College park: titletown? Sure, they're a little Cocky for a team that finally cracked the final four, but the terrapins have the talent for a title - University of Maryland's basketball team

Basketball Digest, Feb, 2002 by Tom Worgo

THE CONFIDENCE, THE swagger and the attitude. Was it there last season for the Maryland Terrapins? It sure is now.

Maryland power forward Tahj Holden mentions winning a national championship four times in a brief interview.

That really bothers Terps head coach Gary Williams, whose team earned a BASKETBALL DIGEST preseason No. 2 ranking, as well as one from the Associated Press (Maryland's best AP preseason rank in 26 years) after the team reached its first-ever Final Four last March.

"Players shouldn't talk about winning a national tide during the season," the 56-year-old Williams explains. "That's something you talk about in the preseason. Tahj has talked about it. Not me. I don't talk about winning a national title."

He should. Maryland is that good. The Terps returned four starters, including All-Americans Lonny Baxter and Juan Dixon, and seven of the team's top nine scorers.

Like Holden, Dixon carries a certain cockiness.

"Last year, we were going after teams," Dixon says. "Now teams are coming after us."

The critics have been after Williams for years, but he scored big with Maryland's success last year. In his first seven NCAA Tournament appearances at Maryland, Williams' teams disappointed so often they wore an underachieving tag like a tattoo.

The Terps were 0-4 in Sweet 16s during that span. The bigger headaches for Williams were back-to-back first-round losses to Santa Clara and the College of Charleston. Fans, experts--everyone, really--felt several of those teams should have gone farther.

In 1999, a Steve Francis-led Terps team suffered a blowout loss in a regional semifinal to St. John's. Two future NBA first-round picks, Joe Smith and Keith Booth, were part of back-to-back Sweet 16 losers in 1994 and 1995.

Williams, one of college basketball's most intense coaches, seems amazed at how people feel about the Terps after their Final Four appearance. After all, Maryland wasn't exactly a Cinderella story.

"For years we have been getting respect," Williams says. "It's not just this year. It has been for awhile. We have been to eight straight NCAA Tournaments. We have been ranked for three years. We have won 25 games [in each of] the last three years."

Twenty-win seasons crowd Williams' coaching resume. He had successful coaching stints at Ohio State, American University, and Boston College. He guided Boston College to two Sweet 16 appearances.

Entering the 2001-02 season, Williams had a career record of 449-267. He left what many consider a dream job at Ohio State in 1989 because of his emotional ties to Maryland--he played point guard for the Terps in the 1960s.

"To me, Gary is one of the best to ever coach college basketball," Delaware State head coach Greg Jackson says.

Jackson can remember back to Williams' first couple of seasons at Maryland. They were ugly.

Williams took over a beleaguered program in 1989. The following season the NCAA hit the school hard with sanctions for infractions committed under former coach Bob Wade. There was a reduction in scholarships and two years without playing on television or in the postseason. In addition, Len Bias' cocaine-related death and longtime coach Lefty Driesell's controversial departure still hadn't been forgotten.

"He deserves more credit for what he has gone through," Holden says. "He got here and University of Maryland [basket ball] was in shambles. I still don't think he has gotten the credit he deserves for bringing this program back and to the Final Four.

"But it might take another year like last year. It might even take a national championship before people realize how good a coach he is."

Williams says its wrong to consider the 2000-01 season his best coaching job. "I don't think last year was the best year I ever had. I don't, judge it on how hr we go or many games we win. I judge teams on how good we are and how many games we should win given that talent and schedule.

"My third year here might have been the best year I ever had," he continues. "We had worked our ass off as a team. We were [near] .500. That's the best we could do. We couldn't play in the ACC Tournament. We didn't have the same scholarships that everybody had."

He has some players this season the NBA covets now and will in the future. The Terps are very experienced. They're just not as deep as last season.

Muscular center Baxter and rail-thin shooting guard Dixon are the team leaders, but their road to success was longer than most. They both came to Maryland as projects. Now as seniors, they're on everyone's All-American team.

It's hard to find a player who has overcome more than Dixon on and off the court. Both of his parents were heroin addicts who died from AIDS before he graduated from high school. Critics said Dixon would have trouble playing in the rugged ACC, arriving in College Park at 140 pounds. Since, he has gained about 20 pounds and added some muscle. He led Maryland in scoring as both a sophomore and junior, averaging 18 points. He's also a tenacious defender, leading the ACC in steals the past two seasons.