Jan. 24, 2008

By Bill Hass
theACC.com

GREENSBORO, N.C. - It's hard to imagine any basketball player at Maryland asking coach Gary Williams to be tough on him.

Yet that's exactly what James Gist, the only four-year senior on the roster, did in late December. The Terps were struggling with a 6-6 overall record and had lost three straight games. In two of those, losses to Ohio and American, Gist had played poorly, totaling 11 points and 10 rebounds.

His idea that he that he could play his old role, often complementary, within the team concept wasn't working. Things had to change, so he went to Williams for a heart-to-heart talk.

"I had to look at myself and the fact that I wasn't helping the team win," Gist said. "First, I apologized to him for my performance. I told him I wanted him to be hard on me, to put pressure on me. I told him I wanted to do whatever I had to do for us to win - score points, get rebounds, make defensive stops, block a few shots. I wanted to do the things no one else was doing."

Mission accomplished.

In his first 11 games, Gist averaged 12.8 points and 7.3 rebounds - not bad stats, but not what the Terps needed. In the last seven games, he has stepped that up by averaging 18 points and nine rebounds.

Last Saturday, Gist played one of his best games ever, scoring 22 points and grabbing 13 rebounds to help Maryland upset top-ranked North Carolina 82-80 on the road. He was named the ACC Player of the Week for the first time in his career.

Gist and his teammates have had plenty of time to bask in the afterglow because they didn't play a mid-week game. But they have long since pushed that aside as they prepare for fourth-ranked Duke Sunday at 6:30 p.m. in the Comcast Center.

"You want to be able to enjoy it," Gist said, "but you have to put it in the back of your mind. It will be there at the end of the season and later on in life. Now we have to put it behind us and focus on what's coming up."

That's exactly what Williams wants to hear.

"Our players have to do a good job of keeping things in perspective," Williams said, "but with Duke coming up that should be pretty easy to do. We have to handle the North Carolina game just like we handled the American game. You have to keep things in perspective without getting too high after a good win or getting too low after a tough loss. Hopefully we'll be a mature team this week, but we'll see what happens."

Williams said it's important that his team stay excited after the big upset so it realizes how far it has come in the last month and how much it can still improve. Gist received that message.

"It was one game, not our whole season," Gist said. "We have bigger goals than just beating North Carolina. It's easy to fall into the trap of just turning it on when you need to. You have to practice hard every single day to sustain this level.

"I want us to be better than we were (against North Carolina) going into the Duke game. There has been some talk that it was a fluke, a lucky win. If we beat Duke, it will slow down that talk."

Gist has faced the Blue Devils six times in his career and the Terps have won four of them, including a sweep last year. That may help his confidence level, but he also understands what's in store.

"Duke has a high level of defensive intensity and they come at you the whole length of the court, every trip, for 40 minutes," he said. "We haven't faced anything like that this year. They like to speed up your offense (to force mistakes). So we have to deal with that and we also have to stop them, and they have a lot more shooters this year.

"It will be a difficult game to win, but we're at home, we'll have a great crowd and we have the momentum."

The son of parents who were both in the Air Force (they're now retired), Gist was born in Turkey and moved around, including four years in Germany, before his family settled in Silver Spring, Md.

"I grew up in a military family, so I learned about discipline," he said. "It was pretty strict and my dad demanded a lot. One thing I took from that is that I'm very respectful to adults. You look someone in the face and give them a firm handshake. That takes discipline and respect."

Silver Spring is about a 3-point shot away from College Park, so Gist was familiar with Maryland's basketball tradition when the Terps recruited him out of Good Counsel High School. His background helped him survive the inevitable dressing downs from high school and AAU coaches.

Still, Williams took some getting used to, although Gist understood what was behind the tirades.

"He's equally hard on everybody, but particularly the freshmen and sophomores," Gist said. "He can really break you down. But there's a message behind everything he says and you have to take that in. It's a maturing process to accept what he's saying and not curl up in a shell. There were times he would give me everything he had and I'd be so mad I'd take it out on the other team.

"He pushed me, made me play harder, and saw more in me than I saw in myself. Since I'm older now and he knows I can make plays, he can relax on me. But I don't want him to lighten up, not this year."

Williams appreciates how Gist has responded, especially after their heart-to-heart.

"I think James showed a lot of maturity this year," Williams said. "When we started the year, he, along with a lot of the players, just weren't getting it done, they weren't playing really well.

"You do a lot of talking with your players on an individual basis away from the court. With James I just tried to stress that this is his senior year and a lot of times you're remembered for what you do your senior year. James needed to give us some leadership because (he) is our four-year senior and he had to step up, not just for himself but for the team.

"He has done a great job with that. He's not afraid to be a leader; he's taken on the vocal responsibility as well as his own individual play. James is very talented and he can do a lot of things. He wasn't giving the team what he could give us talent-wise or leadership-wise early. That has been a big change for our team to see James step up like you like to see all your seniors step up."

The 6-8, 235-pound Gist teams with 6-9, 250-pound Bambale Osby to give the Terps a powerful inside presence on offense, defense and on the boards.

"It's like having a partner in there, like I did last year with Ekene Ibekwe," Gist said. "We're the last line of defense and we have each other's back. On offense he tells me `don't look to pass the ball to me, just shoot it and put it up softly and I'll be there for the rebound.' And I tell him the same thing."

Always a good player who improved his stats every year, Gist dispelled any doubts about his talent last summer when he made the 12-man Team USA roster for the Pan American Games in Brazil. The Americans lost their first two games, then won three in a row to finish in fifth place. On a star-studded roster, Gist averaged 5.4 points and 2.0 rebounds in 14.4 minutes. He scored six straight points in a first-half stretch of the fifth-place game against Panama.

"That was an unbelievable experience," he said. "I had a chance to try out for the 18-under USA team when I was in high school, but didn't make it. This time, I was one of 30 players to try out and making it was a huge accomplishment.

"The competition we played against was amazing. We were playing against grown men, 30 years old, and this is how they feed their families. We were younger, quicker and more athletic but they were smarter. It was humbling, but what I took away from that was more knowledge about the game."

When you add better knowledge, considerable talent and a renewed dedication to the game, you get a senior whose goal is to help, push - even carry - the Terps to the NCAA Tournament.

"You value your last season more because when it's over and you're done with school, you step into the real world," Gist said. "When you're younger, you can take it for granted. Now there's no next year. Everything I want to do is down to one year. So I'm motivated."

Bill Hass is a long-time observer of ACC sports. His career at the Greensboro News & Record spanned 36 years, from 1969 until his retirement in March, 2006. He is now writing "Bill Hass on the ACC" for theACC.com. His weekly columns will keep fans plugged in to the Atlantic Coast Conference.

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