100 Things Maryland Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die
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100 Things Maryland Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781633196629 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Triumph Books |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2016 |
| Series: | 100 Things...Fans Should Know Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
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100 Things Maryland Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die
By Don Markus
Triumph Books LLC
Copyright © 2016 Don MarkusAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63319-662-9
CHAPTER 1
UCLA of the East
In the spring of 1969, Vince Lombardi was starting his first season coaching the Washington Redskins after coming out of a two-year retirement following his legendary career in Green Bay. Ted Williams was in his first season managing the Washington Senators, finally bored after nearly a decade of deep sea fishing following his retirement from the Boston Red Sox.
In a city torn apart by riots the previous year after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King and the mushrooming anti-war protests of Vietnam, sports fans in the nation's capital were counting on these two transcendent figures to lift the sagging fortunes of their hapless sports franchises. Then there was a third, not nearly as well-known as Lombardi or Williams.
Enter Charles "Lefty" Driesell.
That's how newly named Maryland athletic director Jim Kehoe pitched the idea to the 37-year-old Driesell of coming to coach the Terps.
"They came in and talked to me before the season was over and I told them, 'I have a chance to win the national championship, I'll talk to you after the season is over,'" recalled Driesell, who was then in his ninth season at little Davidson College in North Carolina.
Coincidently, and conveniently, Davidson's season ended in the NCAA tournament regional finals at Cole Field House, on a last-second shot by North Carolina star Charlie Scott, who according to Driesell had initially committed to playing for the Wildcats out of Laurinburg Institute, where he had been the school's valedictorian.
Kehoe, only a few months on the job, didn't want Driesell to leave town.
"Kehoe grabs me after the game and we started talking," Driesell said. "He said, 'We've got Vince Lombardi coaching the Redskins, we've got Ted Williams managing the Senators, and we need you to coach basketball. I thought, That sounds pretty good. Plus he was going to pay more money and do this and that."
The morning of Driesell's introductory press conference, he went to breakfast with Kehoe and Jay McMillen, who had finished his Maryland career the year before and was living in the area. McMillen compared the Maryland job to national power UCLA because it was a state school at the time made up mostly of commuters, its campus in close proximity to Washington.
"We were eating breakfast with coach Kehoe and Jay said, 'You could make this the UCLA of the East,' and I said, 'Yeah, we probably could if your brother came here,'" Driesell said. "I said, 'You've got to help me recruit him,' and he said he would. And that's one reason Tom came, to tell you the truth. More or less, it was a recruiting pitch to get Tom McMillen."
At the press conference that afternoon, Driesell boldly predicted that Maryland "had the potential to be the UCLA of the East Coast or I wouldn't be here."
Close to a half century later, Driesell said, "It was always my goal to have my team in the top 10, I said that at Davidson and they thought I was on drugs. That's me. I think I can take anybody right now [at age 83] and put 'em in the top 10. That's how cocky I am. ... That's why my players were cocky, because they believed what I told 'em."
Driesell said that the line helped him recruit not only Tom McMillen, then considered the best high school player in the country, but Len Elmore and "all the other players I got the first couple of years."
Some believe that the line might have come back to burn Driesell.
"I don't care about that," Driesell said. "At Maryland, my goal was always to get in the top 10. I put a banner up in Cole Field House that I have a picture of, of every team that finished in the top 10. I had six teams ranked in the final top 10 and I had six banners up there in the rafters. To me, that's probably tougher than winning the national championship sometimes."
Of those six teams that finished in the top 10, three never even made it to the NCAA tournament, including the 1973–74 team that went 23–5 (with all five defeats to ranked teams) and saw its season end in a 103–100 overtime loss to North Carolina State in the ACC tournament championship, a game many considered the best ever played until the Duke-Kentucky classic in the 1992 NCAA tournament.
Driesell's teams won 348 games in 17 years at Maryland, and went to the NCAA tournament eight times, reaching the Elite Eight twice. During the course of his time in College Park, Driesell coached against North Carolina's Dean Smith for all of his tenure and against Duke's Mike Krzyzewski for his last six years ("and we beat Duke more than they beat us").
Only Smith won more ACC games during Driesell's time in the league.
"We were playing in the toughest league in the country, no question the ACC was the toughest league in the country," Driesell said. "Bobby Knight didn't have to win his league to get into the NCAA because the Big Ten didn't have a tournament then. UCLA didn't have a lot of competition out there. That was my goal, to put my team in the top 10."
CHAPTER 2Garyland
Gary Williams was a few months into his job at Ohio State when Lefty Driesell was fired in the fall of 1986. He had followed the tragic death of Maryland star Len Bias from a distance, as he was busy recruiting for the Buckeyes.
At 41, Williams was considered one of the up-and-coming stars in the business of coaching college basketball, having built his resume at American University in Washington, D.C., and later at Boston College in the early years of the Big East.
Some of his friends back East had told Williams that he would have been the perfect choice to replace Driesell, being an alumnus and having coached in the nation's capital.
But they also told him not to expect getting a call from the embattled chancellor, John Slaughter.
In the aftermath of Bias' death from a cocaine overdose that June, the entire athletic program was in upheaval. Popular athletic director Dick Dull, a cool Californian who once used Susan Anton to promote the Terps, had resigned amid the chaos.
Slaughter had consulted with several high-profile coaches, including basketball legend Dean Smith of North Carolina and John Thompson of Georgetown, about whom he should hire. Their answer: Bob Wade, a legend himself on the high school level at Dunbar in Baltimore.
"It was as if roosters were running the henhouse," said Marvin Perry, the president of the school's chief athletic fundraising arm, the Terrapin Club.
The phone call to Williams never came, at least not that fall.
"It would have been hard, but I would have had to do it," Williams said nearly 30 years later. "Maryland's my school."
It took three more years — a tumultuous stretch that saw Wade often overmatched on the sideline despite inheriting a lot of talent and using his recruiting connections with Nike impresario Sonny Vaccaro to get more — for Wade's reign of error to end amid NCAA violations.
This time, there was no doubt for the Terps or their former captain.
Though the university went through the formality of naming a search committee to find Wade's successor, even one of the men brought in for an interview knew that Williams was going to be hired.
"He's the man," said George Raveling, a former Driesell assistant who by then was coaching Southern Cal.
At an emotional press conference, the first of several during what became a 22-season career in College Park that turned Williams from an up-and-comer to a Hall of Famer, the then–44-year-old teared up when talking about what pulled him from Columbus back to College Park.
Giving up a rising program that had just signed high school star Jimmy Jackson for one that was on the brink of NCAA probation, Williams inherited a talented team that included three future NBA players — Walt Williams, Jerrod Mustaf, and Tony Massenburg — but one that was relegated to the NIT after it was announced that the Terps would be put on three-year probation beginning the following season.
"To leave Ohio State, I think I can really say, honestly, that I would never have left there except for the University of Maryland," Williams said in an interview a few days before his Hall of Fame enshrinement in August of 2014. "I felt some responsibility [as an alumnus]. I knew they weren't in great shape, I didn't know how bad a shape they were in when I went back."
Told by then–athletic director Lew Perkins that the Terps would get a "slap on the wrist" by the NCAA, Williams watched as his ascending career plateaued and nearly derailed by what he and others believe were the toughest NCAA sanctions since the SMU football program was given the death penalty.
"We felt slighted, with that feeling that we were still paying the price for having that black cloud from the Len Bias tragedy hanging over us," said Massenburg.
The Terps had winning records his first two seasons, the second played without not only Mustaf, who became a first-round draft pick of the New York Knicks, and Massenburg, who had graduated and begun a long career in the NBA that culminated with him winning a ring with the San Antonio Spurs, but also a month without Walt Williams because of a broken leg.
Eventually, the probation caught up with the Terps. Williams recalled crying on the phone as Randolph Childress told him that he was going to Wake Forest (where he would be joined by relative unknown big man Tim Duncan) because of the sanctions that included two years out of postseason competition and one year off live television.
Other future college stars, including Lawrence Moten of Syracuse and Donyell Marshall of Connecticut, also passed up the Terps.
Even after coming off probation and recruiting local stars Duane Simpkins, Johnny Rhodes, and Exree Hipp, Maryland suffered through its worst season under Williams, going 12–16 in 1992–93. Those annual mentions of Williams as a candidate for this job or that — including Kansas after Larry Brown left — dried up.
"The doubts creep in as time goes by," he said, sitting in the basement of his home a few days before heading up to Springfield and the Naismith Hall of Fame, his voice choking with emotion. "So you're thinking, maybe you can't get this thing turned around."
The turnaround started the next year. After beating out Kentucky for Baltimore high school phenom Keith Booth, Williams' luck turned when a relatively unknown skinny center from Norfolk, Virginia, — Driesell's hometown — arrived. Two years later, and two Sweet 16 appearances later, Joe Smith was the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft.
Garyland was open for business.
CHAPTER 3Moses Malone Was Nearly a Terp
When Moses Malone died in the summer of 2015 of a heart attack at age 60, all of the obituaries talked about his Hall of Fame NBA career, highlighted by his now-famous "Fo, fo, and fo" comment that predated the championship run by the 1983 Philadelphia 76ers that was a game shy of the sweep their center had bluntly predicted.
There was also mention made of Malone's humble roots in Petersburg, Virginia, and how he was the first high school player to make the jump straight to professional basketball, in his case the Utah Stars of the old American Basketball Association, in the late summer and early fall of 1974. There was no mention made of how Malone had nearly become a Maryland Terp.
In reality, Lefty Driesell always considered Malone one of "my guys." After working nearly to exhaustion with the help of assistant coach Dave Pritchard to land the 6'11", 270-pound man-child, Driesell got a call from Malone one day after signing with Maryland. Malone said that a representative of the Stars was in the two-room house he and his mother shared.
"Moses' mother was making about $25 a week as an orderly. He said, 'He's got $10,000 on my coffee table, I've never seen a $10 bill,'" Driesell recalled a couple of months after Malone had passed away in 2015. "I told him, 'You get him out of your house and tell him if he ain't out of there in five minutes, [you're] calling the police.'"
After the man left, Driesell called Malone back and told him, "Moses, you're not signing for anything less than a million. So don't even talk to anybody for less than a million.' The guy from Utah calls me up one Sunday and says, "Coach, I've got a million-dollar contract here for Moses, is it okay if he signs it?' I said, 'He might sign it.'"
Malone spent the summer working a $7-an-hour construction job Driesell had arranged for him near College Park, and showed the kind of work ethic he displayed throughout his NBA career.
"His high school coach got mad at me because he had to wear safety shoes and a helmet. His coach said, 'Moses is going to get hurt,'" Driesell said. "I told his coach, 'I don't want him to get hurt more than you do.' The guy who hired him told him to meet him on his porch every day at 6:30 or 7:00 and [he'd] take [Moses] to work. He said, 'Moses was never late the whole summer.'"
As the summer went on, Driesell started to plan for the 1974–75 season, with Malone expected to take over inside from the recently graduated Len Elmore and Tom McMillen. The Stars were persistent, raising the offer at once to the million dollars Driesell had told Malone to negotiate for himself.
One day, the same representative showed up at Driesell's house.
"We go in the house, his name was Showalter or something like that, and I told him, 'This contract isn't worth more than $500,000,'" Driesell said. "He was guaranteed $500,000 and he would be given the rest if he made the team the next two years. I told him, 'Get out of here. He's not signing anything. I told you, he's not signing for anything less than a million.'"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from 100 Things Maryland Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die by Don Markus. Copyright © 2016 Don Markus. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword by Gary Williams,1. UCLA of the East,
2. Garyland,
3. Moses Malone Was Nearly a Terp,
4. Cool Hand Luke,
5. This Bud's For You,
6. Not Your Average Joe,
7. Old King Cole,
8. Was It the Bob Wade Era or Error?,
9. Booth Opens Doors to Baltimore,
10. We're Off to See the Wizard,
11. Maryland's First Big Shue Deal,
12. Tom McMillen's Dilemma,
13. Maryland's Greatest Athlete,
14. What Was the Best Recruiting Class In Maryland History?,
15. Terps Win at Dean Dome,
16. The Origins of Midnight Madness,
17. The Promoter,
18. Turgeon the Surgeon,
19. A Forgotten Rivalry, the Fight, and the Shot,
20. Bilas Remembers Bias,
21. Greivis Vasquez, Gary's Alter Ego,
22. The Biggest Shots in Maryland History,
23. 103–100,
24. John Gilchrist's Rise and Fall,
25. Others Who Left Early and How They Fared,
26. A Wild Weekend in Atlanta,
27. Early Lessons for Gary,
28. The Best Players Whose Jerseys Don't Hang in College Park,
29. Albert and Buck,
30. From Walk-On to Captain,
31. Cole Magic for the Miners,
32. Lefty Looks Back At 1974,
33. Top High School Signings,
34. Cole's Going-Away Party,
35. College Stars, NBA Journeymen, and Busts,
36. Top 10 Transfers,
37. Most Memorable Wins over Duke,
38. Had Lefty Not Come,
39. Trivia King,
40. Elmore, Walton, and Uncle Sam,
41. End Game for Gary,
42. Ex-Dookie, Terp for Life,
43. The Star-Crossed Legacy of Ernie Graham,
44. Gary and His ADs,
45. Gary's Night with Mr. Naismith,
46. He's the Juan,
47. Bias Would Have Been Jordan's Rival,
48. Jack and Joe, Kings of the Press Box,
49. Jack Heise, Bob Novak, and the Fastbreakers,
50. It's Always a Holliday with Johnny,
51. Lefty Deserves the Hall,
52. Life after Maryland for Lefty,
53. Getting the Scoop,
54. Lonny's Phantom Foul,
55. Maryland's Biggest Wins,
56. My Favorite ACC Venues,
57. Nightmare at Cole,
58. My Favorite Big Ten Venues,
59. Replacing a Legend Isn't Easy,
60. Rhodes Scholar,
61. Tennis, Anyone?,
62. Maryland's Top Walk-Ons,
63. A Different View of Lefty,
64. Greatest Game Ever?,
65. Maryland's First Great Big Man,
66. The Shot,
67. Diamond Stone Briefly Shining Bright,
68. Steve Blake, NBA Lifer,
69. In a Wink, Francis was Gone,
70. Bias Finally Makes Maryland Hall of Fame,
71. Addition by Subtraction,
72. Just Shy of a Record,
73. Maryland's Biggest Villains,
74. A Star in the Making,
75. Most Underrated Players,
76. The Short Honeymoon with "The Jewish Jordan",
77. Terp Heroes,
78. Lonny Goes Back to Back,
79. The Night Gary and Coach K Went Missing,
80. Kurtis Shultz's Georgetown Cameo,
81. Jake Layman, Survivor,
82. Dez Wells Rewrites His Ending,
83. Gary and the Refs,
84. Was Dixon the Greatest Terp Ever?,
85. A Hot Ticket,
86. Reaching the Promised Land,
87. Women in the Locker Room,
88. Meloland,
89. How Tom Young Nearly Became Coach,
90. Billy, Jimmy, and Gary's Coaching Tree,
91. The True Meaning of No. 3,
92. Redemption in 1984,
93. Bison Dele, RIP,
94. The Turgeonites,
95. Will The Big Ten Ever Feel Like Home?,
96. Maryland's First African American Player,
97. The Probation Years,
98. The Fuel That Drove Dixon,
99. Memories of Len Bias,
100. My Career in College Park,
Sources,