Coaching, coaching, coaching

[Sports Guy]

Haha, sure SG. You're using it as a way to say MD overachieved in terms of their standings. So that means you're saying pure talent should equal being better unless they overachieve. You're saying they weren't a top 5 talented team this year, but Gary got them into a tie for first. The problem with that is what I've said. Pure talent is a poor way to evaluate if a team overachieved in a given year or not. But ok, play the that's not what I said even though it is card.

Wow..you really are clueless. I am not saying anything at all about overachieving or anything even remotely like that..For you to get that from what i am saying is really really poor.

My point is that with lesser talent, Gary wins more...The point of this thread, in case you couldn't figure it out, is that coaching is extremely important and MD fans should feel lucky Gary is their coach. That's it...No other point whatsoever so stop trying to find one because you whatever you think you find, you are wrong.

[mweb]

Wow..you really are clueless. I am not saying anything at all about overachieving or anything even remotely like that..For you to get that from what i am saying is really really poor.

My point is that with lesser talent, Gary wins more...The point of this thread, in case you couldn't figure it out, is that coaching is extremely important and MD fans should feel lucky Gary is their coach. That's it...No other point whatsoever so stop trying to find one because you whatever you think you find, you are wrong.

Can't stop laughing.

They aren't one of the top 5 most talented teams in the ACC THIS year and they won 13 games...Why? GARY WILLIAMS.

Hmmm, seems like what I just said.

You had multiple points, I agree with all of them in that first post other than what I just quoted and your way of applying that.

[Sports Guy]

Can't stop laughing.

Hmmm, seems like what I just said.

You had multiple points, I agree with all of them in that first post other than what I just quoted and your way of applying that.

But the fact that they aren't all that talented doesn't take away from anything I said in that post and it is meaningless for the purpose of my point and this discussion.

You are making an argument that isn't there.

The argument that is there is that Gary can take a team, that has lesser talent and make them a very good team.

[mweb]

But the fact that they aren't all that talented doesn't take away from anything I said in that post and it is meaningless for the purpose of my point and this discussion.

You are making an argument that isn't there.

The argument that is there is that Gary can take a team, that has lesser talent and make them a very good team.

I simply said that I agreed with everything you wrote except that and explained why. You're the one who responded and stood by that aspect of your argument. So if I'm making an argument that isn't there, why did you respond supporting your side of the argument?

You're right that Gary isn't a guy that typically lands the big time prospects, and his rosters rarely consist of lottery pick caliber players. But he also rarely has guys leave early, gets some undervalued recruits, and coaches them up well as you've stated. The level of how much a team overachieves in a given year should not be based on where the recruits were ranked and where guys are projected to go in the draft. It should be based on how good the roster is for the college game. He definitely had a top 5 ACC roster this year.

I agree with your last line as I said when I said I agree with it all except the part I quoted. I just think you're undervaluing how good the MD roster is and your basis of how you seem to define if a team overachieves or not is off-base.

[Flosman]

Anybody with common sense doesn't want Gary fired and even last year when everything was going wrong there weren't many calling for his head. The complaint has always been and will always be that Gary should be recruting better. The problem is when Gary runs into an exceptionally more talented team. He hasn't and isn't going to beat that team very often in the tournament. Sure, he has a knack for knocking off better teams and competing in the ACC with marginal talent but outside of '01 and '02 when he had 5 eventual NBA players on his team he hasn't got past the Sweet 16. I made this comparison with Gary before, Gary is the kid I watch play baseball who has so much talent but is too lazy to take his game to the next level by working hard at all aspects of his game. He's content to be good when he could be great.

CC dont take this personally. But the first sentence is complete BS. Hell the owner of this great forum we post in vocally called for Gary's head this year. Tony was not the lone voice in the wilderness. Secondly Gary has consistantly actually beaten the more talented #1 ranked team in the country during his time at Maryland. So much so that whenever Maryland plays the #1 ranked team in the country you hear about it atleast 5 times during the broadcast. I think most fans, even knowledgable fans have a hard time understanding how hard it is to be good not to mention great every year. I remember many citing how Gary falls short of what is needed and how great it would be to have a guy like Roy Williams who never has a letdown. How is that looking right now? That is not a knock on Roy at all. I don't care what anyone says the ACC is the toughest league in the country to consistantly win in. Look at the talent on the teams at the bottom of the league. As much as a can't stand him, what coach K has done at Duke is amazing. All it takes is a couple recruits leave, or fail to reach thier potential, or in the case of the highly touted and relied on Freshman playing like, you know, freshman and your playing below 500 in the ACC.

On an aside I bet Kansas is well aware of Gary's history of knocking off the top team in the land and is likely hoping MSU takes out the terps. Izzo is a great coach so is Gary but Gary has better players this year.

[ccbird]

CC dont take this personally. But the first sentence is complete BS. Hell the owner of this great forum we post in vocally called for Gary's head this year. Tony was not the lone voice in the wilderness. Secondly Gary has consistantly actually beaten the more talented #1 ranked team in the country during his time at Maryland. So much so that whenever Maryland plays the #1 ranked team in the country you hear about it atleast 5 times during the broadcast. I think most fans, even knowledgable fans have a hard time understanding how hard it is to be good not to mention great every year. I remember many citing how Gary falls short of what is needed and how great it would be to have a guy like Roy Williams who never has a letdown. How is that looking right now? That is not a knock on Roy at all. I don't care what anyone says the ACC is the toughest league in the country to consistantly win in. Look at the talent on the teams at the bottom of the league. As much as a can't stand him, what coach K has done at Duke is amazing. All it takes is a couple recruits leave, or fail to reach thier potential, or in the case of the highly touted and relied on Freshman playing like, you know, freshman and your playing below 500 in the ACC.

On an aside I bet Kansas is well aware of Gary's history of knocking off the top team in the land and is likely hoping MSU takes out the terps. Izzo is a great coach so is Gary but Gary has better players this year.

I'm just saying in general I didn't hear a lot of people going as far as to say they wanted Gary fired. A lot of people were critical and questioned whether Gary was going to get things turned around but I didn't hear a lot actually calling for his head. Yes, it's hard and pretty much impossible to be good year in and year out. I can take having a down year. The problem is recently we are building towards one good, legit Sweet 16 team every 3 or 4 years. Our two best teams over the last 7 years and the only ones who haven't been on the bubble and had above .500 ACC records were our '07 and 10 teams. The problem is they are senior laden teams that are not legit Final FOur caliber teams. We scratch and claw for 3 years to build a Sweet 16 caliber team and start all over again. I just think we could and should be better than that. I don't expect us to be UNC or Duke but there is no reason we can't be a program that expects to make deep runs every 3 or 4 years.

[Sports Guy]

I simply said that I agreed with everything you wrote except that and explained why. You're the one who responded and stood by that aspect of your argument. So if I'm making an argument that isn't there, why did you respond supporting your side of the argument?

You're right that Gary isn't a guy that typically lands the big time prospects, and his rosters rarely consist of lottery pick caliber players. But he also rarely has guys leave early, gets some undervalued recruits, and coaches them up well as you've stated. The level of how much a team overachieves in a given year should not be based on where the recruits were ranked and where guys are projected to go in the draft. It should be based on how good the roster is for the college game. He definitely had a top 5 ACC roster this year.

I agree with your last line as I said when I said I agree with it all except the part I quoted. I just think you're undervaluing how good the MD roster is and your basis of how you seem to define if a team overachieves or not is off-base.

The most intelligent poster on the MD portion of this site, in terms of knowledge of the Terps, is Stoner...He agrees with me about the talent...That's enough for me.

[mweb]

The most intelligent poster on the MD portion of this site, in terms of knowledge of the Terps, is Stoner...He agrees with me about the talent...That's enough for me.

So he agrees that Plumlee or guys like that are more talented than Greivis and Scheyer, and that is somehow very relevant to how good the teams should be now? Interesting.

BTW, doesn't Stoner predict MD to do great like every year?

[CSB Jack]

Some interesting discussion going on here if you can avoid the flying mud. I agree with the OP on Gary's abilities as a coach, both throughout a season and in preparing his team for a game and making adjustments within a game. I also agree with his general premise that too much has been made of the graduation rates of his teams, though it has also been a source of embarrassment to me as a fan of Maryland athletics. At least until I looked into what was going on behind the scenes. That's when the "mitigating circumstances" start to be revealed.

It actually goes back to the day that Len Bias died (doesn't it always?) and it came to light that he had a perfect 0.00 GPA for his final semester. What did he care? He was about to become fabulously rich by being a high draft pick so he just stopped going to class. In the aftermath the university instituted some "reforms" that included making it necessary for student-athletes at the university to actually be students. It is more difficult for athletes to get into Maryland than many schools because they don't make the exceptions that a lot of places do, and once they are there they have to actually take real classes for real majors to graduate. Sure, there are classes the jocks tend to take, but getting a degree from the University of Maryland is something anyone, athlete or not, can be proud of accomplishing.

As for some of the specifics, the 8% graduation rate goes back to the guys on the NC team and shortly thereafter. Dixon and Blake did not graduate, even though they played for four years, because they withdrew the last semester to concentrate on preparing for the draft. Wilcox left school after his sophomore year. I don't have the info on all the guys, but for the most part they left school in good academic standing, and have been making a decent living playing professionally in the US or Europe.

As for Chris McCray, what can you say? At what point does a 21-year-old have to assume responsibility for himself? You can have monitors, tutors, study halls, and everything else, but if the kid doesn't go to class or complete his assignments on time ultimately that's his fault, and not the coach's, not the athletic department's, not the university's. How you can make it to that point and blow the last semester of your senior year is beyond me.

Gary has acknowledged that there were problems in the past, but after the low point several years ago there were changes made, and he is on track to graduate all three of his seniors this year, and 13 of the last 15 seniors.

My personal belief is that this is not an issue for the coach except to the extent that he recruits players capable of graduating. Even that is a matter of university policy of what athletes they choose to admit as students. But the support system that is put in place should be part of the university's and athletic department's procedures as well. I think what Maryland has in place now will stand up to close scrutiny.

[Sports Guy]

So he agrees that Plumlee or guys like that are more talented than Greivis and Scheyer, and that is somehow very relevant to how good the teams should be now? Interesting.

BTW, doesn't Stoner predict MD to do great like every year?

He agrees that MD probably isn't one of top 5 most talented teams in the league...He agrees because it is probably true....They certainly aren't in the top 3.

Of course, this means nothing because they were the second best team.

[mweb]

He agrees that MD probably isn't one of top 5 most talented teams in the league...He agrees because it is probably true....They certainly aren't in the top 3.

Of course, this means nothing because they were the second best team.

Again, saying they aren't in the top 3 or 5 teams in your pure talent definition is not what I'm arguing with. If you haven't gotten that by now, I don't know what to tell you. But I'll try anyway, they're a top 5 roster in terms of what you can expect from the guys production wise. Not based on NBA draft potential or ceiling or athleticism or whatever. Production of players is what matters most, not the other things.

[ccbird]

The most intelligent poster on the MD portion of this site, in terms of knowledge of the Terps, is Stoner...He agrees with me about the talent...That's enough for me.

Obviously, a completely biased opinion. Stoner is a very good guy and undoubtedly does his research in regards to the Terps. That said, he's extremely optimistic and it hurts his ability to think realistically when it comes to this program and Gary Williams. Stoner would probably agree with me in that assesment.

[HititHere04]

He agrees that MD probably isn't one of top 5 most talented teams in the league...He agrees because it is probably true....They certainly aren't in the top 3.

Of course, this means nothing because they were the second best team.

GT, NC, and Duke are more talented than MD...That really can't be questioned.

But in GT's case, it is pure talent...It isn't refined talent, that can play as a team.

Ibekwe probably has more pure talent than anyone in the current MD team. Does that mean he'd be the best player on the team? Does that mean anything as far as potential results, if this MD team went against 5 Ibekwe talented players at each position? Absolutely not.

[Sports Guy]

GT, NC, and Duke are more talented than MD...That really can't be questioned.

But in GT's case, it is pure talent...It isn't refined talent, that can play as a team.

Ibekwe probably has more pure talent than anyone in the current MD team. Does that mean he'd be the best player on the team? Does that mean anything as far as potential results, if this MD team went against 5 Ibekwe talented players at each position? Absolutely not.

Again, people are taking the talent aspect too far.

You guys are arguing my point....Why I think Gary should be praised and not villified. With less talent, he does so much more.

[mweb]

Again, people are taking the talent aspect too far.

You guys are arguing my point....Why I think Gary should be praised and not villified. With less talent, he does so much more.

I'm not arguing your point. I agree with most of what you say though.