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Thursday, March 29
They've been through it before
By Andy Katz
ESPN.com
MINNEAPOLIS -- Want to know what Gary Williams is probably going through right now?
|  | | Jim Calhoun's first trip to the Final Four couldn't have had a better ending for Connecticut. |
Well, he's thinking about tickets for his family and friends. He's figuring out how to get his players grounded -- while still allowing them to enjoy the Final Four experience. He's tinkering with his game plan to beat Duke, while also realistically thinking about playing Arizona or Michigan State two days later. Oh, and he's trying to keep things as normal as possible, too.
How do we know? Because that's the type of stuff Jim Calhoun and Jim O'Brien were doing two years ago. Same with Jim Boeheim in '87. Those coaches know what Williams must be going through in these harried days as the Maryland coach makes his first Final Four appearance.
Every coach has his own approach to this Super Bowl-like frenzy in college basketball. Some worked. Some didn't. There is no perfect answer.
"I remember the tickets, we had to get 96 for our family and friends," Calhoun, the Connecticut coach, said of his first and only Final Four in 1999. "And the players? I told the players that they'll hear from their CYO coach they haven't seen in years and will suddenly have new friends all over the place."
Calhoun took the Huskies to Tampa/St. Pete on the Wednesday before their semifinal, allowing them two days to enjoy themselves and soak up the "flavors and smells" of the Final Four. That was a bit of chore, with the '99 Final Four lacking a true walkway feel with teams and fans staying miles apart in one or the other sister cities. The Huskies went into lock down Friday, Saturday and eventually Sunday and Monday once they beat Ohio State in the national semifinal.
"We just tried to approach it like it was another Saturday-Monday setup in the Big East," Calhoun said. "We tried to make it 80 minutes. That's all. We tried to separate everything but it's hard. Like me, Gary has been waiting for this. So too has Maryland, just like Connecticut."
Normalcy is easier to talk about than to achieve. Boeheim, who made his first Final Four appearance in 1987 and returned in '96, said it can be complicated by the slew of media requests, especially for a school that hasn't been there before.
"It's really hard to do anything normal, it really is a different week," said O'Brien, who was in his first and only Final Four in '99, with Ohio State. "One of the things you have to do is manage your time and manage the time of your players. There are so many people, so many media that want to get a piece of their time. You have to be as accommodating as you can be but you can't do that and lose sight of practice and the games."
O'Brien said he got criticized in Columbus for keeping his players tucked away in Tampa at a highly secure hotel. He said it just so happened the hotel the NCAA chose for the Buckeyes had a secured gate.
"Finding that middle ground of having them enjoy it and not letting them get too involved is hard," O'Brien said. "You've got to have normal preparation but it's anything but normal."
Maryland is staying in St. Paul, across the river from Minneapolis and away from most of the fans that will be kept in downtown Minneapolis hotels between the Target Center and the Metrodome. Chilly temperatures should keep pedestrian traffic down and keep most of the fans shuttling through the gerbil tunnels that connect the downtown hotels and shopping malls.
"It's really not as bad as people think," Boeheim said. "It's hard having a week off. You've got all the excitement of the previous week, you've come down and you've got to build back up for the game. The players are sheltered more than you think because the coaches will keep a tight reign."
Boeheim said there is pressure to win, not just be happy to be at the Final Four. "But for Gary, it's great for him to get there, but it's also great because it's a game he can win. He can beat Duke. He knows he can beat Duke."
That's why Boeheim, Calhoun and O'Brien, three coaches who know Williams well (Calhoun and Boeheim coached against him in the Big East and O'Brien replaced him at Boston College) believe Williams actually has an advantage that they didn't have in their first appearance. Williams knows his opponent extremely well, playing the Blue Devils every season at least twice and this year three times.
"He should be 3-0 against them," Calhoun said.
Calhoun knows that Duke needed a 10-point, last-minute comeback to send the first game into overtime before winning, then got a last-possession win in the ACC tournament semifinals.
"He'll be so tuned in to winning the game that he'll have an advantage more than anybody else in this first-time position," O?Brien said. "A lot of coaches would go in against Mike (Krzyzewski) and be in awe. But Gary won't. The other three coaches (Krzyzewski, Michigan State's Tom Izzo and Arizona's Lute Olson) have all won the title, let alone been in the Final Four. Gary hasn't, but he's probably thinking that he's better than those teams anyway."
And that's the mentality Williams probably has to have this week. Calhoun said the '99 Final Four was supposed to be the Krzyzewski-Duke Invitational with three first-timers in Calhoun, Izzo and O'Brien.
"But we all thought we could win it," Calhoun said. "Each coach has his own story and no one has any less desire. Each one of them will imagine cutting down the nets.
"I don't care who you are, it's a special experience. For Mike, it has been nine years since he won it. For Tom, it's a chance to make basketball history (with back-to-back titles). For Lute, it's doing something special after an incredibly difficult year. For Gary, it would be one of those special things to get there for the first time and win the thing."
O'Brien said the first few days of the week allowed the Buckeyes to take inventory of what they accomplished. Maryland is likely doing the same thing. But the recovery will be over when the Terps arrive Wednesday night.
"Mike is the greatest coach of our generation and there's no question that the thirst and hunger is just as great for him as it is for Gary Williams," Calhoun said. "It's his first time there but he's got a team that can win it."
And that should make Williams' first Final Four a lot easier to handle.
Andy Katz is a senior writer at ESPN.com.
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