Gary Williams, Tiger Woods Bring the Fist Pumps

When Tiger Woods joined Gary Williams on a Comcast SportsNet set this week, the first thing Woods said was, "I haven't forgotten that game."

"That game" was the 2001 NCAA tournament regional final between top-seeded Stanford and Maryland, which the Terrapins won to advance to their first Final Four, a crushing result for Cardinal fans such as a certain tournament host.

"I said, 'Ah, we played really well. It was just one of those days,' " Williams said yesterday.

"Right," Woods responded.

What the men didn't discuss was what I wanted to ask them: the similarity of their signature fist pumps. Living in this town, it's hard to think of two men more closely associated with the fist pump than Woods and Williams, who is again working as an analyst on CSN's nightly golf show from Congressional. Like, whose fist pump is better?

"Tiger's got the best," Williams said. "Tiger by far. But he's younger."

The fist pump, it turns out, wasn't some accidental addition to Williams's persona. When he played basketball, he wasn't demonstrative. "It was a different game, a different time," he said. He doesn't get fired up on the golf course. "If I made a fist pump, I'd probably hurt my elbow," he joked. And when he coached at Ohio State, he entered the arena and waved at the Buckeye fans.

Then he got to Maryland, and the vibe required something stronger. Len Bias had died. The program was under investigation, and the Terps soon couldn't appear on television or play in the NCAA tournament. Williams wanted a way to say thanks to the 7,369 fans who still showed up for his first game, an 87-53 win over Delaware State at Cole Field House.

"Walking into Cole and seeing a pretty good crowd even though we had those restrictions meant a lot to me," Williams said.

And so Williams has fist-pumped his way through 20 regular seasons and 13 NCAA tournaments, through a national championship and an ACC title, always with the right. It makes him comfortable, he said, has become "part of the routine."

But casual observers noticed a bit more defiance in that pump this spring. Maybe you heard, but there was a bit of media chatter about Williams's future, and as the noise mounted, the fist sneaked a bit higher into the air, stayed there a moment longer.

"About halfway through the year, I got very enthusiastic," Williams agreed with a smile. "We had to prove something as a team. . . . It was just showing the people that I thought we were still good, [that] we still had a good chance to make the NCAA tournament, when a lot of people said we didn't. It was kind of like, 'Here we go. You're either with us or you're not with us.' "

And next year?

"The fist pump," he said, "will be around forever."