get there by the time they graduate.

That's where college basketball is today -- we might lose a great young player now and then, but we're always going to have replacements.

I am not concerned about defections and their affect on the college game. I am concerned about the players who leave early and never make it in the NBA and can't come back and get their education.