At Maryland, Weighing the Pros and Cons of Gary Williams

The back-and-forth between men's basketball coach Gary Williams and Maryland athletic officials regarding the decisions of prospects Gus Gilchrist and Tyree Evans to attend other schools touched off a variety of opinions among Terrapin followers. A sampling of yesterday's comments on washingtonpost.com:

Handling difficult players is simple: If they don't want to play or are going to be a problem for you, let them go. Gilchrist and Evans were poisonous to this program. I would rather have a lousy team with a clean record than a winning program with a rap sheet a mile long. One thing I like about Gary Williams is that he has always run a clean program.

-- ecglotfelty

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It's unfortunate. Gary has done so much for this program. But he either does not want to recruit or is terrible at it. Either way, if it does not improve dramatically, it may be time to look elsewhere. When you look at the top players/recruits, they don't even have Maryland on their radar. Gary needs to explain why, without references to his national championship and that he resurrected this program from the dead -- we get that and thank him for that. But the fans need to know that the program is going in the right direction -- and it is not. It's on a steady decline since the national championship.

-- BulletsFan1

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This has become a sideshow.

Gary Williams is the pillar of Maryland athletics. There is no Debbie Yow without Gary Williams. Forget Debbie Yow; forget the assistant AD. Gary Williams could spit rum at his players and I would applaud him. He's a great coach and perhaps not the avid recruiter he should be. He plays out his contract and gracefully bows out.