BOOM.
Jordan Williams.
Debbie Yow vs. Gary Williams - Again
I thought the thinly-veiled hostility between former Maryland AD Debbie Yow and Terps head basketball coach Gary Williams was a thing of the past after Yow left for N.C. State.
I was wrong. She’s baaaaaaaaack. And she likes Gary less than ever.
On Tuesday, VCU coach Shaka Smart, a hot commodity thanks to the Rams’ surprise NCAA tourney run, announced he would not take the vacant head coaching job at N.C. State.
Fair enough.
Soon, there were rumors on Twitter that Smart was advised against taking the job because it was no fun to work under Debbie Yow.
Who would say such a thing? (Other than the Maryland fans who spammed my Twitter feed retweeting the rumor, of course.)
According to Yow at a press conference today, the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of one Gary Williams.
“I don’t have a reputation across all of men’s basketball of being difficult to work with,” Yow said. “I have a reputation of not getting along with Gary Williams, who has tried to sabotage the search. Come on. We all know that, OK? So whatever. It’s not a reputation. It’s Gary Williams out there doing his thing. Whatever.”
Two things:
- When Yow said “We all know that, ok?” is she referring to her history of not getting along with Gary, or to the fact that Gary tried to sabotage the search? Because I’m pretty sure no one knew that until she brought it up.
- By publicly calling Gary out like that, when no one else had really gone there, isn’t Debbie almost proving that she’s not easy to deal with and has not always had positive relationships with her coaches? And even though that tense relationship was public knowledge, it probably shouldn’t be high on your list of talking points when you’re trying to land one of the year’s hottest coaching candidates.
Debbie’s not the only one angrily pointing fingers at Gary, though.
According to The Baltimore Sun, she hinted in her press conference that “someone will be writing about [the situation] nationally.”
I don’t know who that someone is, but I’d put my pennies on CBSSports.com columnist Greg Doyel.
Over on his D.C. Sports Bog, The Washington Post’s Dan Steinberg has details of Doyel teeing off on Gary during a radio appearance today. Doyel’s remarks were more bitter than just about anything I’ve heard from either Yow or Williams at any point during their relationship - if he called Williams a “coward” once, he said it about seven times (well, actually he said “little tiny little petty human being,” “little bit tiny runt coward of a man,” and “spineless fraction of a man,” but you get the idea).
Gary Williams, of course, denies having anything to do with the N.C. State search. While he apparently didn’t personally return Doyel’s numerous calls on the matter, he did issue a statement that read:
“I haven’t talked to anyone — coach or athletic director — connected to the NC State search. I don’t have any interest in the NC State search, since I’m coaching at Maryland and working hard to run our program. Anyone who says I’ve had contact with a prospective coach or athletic director regarding this search isn’t being truthful.”
Even if Gary did have a conversation with Shaka Smart about the job, who cares? (Besides Yow and Doyel, obviously.)
It is not the least bit ludicrous or far-fetched for someone considering a new job to ask around about their prospective new employer. It’s reasonable for the participants of any conversation of that nature to expect it to be an honest, off-the-record, private discussion. It is a given that if someone asked Gary about it, he wouldn’t have too many positive things to say about Yow. And it’s overestimating Gary’s influence to suggest that he was the only thing between Shaka Smart and the Wolfpack.
I doubt we’ve heard the end of it - apparently someone suggested legal action to Yow during the press conference - but at this point, Yow’s the one who looks paranoid and petty.
And Shaka Smart is probably looking at the whole mess and thanking his lucky stars that he managed to stay the heck away from it.
