Maryland basketball will return to action on Saturday afternoon when 14th-ranked Illinois comes to town, but the Terps are also set to honor the 20th anniversary of the 2004 ACC Tournament championship. Led by DJ Strawberry, Travis Garrison, John Gilchrist and Nik Caner-Medley, Maryland salvaged its 2003-04 season after taking down consecutive ranked opponents in Wake Forest and NC State before delivering a 95-87 overtime upset against Duke to win the '04 title and secure an NCAA Tournament bid. It'd mark the last time that Maryland won its conference tournament, though the Terps may need a similar fate in next month's Big Ten Tournament to secure a postseason appearance. Former head coach Gary Williams spoke about Saturday's reunion, recalled the '04 championship, the ACC days and the current state of the program with Glenn Clark Radio: Gary Williams on whether he expected Maryland to win 2004 ACC Tournament Championship “Well, we had kind of an up-and-down year. We weren't real consistent, but we had moments where we were pretty good. We had lost some really key backcourt guys the year before in Steve Blake and Drew Nicholas. Whenever you lose your backcourt, you know, that experience, how to play, situations, all that comes down to your guards a lot of times. So I was very concerned with that. John Gilchrist came on and he was a very strong, tough point guard and he obviously had the three best games of his career in the ACC Tournament. His performance for the guys to go way back rivaled Randolph Childress, who played for Wake Forest and just had three days where he dominated and that's what John Gilchrist did. We beat Wake, they were on Friday night, we had the nine o'clock game. They were the number three seed, and then Saturday afternoon at one we played N.C. State, they were the number two seed in the tournament and then we beat Duke at the number one seed. Duke had won five straight ACC Championships going into that game. The winner of the conference tournament is the ACC Champion. That was set up in the fifties when the league was formed.” On Mike Grinnon’s game-sealing free throws to beat Duke “How about that? Mike never shot a pressure free throw in his life until those two free throws. And he swished both of those free throws. And he also guarded J. J. Reddick, the last possession in regulation that Duke had, where Reddick missed a jump shot, and of course Mike said he was all over him, that's why he missed after the game. But I think there was Reddick had a pretty good look, let's put it that way.” On the experience of Maryland playing in Greensboro “You look at the history. I think in ‘56 maybe, Maryland won, Bud Millikan was the coach and the league had just been formed. ’84, Lefty Driesell’s team won and then we won and that's it. That was it in the ACC. And look at all the good basketball teams that Maryland had during Lefty’s time, my time, National Championship team, Final Four team did not win the ACC Tournament. Part of that is that the league is so good. To win three straight three consecutive days is hard but they’re road games. When you play at Carolina in anything, they’re road games if you're Maryland and that was always the problem. If you played a tough game, you had to come back and play right away. The fan base gradually got to be all Carolina if you played a Carolina team because teams lose and sell their tickets and the people that buy the tickets are the people that live around there, so whether it was in Greensboro or Charlotte, didn't matter. It was going to be a tough game.” On what it meant to Gary Williams to win the ACC Tournament “It definitely was. I mean, Lefty had a lot of success, but to win that tournament, that was something that was, it was proven very difficult to do. And I know when he got it, we talked a little bit how important that was as being connected to Maryland, I had gone to school there, played there so, it was big for me. And you talk to Maryland alumni, a lot of the older alumni back then in 2004, that was as important to them as winning a national championship. It really was. And it's just the frustration of going down there with good teams and not being able to win. I think that just it was in a lot of people that connected to the University of Maryland. So the few times that we did win, you know, with Lefty and myself winning an ACC Tournament, that was big.” On the emotions of not being in the ACC “We got a lot of heat when Maryland went to the Big Ten, obviously. I think it was 2014. But the ACC had already basically broke up the Big East. They took all the football schools from the Big East -- Syracuse, Virginia Tech, you know, Miami. They all became part of the ACC and the Big East has reformed and they're a good basketball league, but it's nothing compared to what the Big East was when you had so many really good tough teams in there. Now you look at the ACC, I mean, when that was a nine team league, you played a ranked team probably half your games in a normal ACC season. And everybody knew the teams, the rivalries, all that stuff was there. Like, if we were to stay in the ACC, our travel partner was going to be Pittsburgh. We would play Pittsburgh twice a year, every year…Pittsburgh, ACC, you can't comprehend that.” On Coach K’s anger at Maryland leaving the ACC “You look at the things that were said critically about Maryland leaving and going to the Big Ten were done by the ACC. They did the same things. Maryland leaving, but that's okay because it was their leg, you know. That was okay when that happened. The landscape changed. Everybody's gotten in these mega leagues, the power conferences, all that. That's the future. Whether we like it or not, I mean, I'm a traditional, so I'm old. I don't particularly like it, but it's here and it's going to get worse. There's going to be a couple mega conferences that have 20 some teams. All this is football driven, by the way. In other words, there'd be no expansion if there was no football. You'd still have the ACC the same and all that. So it's just the money involved with TV contracts with football and the football playoff. I just saw they get $1.6 billion for the next six years with ESPN and that's what's out there. College presidents, they talk about academics and all those things. That's fine, but the bottom line is there's a lot of dollars out there if you're part of one of these big leagues now.” On how much time Gary spends watching college basketball “I watch more teams now. When I was coaching all you basically watched was videotape of your next opponent. And so you didn't watch Pac-10, you didn't watch any of the other games. And as you got closer to tournament time, you watched some of the conference tournaments for sure. But now, you’ve got time. So I watch a lot of games. I like to compare teams sometimes because you hear about some of these teams and unless you get a chance to watch them that you don't know how good they really are, things like that. And plus, I watched a lot of my granddaughter's game. She's a guard on Wright State's women's team. So I get to watch that on ESPN plus. So that's awesome.” On year two of the Kevin Willard era “No, I think it's coaching is true of probably a lot of jobs where you think you know program before you take the job, but you don't really know it until you get there and get caught up in the whole routine of the job. They had a great year last year. They wanted an NCAA tournament game. They were a strong team. And this year, I think that the defense is exactly the same and everybody that watches Maryland basketball knows that they they've had trouble scoring. It's basically come from three players, the scoring and as the season goes on, other teams pick up on it, do things to try to take a Young out of the game and things like that. So it's been really tough. And I think the freshmen people thought, well, those freshmen are going to come in and they're going to play great. Well, very few freshmen come in and play great their first year. It takes time. And I think you're starting to see signs that some of the freshmen at Maryland are starting to play better now. And I think that's going to be a key down the stretch. The Big Ten tournament is how well the other guys can play beside the three main players that score all the points.” On how different today’s game compared to when Gary coached “Well, when I came in it wasn't any fun because the sanctions from the previous administration. No TV, no NCAA Tournament for a couple years, reduced scholarships. We had to pay a pretty big fine back then in 89. Nowadays, your team is year to year. We had the opportunity when all of us that were coaching during that period had the opportunity to build a program. Very few guys even thought about transferring. And now, transferring is looked at as not a negative, it's what players do. They find out their worth with the NIL and all those things and going to the transfer portal, hoping somebody will bid on them, really. In other words, transferring is based on a lot of times how much money I can get at another school rather than it's a better playing situation, the coaching staff I like better. That's secondary. The most important thing is for a lot of these transfers, is how much money they can get at their next place that they go.” On whether his approach would work in the modern era of college basketball “Well, I think you have to have a, you have to accept what's here. The NIL, every major school has a collective that raises money so that they can be competitive with the best players in the country in terms of what they can get. We all saw the Hunter Dickerson saga as he left Michigan and wound up in Kansas. I mean, that's worth a million dollars to the kids so you can't really fall to him for getting a million dollars this year for playing for Kansas. And that's just the way it is. So you have to be able to be competitive in that area. That was an area I didn't have to worry about. There was no meeting people, trying to get them to contribute to get some money together so you can get some players. And when you think about it, that's as important as anything now. You can be a good recruiter and assistant coach, but if you don't have the money to back up your recruiting effort, you're not going to get that player 90% of the time now.” On Walt Williams being a Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame nominee “You almost look at that and you would think that there should be a veterans committee like baseball has that can pick guys from different eras. And Buck Williams, he'd be a great, put Buck Williams on Maryland's team this year. Maryland might be a Final Four team because that one big, tough inside player that gets your 15 rebounds a game, that type of thing. That was Buck Williams and he was never hurt. He just was consistent. He could score inside. Played the NBA for 15 years. He definitely should be in the Hall of Fame, but like you guys said, time goes by. People have short memories sometimes. It's always that next great player that people talk about. I've gotten to know Buck very well, and one of the great people, one of the great representatives of the University of Maryland.” On whether Maryland is in good hands under Kevin Willard “Yes, it is. He was at Seton Hall and that's one of those jobs where you don't have the same resources that a lot of the Big East teams had, and you had to fight for everything and do that, so he's got that in his makeup as a coach. His ability to fight and he'll, even in the Big Ten now especially next year with Southern Cal, UCLA, things like that, the travel that's going to be involved. I think he's tough enough for the job, and that's important now. The basketball is important but you have to be tough enough for the job, and I think Kevin can do that. Plus, this time of college basketball, he's young enough where he can wrap around this whole NIL transfer portal process. You look at the good teams now in college basketball, most of them have at least one or two transfer portal guys because coaches would rather take a guy that averaged say ten points a game and a pretty good team in college than take a high school guy who might be averaging 25 points a game in a weak high school conference or a decent high school conference. Obviously there's the top-25 high school players out there that everybody want but after that, I think a lot of college coaches would prefer to get a guy out of the transfer portal. I think you're seeing it in college basketball this year with all the upsets, teams not being good teams, ranked teams not being able to win on the road, losing an incredible amount of games on the road. And I think part of that comes from the makeup of your team each year is going to be different in a lot of situations and you don't develop that toughness that you do over two, three-year period when you have players for that length of time that are playing for something more than just stopping off at your place for a year. They're playing for the school. They're playing for their teammates, even though they are getting some money in the NIL process.” On the idea to expand the NCAA Tournament “Well, I think that's that has to be looked at. If you're going to expand, hopefully that will help some of these one bid leagues especially when they have an upset in their conference tournament. I've never understood these one bid leagues having the winner of the conference tournament go to the NCAA Tournament. It should be the regular season winner because you put a lot of time in three months of basketball into being first place in your conference in the regular season. The ACC was the first conference to have a conference tournament and they did it so that they could make money. That became a big money maker. And that's why other teams, other conferences eventually went to a conference tournament. These other leagues where the conference tournaments really aren't moneymakers, so they're not that big of a deal. They send that winner of the conference tournament. So I can see there's more good teams out there. That's for sure. Football, you look at the percentage of division one football that goes to bowl games. That's much higher than the number of teams that get into the NCAA Tournament. There's 360 teams now in division one basketball and so 68 go. So there's a push for expansion. Obviously there's money involved, like there always is in this situation because TV would jump on it and certainly like more games. So we'll see how it goes.” On Mike Locksley’s success with the football program “Mike has come in and he’s done a great grassroots job of really combing this area, the whole DMV area is a great area. A lot, a lot of good players around here in football and basketball and Mike's done a great job of that. He's from this area, he knows the area, all those things. Plus, he has a very good staff, got guys that know football, good football and it's going to be interesting with the expansion of UCLA and Southern Cal, for example, coming into the Big Ten, how that affects Maryland football, how it affects everybody's football. But Mike is, he's a classy guy. He’s come in and he's won over a lot of people. Now we need people to start coming to the football games. I think that's the next big thing. I get tired of that. They want a good football program. Well, you go to Ohio State and play a football game, you got 105,000 people screaming at you all the time. You come and play Maryland, there might be 30, 35,000 on a good day in the stands and that's, it's tough in a metropolitan area. I understand. I understand that with basketball, how tough it is, unless you're really good to get people game in game out to come. But there's six, seven football games a year and hopefully our attendance will really start to spike because of the job that Mike Locksley and the football program have done.” Related Links Local four-star edge still has Maryland in his top group (+) Maryland baseball set to kick off Matt Swope era vs. Georgia SouthernMaryland remains consistent with ’26 four-star Chris Hewitt Jr. (+) Maryland football’s 2024 defense ranks top-30 in preseason ESPN SP+ rankings
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