Gary Williams, Scott Van Pelt on Maryland basketball: 'A different type of year'

Former Maryland men's basketball coach Gary Williams and &quot;SportsCenter&quot; host Scott Van Pelt were on hand for the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation's &quot;College Season Tip-Off&quot; fundraiser luncheon Wednesday at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront.With both nearly as invested in Terps basketball as the speaker who followed them — coach Mark Turgeon — Williams and Van Pelt spent much of their 12-plus minutes with the media answering questions about the season ahead in College Park, Melo Trimble and more.Below is a transcript of their answers, which have been edited and condensed for clarity.On the diminished expectations for this seasonVan Pelt: When they won the title [in 2002], the year before, they'd been in the Final Four, so the idea that a lot was expected made sense. Last year, the expectations sort of came out of nowhere, and that's a lot to carry around. And there were a lot of different personalities and new people and [questions about,] &quot;How do you make all the pieces of the puzzle fit together?&quot; That's a challenge. It seems that they've got a lot of new puzzle pieces, but it's different. ...There's not as much expectation, and that could be a good thing, because these guys can grow into whatever they're going to become without people asking, &quot;Well, 27 wins, why don't you have a better seed?&quot; You know what I mean? I think this will be a different type of year, and it takes a lot to carry around those expectations, and when they did the year they won the title, they lived up to it. I think that's hard to do.Williams: I think the one thing you learn as you go through the whole coaching thing is that people are always going to have outside expectations of your team, but the thing is, being with that team each day is the most rewarding thing for me as a coach. ...I've always felt getting picked high was good because people thought we were good going into a season. I never minded that. I was always a little upset when we were picked, like, eighth in the league preseason. That's the one you've got to worry about, because that means not only the people who pick the order of finish, it's your fans, it's the referees, going into the game not thinking you're very good. So I'd rather be up here where people think that you're really going to be good.On Trimble's role on the teamWilliams: The way I look at it now, juniors are really seniors now. ... He's been through a lot. He's been through the whole gamut of &quot;best guard in the Big Ten&quot; to not being a first-round pick last spring. All that is part of your development as a player. You go through highs and you go through lows. So now he has that experience with all the young guys on Maryland's team this year that he can give back to the team.Van Pelt: I think a guy like Greivis Vasquez is a great blueprint for anybody. Look at the progression of who he was. Greivis flirted with the idea of going. He was close to it. And then what does he do? He stuck around, and by his senior year, he plays himself into ACC Player of the Year and into a first-round draft pick. And what that means is that you're guaranteed that money. ...Would he have gotten there had he not stayed the year that he enjoyed as a senior, where he became a first-round draft pick? Maybe not. I think the process of being able to go through and find out where you are is different than it was then, too, but I would think a guy like Vasquez is a great blueprint for Melo.And who knows? Maybe's Melo a four-year player. When he came out of high school, he wasn't a five-star guy. He wasn't supposed to be a one-and-done. He kind of exploded that freshman year. It's OK to stay in college. You can still make it to the NBA. You're allowed to.Williams: That was always my big point with players: It's OK. Because everybody's [asking], &quot;Well, what happened? How come you didn't go into the draft last year?&quot; That's not it.It's trying to put yourself in the best possible position, and while doing that, you make your team really good. And that's what Melo has a chance to do this year because he can be in a better position at the end of this year than he was at the end of last year in terms of testing the waters in the NBA.On integrating newcomers into the teamWilliams: There are good young players there, but having good young players doesn't guarantee success all the time, because they have to adjust a lot of times to the college game because it's much quicker than the high school game, no matter how good they were in high school. So [Trimble's] job is to make them understand: It's not always going to be smooth. There's going to be bumps in the road, and you have to get over those bumps.The key thing in college basketball, I always felt we played in a major conference — is when you lose a game, it's to come back and play well the next game because it's very easy to go into a slide, especially with younger players, because they lose their confidence quickly. Well, Melo's going to do a great job of making those guys understand that each day in practice is really important, especially this time of the year, because this is when you get good and establish what you're going to be as a basketball team.

Gary Williams, Scott Van Pelt on Maryland basketball: 'A different type of year'

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