ShareThisThese past three or four seasons, I couldn't watch Gary Williams coach a basketball game without thinking about the Frank Sinatra song, "My Way."
Williams, an uncompromising Maryland guard long before he became the school's uncompromising coach, retired last week.
At age 66, it was probably time for Williams to leave the sport. His teams were still competitive, and the future would have been bright had center Jordan Williams pulled out of the NBA Draft pool and opted to return for his junior season in 2011-12.
But Williams clearly had grown tired of fighting the good fight on various fronts. He said as much in his parting statements.
It wasn't just about his views on Debbie Yow, either.
Long before Yow resigned as Maryland's athletic director to take the same job at N.C. State, Williams had formed a turtle-tough shell of resistance against a recruiting culture rooted more on AAU insiders than the high school coaches Williams still admired and respected.
"It's become as much about politics as actual recruiting," he said just as Jordan Williams was first emerging as an ACC freshman standout in '09-10. "I couldn't have ever got him if he hadn't been as interested in us as we were in him."
When the coach won the 2002 NCAA championship, he got the ultimate vindication.
He won it with a core of players -- Juan Dixon, Lonny Baxter and Steve Blake -- who went to college with plans to stay four seasons and improve rather than a team of pros in waiting.
After that title, Williams knew he'd never have to worry about changing his recruiting philosophy. He had the ring, the money and the determination to ride it out in the role of what Al McGuire used to refer to as "the last of the singing cowboys."
It's become a historic footnote that when Williams left Ohio State to take the Terps' job in 1989, Maryland basketball was a mess.
Bob Wade, in one season, had gone 9-20 overall and 1-13 in the ACC.
Cole Field House, once a hoops hothouse during Lefty Driesell's salad days, looked like an arena in a constant state of fire drill. Fans stayed away in droves. The few who came often left during the first television timeout of the second half.
"This is going to take a while," Williams said at the ACC's preseason interviews a month before his first season. "But don't anybody feel sorry for Maryland basketball. We don't want pity. We want to get back to where other fans don't like us again."
In the most technical sense, it took Williams less than three months to make good on that self-imposed challenge. His first team won 19 games and played ACC foes on mostly even terms.
From the ACC's perspective, those 19 wins (6-8 in conference play) were worth their weight in television ratings.
Williams didn't merely pump life into the program, he recharged the D.C., Maryland, Northern Virginia television market for the conference.
For the league, the timing couldn't have been more crucial. His first season at Maryland (1989-90) coincided with Terry Holland's retirement from coaching at Virginia.
Potentially, it was a catastrophic situation for the ACC exposure and regional impact. The league's television market north of the North Carolina border could have gone the way of the underhand free throw.
Folksy Gene Corrigan, the ACC commissioner from 1987 through 1997, once said of Williams' influence on TV ratings, "He's a hero."
Yes, "Sweating Gary" yelled. He cursed. He questioned and debated those in authority. He also made Maryland basketball matter. And he certainly did it all his way.
(Contact Caulton Tudor at caulton.tudor(at)newsobserver.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C.
