Atlanta (AP)–The white-haired little boy skittered around the court, oblivious to the whole celebration. Gary Williams scooped up his grandson, looked into his eyes–and smiled. The coach could relax. Finally. The Maryland Terrapins had their national championship. Finally.
“I’ve never done this before, so I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be like,” Williams said. “I’m very happy. It’s a thrill, there’s no doubt about it. But I’m really tired.”
No wonder. He kept coaching right to the end, long after Maryland secured a 64-52 victory over Indiana in the title game Monday night.
The tie was askew. The arms were flailing. The voice never wavered. After 24 years of coaching–and Maryland’s history of scandal and disappointment–who could blame him for taking no chances?
“If you’re going to be a good basketball team, you have to play every play,” Williams said. “We don’t want to waste any plays.”
On Tuesday morning, still sleepy-eyed, Williams accepted the championship trophy.
“This will look good in my living room,” he joked.
This team, led by seniors Juan Dixon, Lonny Baxter and Byron Mouton, had no intention of letting that happen. Not after the disappointment from 366 days earlier, when the Terrapins squandered a 22-point lead in the Final Four against eventual champion Duke.
“People asked me if the Duke game was on my mind,” said Baxter, who scored 15 points and grabbed 14 rebounds. “I was like, ‘No, it won’t be until I win a national championship.'”
In other words, the Terrapins (32-4) never really forgot. Their game plan was simple: Get back to the Final Four, win two games, cut down the nets–put that bitter defeat behind them.
“They had the courage after last year’s game in the Final Four to set a goal that a lot of people kind of laughed at,” Williams said. “They weren’t afraid to tell people what their goal was.”
This was Maryland’s first appearance in a national championship game and the senior-laden lineup came through over the final 9:42, ending the Hoosiers’ magical run through the NCAA tournament.
“The victory was won,” said Indiana’s second-year coach, Mike Davis, who succeeded Bob Knight and took a No. 5 seed to the final game of the season. “We had a chance tonight, but Maryland is a much better team than we are.”
It wasn’t always that way. Williams guided his alma mater from the depths of probation 13 years ago to the pinnacle of college basketball. He took over just three years after the cocaine-induced death of star Len Bias, inheriting a program wracked by scandal.
“Having played at Maryland, coming back at a time I hate to even think about because there was so much mistrust, so much doubt about the place of the basketball program at the University of Maryland,” the coach said. “We had to work all those things out before we could even think about having a good basketball team.”
With the journey complete, Williams held his 2 1/2-year-old grandson, David, and allowed that famous intensity to melt long enough to celebrate with the players.
Dixon led the Terrapins with 18 points and hit the shot that put his team ahead for good. When the horn sounded, the 165-pound guard hurled the ball toward the roof of the Georgia Dome and collapsed to the floor, sandwiched between the 260-pound Baxter and 247-pound Tahj Holden.
“I feel like I’m dreaming right now because I’m part of a national championship team,” said Dixon, selected the Final Four’s most outstanding player.
He scored at least 27 points in four of the first five tournament games, including 33 in the semifinal victory over fellow top-seed Kansas.
Dixon started the title game at that pace, scoring 11 points in the opening 10 minutes. He didn’t score again for more than 20 minutes, allowing Indiana to grab its only lead. It lasted just eight seconds.
Steve Blake escaped a trap and fed Dixon for a 3-pointer with 9:42 to play, giving Maryland the lead for good at 45-44.
“I was trying to be patient,” Dixon said. “I was trying to let the game come to me. I hit a big shot.”
Dixon made a bunch of them during his career, passing Bias as the school’s leading scorer.
The senior overcame a troubled life. Both parents were addicted to drugs and died of AIDS while he was in high school. Dixon wanted to play at Maryland, but plenty of people thought he was too frail–only 150 pounds at 6-3 as a freshman–to make it.
Williams took a chance and was rewarded with an All-American.
“It’s not the size of the body,” Blake said. “It’s the will to want to get open, to want to score. He has that.”
Indiana (25-12) shocked defending national champ Duke in the regional semifinals, then knocked off second-seeded Oklahoma in the national semifinals.
The team that had the country almost forgetting about Bob Knight couldn’t come up with another stunner, though.
The Hoosiers made eight of their first 12 from behind the 3-point line, then went 2-of-11 the rest of the way. When the long-range shots stopped falling, they had no way to counter the more physical Terrapins.
Jared Jeffries, the Big Ten’s player of the year, finished with eight points on 4-for-11 shooting. The Hoosiers were 20-of-58 from the field (34.5 percent), the first time in the tournament they shot below 50 percent.
Maryland, which won 19 of its last 20 games, again was big on the boards, finishing with a 42-31 rebound advantage.
“They were definitely physical,” said Jeffries, who will decide whether to enter the NBA draft. Kyle Hornsby led Indiana with 14 points.
The loss was the first for Indiana in six national championship games. The last three titles–1976, 1981 and 1987–were won under Knight, fired two years ago.