Re: Fw: Mike DeCourcy: Terps' collection of no-names learned how to win

From: William J. Rands
Date: 02 Apr 2002 - 02:55 PM EST

This article is right on pt about Byron Mouton. He was highly
recruited,went to Tulane & was a selfish, nonhustler, esp his sophomore
yr.My least favorite ever Tulane player.Shows something about Perry Clark
as a coach.
Bill(Tulane Law '73)

On Tue, 2 Apr 2002, richard l. kandell wrote:

Does this recruiting philosophy sound familiar?

Richard K.

----- Original Message -----
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Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2002 12:03 PM
Subject: Mike DeCourcy: Terps' collection of no-names learned how to win

You can also find this article at:
http://www.sportingnews.com/voices/mike_decourcy/20020402.html

Terps' collection of no-names learned how to win
04/02/2002

Mike DeCourcy
The Sporting News

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ATLANTA -- On the play of his life, the play that made him an NCAA

champion, Byron Mouton could have landed flat on his face. The ball was
sailing over the baseline and seemed entirely out of reach. To rescue it
required him to think fast and act without concern for his health. In other
words, he had to hustle. This, he learned at Maryland.

Terrapins basketball has been funny that way. What the players did not

bring into Cole Field House, they were likely to absorb while playing under
its arched ceiling. "I came a long way," Mouton says. "People don't realize
the difference between the Tulane Byron and the Maryland Byron. At Tulane, I
probably would have let that ball go out of bounds. I would have watched
it."

Mouton's moment -- easily buried beneath the statistical excesses of his

more celebrated teammates -- developed with 3:56 left in Monday's national
championship game at the Georgia Dome and Maryland leading Indiana by only
four points. Although the margin would grow rapidly to blowout proportions,
to a 64-52 outcome, the game still was very much a game at that juncture.

Terps point guard Steve Blake missed a 3, and the ball headed out of

bounds along the baseline. Mouton hopped on one leg and scooped the ball
with one hand to Blake, whose pass to power forward Tahj Holden was
redirected inside for a quick score by guard Drew Nicholas. Thus began an
11-0 surge that delivered the Terps their first national title.

Other schools that have won recent NCAA Tournament championships took

basketball stars and made them into teams. Khalid El-Amin and Richard
Hamilton became Uconn's 1999 champions. Jason Williams, Mike Dunleavy and
Shane Battier coalesced to win it for Duke last April. Maryland won its
title with the recruiting equivalent of Five Guys Named Moe. The Terrapins,
even star seniors Juan Dixon and Lonny Baxter, once were deep enough on
those ubiquitous lists of top high school prospects that it required the
nerve of a spelunker to locate them.

"No one really gave these seniors a chance when they came to Maryland,"

assistant coach Dave Dickerson says. "But they are the best in college
basketball now, and they really appreciate what that means."

This NCAA championship might have seemed unremarkable to those who began

following college basketball as the tournament commenced. The Terps were a
No. 1 seed. They were Atlantic Coast Conference champions. Their roster
included a first-team All-American. Teams such as this are the ones that cut
down nets and invent dances on the hardwood floor.

This, however, is anything but an ordinary, overwhelming, overdog

champion. This is a team whose components largely were dismissed or derided
by numerous recruiting analysts and the apprehensive Terrapins fans who
trusted their assessments. This is, remarkably, the first team since 1978 to
claim an NCAA championship without a McDonald's All-American on its roster.

That does not make these Terps the answer to a trivia question. This is

much more. This is the culmination of a fundamental shift in the nature of
the college game, a game whose surface has been eroded by early NBA draft
entry but whose core strength was revealed in the beauty of the games played
last weekend at the Georgia Dome. This is an endorsement of the value of
experience, with the Terps starting three seniors who have passed their 23rd
birthdays.

Specific to Maryland, this is an affirmation of the approach to player

development followed by coach Gary Williams. He battled for many of the
elite-level players produced in the Baltimore-Washington corridor during the
past half-decade, and let some of them escape. Among those who left the area
to play elsewhere: Keith Bogans, Joseph Forte, James White and DerMarr
Johnson. And that's just a sampling.

Instead of those headline-grabbing talents, Williams signed Blake, Baxter,

Chris Wilcox and Dixon, an all-city guard from Baltimore who became
Maryland's career scoring leader. The typical Terp was ranked somewhere
between 40th and 80th by analysts. Williams and Maryland helped turn them
into stars. And champions.

The most highly recruited Terp wasnÕt even successfully recruited by the

Terps -- not out of high school, anyway. Mouton, a 6-6 small forward, had
been close to making the McDonald's game and close to choosing Kentucky, but
Rick Pitino's departure from Lexington in the spring of 1997 led him to
waste two years at Tulane.

By the time Mouton wound up at Maryland, much of that high school-star

polish had been worn away by his inert play with the Green Wave. Starting
two years, he attempted nearly half his shots from 3-point range even
though, honestly, he was lousy at it. Because of his size and athletic
ability, Mouton was appealing to the Maryland coaches despite what they saw
on Tulane game tapes. Maryland assistant Jimmy Patsos spoke to a coaching
friend from Conference USA, then-Cincinnati assistant Mick Cronin, to
question whether this was a risk worth taking. "Mick said, 'He needs you as
much as you need him,'" Patsos recalls.

"I wouldn't rebound. I wouldn't get in transition. I wasn't a great

defender," Mouton says. "Coming here and sitting out a year was big for me.
I played all five positions. Sometimes I played point. Sometimes I played
guard. Sometimes I played center and had to hold Terence Morris down. That
year was tough, and it helped me learn to play the game."

The ideal that defines Williams' approach is this: He coaches basketball

players. Not power forwards. Not small forwards. Not shooting guards. He
tells his players there are no kickers on his team -- no specialists.

Patsos says that when the staff is conducting offseason workouts, there is

no effort to segregate big men and guards. "It doesn't matter who's in the
group. Everyone learns a lot about all facets of the game." All the big men
do ballhandling drills. All the guards learn to play in the post.

Maryland also uses as fuel the notion that its players are, well, mutts --

unwanted and unloved by the talent evaluators. The Terps know precisely how
many McDonald's All-Americans have been in their company. "Since I've been
here, we've had one, Danny Miller, and he left the program," Dixon says.

"We play a certain way, and I think you have to get certain types of

players," Williams says. "We look for guys that maybe other schools think,
'He's not big enough,' or whatever. For us, he might be a really good
player, even though he doesn't have the All-American label or whatever after
his name.

"As you're in coaching, you're a teacher. You like to get guys that are

willing to work. To walk down every day in practice and have guys willing to
listen and to work hard to get better, that's pretty special. I know some
players that are more difficult to coach than what I have."

Maryland's intelligence and experience helped build a double-digit

first-half lead. The Terps confidently ran at Indiana's potent 3-point
shooters, trusting the scouting report that insisted the Hoosiers were no
threats to drive.

The most important difference between Maryland and Indiana, though, was

obvious each time Hoosiers star Jared Jeffries caught the ball in the post.
Instead of commencing to dribble and attempting to back down Wilcox or spin
off him into the lane, Jeffries turned to face him. Wilcox's strength
convinced Jeffries he had to try something different. Wilcox finished with
10 points and seven rebounds in 24 minutes, but his effort in suppressing
Jeffries might have been more vital than Dixon's 18 points or Baxter's 15
points and 14 boards.

Wilcox and Jeffries were high school seniors in 2000. Jeffries was a

McDonald's All-American. Wilcox was not. "When he was inside in the
McDonald's game, I was outside working on my game," Wilcox says. He played
only 8.6 minutes per game as a freshman, when the Terps reached the Final
Four and lost to Duke. He says he learned while spectating that playing hard
was not optional.

"There's always a list of players out there that if you don't recruit

them, you're a bad recruiter -- no matter how many games you win," Williams
says. "There are people who care more about recruiting than they do about
how many games you win. I've never figured that out."

The thing about the recruitniks is they can manufacture the conviction

that if a team had landed that one additional superstar talent, their team
would have had the equipment necessary to claim a championship.

They no longer can aim that contention at Williams. He had what he needed.

Senior writer Mike DeCourcy covers college basketball for The Sporting

News. Email him at address@hidden

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References:
- Fw: Mike DeCourcy: Terps' collection of no-names learned how to win
  - From: richard l. kandell

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