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Gary Williams’ charity roast produces great story

Michigan State v Maryland

Michigan State v Maryland

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On Wednesday night, in an event hosted by Michael Wilbon and longtime DC sports anchor Chick Hernandez, former Maryland head coach Gary Williams was roasted in an effort to raise money for the DCCAP, a non-profit organization that tries to help high school kids from the nation’s capital get to college.

A number of Williams former assistants and player showed up to tell stories and wax nostalgic about their old head coach, and some of the tales that they told were terrific. It’s all chronicled by the Washington Post here, but the best nugget is as follows:

Dave Dickerson, who served as an assistant on Williams’s staff for nine seasons, told a story about a particularly rough week during the 1997-98 season. At halftime of an eventual 89-83 overtime win against No. 1 and previously unbeaten North Carolina, Williams asked his assistants if they had any suggestions. After Billy Hahn and Jimmy Patsos said they had none, Williams turned to Dickerson.

“You don’t effin’ care!” Williams told Dickerson, who remembers being confused. “Because you’re not sweating!”

Dickerson, who asked a team manager to have a bucket of water waiting for him in the coach’s locker room after the game “just in case,” left on a recruiting trip the next day. He met the team in Winston-Salem for its next game, a tough loss to Wake Forest. Afterward, Williams gave Dickerson the same look from halftime of the North Carolina game.

“You’re the effin’ reason why we lost the game … because you spent two days down in Miami, down in North Carolina, recruiting two kids we’re not going to get,” Dickerson said Williams told him. (The players Dickerson was recruiting were Steve Blake and Chris Wilcox, who helped lead the Terps to the 2002 national title.)

Williams retired abruptly prior to the 2011-2012 season, with Mark Turgeon taking over and leading the Terps to a position where they can contend for the program’s second national title. Williams won the first back in 2002.