CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Back in January, coach Gary Williams talked about the value of winning the ACC’s regular season title.
The Terrapin men’s basketball team was off to a quick start in conference play, and Williams cited Hall of Fame former North Carolina coach Dean Smith in an answer about whether the ACC Tournament is overvalued and the grueling regular season overshadowed.
“You want to win the regular season [and] you don’t get as much credit as you should,” Williams said at the time. “The winner of the regular season should be the champion of the ACC because that’s a three-month deal and you play 16 games. The ACC Tournament is three, possibly four games, so to me the most important thing is winning the regular season championship if you can.”
The Terps clinched a share of the ACC regular season championship Saturday with a 74-68 win over Virginia, and they deserve a ton of credit for doing so.
Great teams are always going to be measured by their success in the postseason, but the Terps’ ability to sustain a high level of play for more than two months in a tough conference is a tremendous feat.
Critics will say the conference is down this year, but those of us who watched this team on a game-by-game basis know how much of a dogfight this season was.
Most importantly, the Terps now have a tangible accomplishment to remember this season by, regardless of what they are able to do in tournament play in the weeks ahead.
Obviously they are not satisfied, but they are already champions.
“We worked hard the whole season to get where we are today,” guard Sean Mosley said. “It’s one of those feelings that I’ll never forget.”
This title validates everything the Terps have done in the past two months and will make this season stand out from a historical perspective.
Instead of remembering this year simply as a collection of exciting games, fans in future generations will now be able to look through the record book and see a championship headlining the 2009-2010 season.
It won’t just be “that year guard Cliff Tucker hit a buzzer-beater against Georgia Tech,” or “that year guard Greivis Vasquez scored 41 against Virginia Tech” or “that year we beat Duke and I lit my couch on fire afterward.”
Now it’s the year a great Terp team won a share of the ACC regular season championship, and all of those amazing games just happened along the way.
And that’s a really nice thing to think about.
“I’m really proud of our team. To get 13 wins this year in a very even league, I’m just proud of what we did,” Williams said. “At the beginning of the year, we had to put things together. We had to work hard to get to where we could play. Once we did, we were able to sustain it pretty well over a period of 16 games.”
The Terps have come a long way during the past 14 months or so.
Williams faced media criticism about his recruiting, he had a public dispute with an Athletics Department official and many writers — including me — repeatedly questioned the level of talent the Terps put on the court.
The scrutiny certainly seemed justified at the time, but now the adversity is just another part of the unlikely story that will pick up again this weekend in Greensboro, N.C., where the Terps will have as good a chance as any team to win the ACC Tournament.
The Terps have already cemented their legacy as the program’s most successful team since 2003, when guard Steve Blake guided the defending national champions into the Sweet 16.
Now, all they can do is make it look even better and make Williams’ argument about the importance of the regular season versus the conference tournament moot.
People will ultimately judge the Terps based on what they accomplish in the postseason tournaments, and maybe that’s justified.
Just don’t belittle what they clinched this weekend.
schimmel@umdbk.com
