---St. Bonaventure coach Mark Schmidt played for Gary Williams for three seasons at Boston College during the early 80s. Schmidt shared his thoughts on Williams, the former Maryland coach, who retired on Thursday:
He’s leaving a tremendous legacy and his biggest legacy is he won doing it the right way. He didn’t cheat and he did the way you’re supposed to do it. He didn’t cut corners, he did it the blue collar way.
He’s a great Xs and Os and he’s always the underdog. He didn’t have everything that Carolina and Duke had but he was a fighter. I heard someone say one time that he’s a coach’s coach. He epitomized everything that’s in a good coach. The passion that he had, the commitment, the drive. It’s a tremendous legacy especially at Maryland where he took over a program that was on probation and it wasn’t a great situation but he built it into a national champion.
He wasn’t into AAU coaches, he did it his way and he didn’t always have the best players. He didn’t always have the highly recruited players but he coached them and most of those guys maximized their abilities under his tutelage. He’s one of the coaches who has been very successful for a long time that didn’t bend the rules. That’s hard to say in today’s world. You can never say he cheated. He did it the right way. He won the right way.
---Rodney McKissic
