The Gary Williams departure and its effect on BC

With all respect to our friends at Terrapin Station, the excellent Maryland Fansided blog, it hasn’t been a good week for hoops in College Park. In fact, it’s been downright awful as the two Williamses, Jordan and Gary (no relation), delivered blows to the program. Jordan Williams announced he would stay in the NBA Draft, which was followed by long-time head coach Gary Williams shocking everyone by retiring.

Gary Williams was an assistant coach at BC from 1973 to 1978, and the head coach of the Eagles from 1982 to 1986. In that short period, he took the team to the Sweet 16 twice. In 1986, he left BC for Ohio State (and in a twist of fate, the next coach BC hired, Jim O’Brien, also ended up leaving the Eagles for the Buckeyes).

To put it plainly and in poor English, ain’t nobody saw this one coming. He has been the coach of Maryland since 1989, or in more impactful terms, consider the graduating senior class down there. Many of them are 22 years old, which means they were born in 1989. Gary Williams has been the basketball coach of the Terps for their entire lives, and now, in a stunning announcement, he will be leaving the bench. I mean, surely he is entitled to want to step back and into the athletics office at his age (66; he was the oldest ACC coach upon his retirement). I can say that the Atlantic Coast Conference won’t miss having to face him, but we will miss the great coaching that he brought to the table. Williams goes out as an excellent coach who raised the quality of basketball in our conference.

So now, who will the Terps hire? Your guess is as good as mine, but keep in mind that the Maryland job is a good one. It won’t be easy filling Williams’ shoes, but they’re going to do what they can to find someone on a high level. They may or may not succeed, but chances are whomever this man is will be able to compete with the rest of the ACC, meaning still no cakewalks for the Eagles against the Terps. I think it all remains to be seen, however. We know that our conference has lost a top coach, but without knowing his replacement, we can’t fully predict how it will impact the ACC and BC along with it.

One thing I do know, however, is that Steve Donahue is fast moving up the seniority chart in the ACC.  Taking Williams’ departure into account, this is how it looks now:

He is now in the top half of ACC coaches when it comes to tenure with the current team.  It’s very interesting to see that over half of the coaches in this conference were hired in the 2010s.  In just the last few years, we have seen a lot of turnover in this conference, and our school was one of those that flipped.  Who knows what this will mean in the upcoming season with regards to coaching quality in the ACC.  That’s an issue for all 12 teams since the integrity of the conference is at stake; with Maryland being one of the higher-profile basketball programs, BC fans should hope they hire well.  We can worry about trying to beat him later.