Senior forward James Gist has started to notice a bit of a change around the Terrapin men’s basketball team’s practices: Coach Gary Williams has taken a different approach this year.
It’s not a change for the worse; it’s just not the status quo that Gist was used to during his first three seasons with the Terps.
“It’s crazy. I started to notice it over the past few games – his patience with the team,” Gist said. “I mean he’s still Gary Williams; he still yells, he does the whole thing, but it’s a lot more laid-back than it had been over the years that I’ve been here. My freshman year … we had a lot of veterans on our team. He was pretty intense with us, but now it just seems to be a little more laid-back. He gets intense, but not as intense as he was before.”
Why?
“‘Cause he knows the guys are young, and it’s gonna take a while to catch on,” Gist said. “It’s not gonna happen overnight.”
With six true freshmen and a redshirt freshman, Williams knew from the beginning that wins wouldn’t come easily. The Terps’ coach has admittedly been very patient with this year’s team, which has a 4-2 record after six games.
Tonight against Illinois, in the ninth annual Big Ten/ACC Challenge, the youthful Terps will get another shot to knock off a solid team from a power conference. So far they are 0-2 against such teams, but that’s not discouraging to Williams, who knew what to expect coming into this season.
“To do the best coaching you can, you have to be yourself,” Williams said. “You can’t be a fake or try to coach like somebody else, so you gotta stay with that, what you’ve been doing for the last 30 years. Whenever you have freshmen, you have to take it a little slower. We have a lot of freshmen this year.”
Braxton Dupree and Adrian Bowie have begun to separate themselves from the other newcomers and will likely be the first two off the bench tonight.
“I think those two guys have established themselves, and nobody gave them that,” Williams said. “They did that, and that’s not just in games. That’s in practice, which is important. I find it interesting when somebody comments on who should be playing just based on games. Now obviously, a guy has to play well in games to keep his spot, but the reason they get there, where they go in first, is from what they did in practice.”
Dupree, Bowie and the rest of the freshmen were top dogs in high school, but now they are just small fish in a big pond. Because of that, it’s taking longer for most of the freshmen to develop to Williams’ style, the Terps and playing in the NCAA.
“It’s a lot different from high school,” Dupree said. “Plays are a lot more complex and the game’s a lot more intense.”
Gist, who only played about 17 minutes per game his freshman season, knows the adjustment period is difficult, and like Williams, is patient with the Terps’ development.
“The main thing that a young player might not understand is how hard you actually have to work,” Gist said. “You can take plays off in high school; you’re the best player on the court. If you don’t get back on defense one time, it’s no biggie. But here in college, every player on every team is good. Every player on every team was the best player in high school, so it’s like you can’t take plays off.”
Growing pains are bound to happen, which is why Williams is treating his practices a tad differently than in the past.
“He doesn’t yell nearly as much in practice,” Gist said. “In practice, I know there’s times where guys constantly mess up on plays, and I know a couple years ago if we’d have messed up a play more than two or three times, he probably would have thrown us outta the gym. Now that hasn’t happened.
“Sometimes during practice, I’d be talking to guys. I’d be like, ‘Man I know coach Williams is upset, but he’s just not reacting the way he usually would,’ so I know it’s a struggle for him to hold it in at times, but he realizes he has to be patient with us.”
In a way, that patience also means rebuilding the offense, which has yet to look in-sync.
Williams has said that it has been a challenge to keep practices from being too boring for the veterans but not too complex for the freshmen.
It hasn’t always been easy.
“It is kinda different because we never spent so much time on each play,” Gist said. “Usually it’s like, coach could put in a play the day before a game or two nights before a game and we’ll be able to run that play to a ‘T’ in the game. But this year it’s a little different because he can’t do that.”
After the Terps lost to UCLA last week, Gist said Williams had wanted to go to a local gym to practice but was unable to do so because the team played the next night and the adjustment period wasn’t long enough.
“Just him hesitating in that situation, I know last year or the year before he wouldn’t have hesitated,” Gist said. “So, it is a little different.”
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