Stet Sports Blog

The seat was already hot for Gary Williams this season. The years following the Maryland Terrapins’ first national championship had been marred with underachievement and a lack of excuses for it, particularly last season, when the Terps surprisingly financed the success of local mid-majors for the next ten years in home losses to Ohio and American.

But this year appeared to be different. They were winning games they were expected to win, their best players were playing to potential, and Dave Neal emerged as Captain Superman. Gary Williams looked like he was turning it around for Terps basketball.

And then, Morgan State came calling.

There’s no need to get into what made this possible, other than the fact that Maryland’s recent history made this loss entirely possible. And that’s the biggest problem for Gary Williams and the Terps. It is possible for lower tier teams, mid-majors even, to feel confident in the Comcast Center.

Opposing swag is never a good thing at home, and that points directly at the coach with the keys to the gym.

Morgan State beat Maryland with a number of Baltimore-bred ballers, cultivated in junior colleges and local high schools. If there’s anything that should hurt Terp faithful, its not that a little black school in Baltimore City compiled talent that should have grown up on the College Park campus. It’s the fact that Maryland was willing to overlook that talent. Last time I checked, Maryland didn’t have enough prestige to go around the country and pick five-star recruits like North Carolina and Duke, but they have the coaching and enough talent to keep up with North Carolina and Duke on the court.

But if local talent doesn’t respect you enough for being a formidable opponent to two of the best programs in the country, if Maryland can’t sell the fact that they are this close to being a national powerhouse in the middle of a basketball hotbed, then its time to change your lead salesman.

Maryland’s stretch of mid-major malaise over the last two seasons is unacceptable. The equivalent for Morgan would be losing to Sojourner-Douglass College and Baltimore City Community College. No disrespect to those schools or the athletes, but Morgan State has far more resources to position itself for success over those schools, just as Maryland has over the Bears.

This is it for Gary Williams. Not being able to recruit was always masked by his ability to get the most out of players that, by ACC standards, are mediocre. But now that he’s losing games to local mid-majors, which causes his shrinking influence on local talent to be loosened, it’s time for the Terps to cut their losses and start over with a commitment to Maryland basketball.

Not the University of Maryland, but basketball players and programs throughout the state.

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