THE DAILY WORD

ATLANTA -- Maryland was up 15, the clock was down to under a minute, and Gary Williams was still yelling -- still demanding his team play hard to the final second.

"It's not over," Williams implored to his team. "It's not over."

It was. Ask any one of the more than 50,000 fans inside the Georgia Dome. But it wasn't over to Williams, not when the clock wasn't showing all zeroes.

And when Indiana's Donald Perry hit a 3-pointer with eight-tenths of a second remaining, that seemed to irk Williams.

"I preach that as a coach and tell players to play every play, and I wasn't going to change because it was the national championship game," Williams said. "I saw the Indiana-Duke game and saw Indiana come from 17 points down."

But, when the buzzer sounded and it was all clear to celebrate Williams' first national title, the school's first-ever championship in men's basketball in only its second-ever Final Four, Williams stopped coaching.

Finally.

"That's just him," Maryland assistant Jimmy Patsos said. "Anybody that watches Gary Williams knows he goes 40 minutes. At the end of the game he's yelling at Juan Dixon, saying, 'See that's why you've got to work on your ballhandling,' instead of saying it doesn't matter. He's saying to Juan if he's going to play point guard in the NBA, he'll have to learn how to handle the ball better."

	Emotional to the end, Maryland's Gary Williams could finally enjoy the moment Monday night with his Terrapins.

"If you're going to be a good basketball team, then you have to play every play," Williams said. "I preach that all of the time. My players get tired of it, but we don't want to waste plays. I kind of coach that way but I back up what I say."

The method to Williams' and ultimately Maryland's madness is his relentless pursuit for perfection. He just has an intense (to say the least) way of displaying it.

"We can learn from it and then the coaches on the bench can help the next person through that situation," Maryland assistant Dave Dickerson said. "It's positive reinforcement. He does things a different way. It's positive and has helped us to be the best team in the country."

Williams got on his players, railed at his assistants and totally berated walk-ons throughout the national title game, just like he did in every other game this season. If anyone is exempt, it's the players on the court -- but that's only because they're out of earshot. Once they come close enough, either on the sideline or during a timeout, he's in their face, too.

"He knows it's never over until he sees the four zeroes on the clock," Dickerson said. "He wants to make sure that everything is done correctly to the end. He's going to stay intense because that's his love and hunger for the game. That man loves the game of basketball.

"He loves being a basketball coach. If he could still play, he would play instead of coach. That's how much he loves it."

Williams tried to fire up the bench at one point, telling the reserves who would never see the court "to get angry," when the Terps weren't playing well. Another time he got on Patsos for not having the big men, which is his responsibility, in the right spots. Patsos responded by getting in the grill of Byron Mouton.

"I said, 'I can't do everything,' " Patsos said. " 'I get yelled at for everything. Can't you guys help me out for one game?' And Byron said, 'You're right,' and went back in and got two rebounds. Ninety-nine percent of the time his points are right on. He's a motivator and he's an unbelievable coach."

Williams doesn't and didn't play favorites Monday, either, getting on his stars Dixon, Lonny Baxter and Chris Wilcox, as well as Steve Blake, questioning his point guard as to what was wrong after Blake tossed a towel up in the air during a timeout after Indiana's run in the second half gave the Hoosiers the lead for a brief minute.

But, in the end, just like after every game, the players aren't bitter or relieved to be through of Williams. In fact, it's quite the contrary. They're almost better for it. The coaching style has won him a ton of games and the loyalty of the majority of his players. They just choose to tune in for what they need to hear.

"The method is he keeps coming at you no matter what," Blake said. "Even if you got a 20-point lead and make a mistake, then he'll let you know. That keeps you going. He wasn't happy the team came back. But you've got to stay tough mentally. You have to live with it and just play harder."

Williams' intensity, his sweat, definitely his sweat, was poured into building this program back into a national power. And he wanted this title more than anyone at the university, but not just for himself. He wanted this for Maryland because he has become Maryland basketball.

"He wanted it bad," said Maryland assistant and former player Matt Kovarik. "He wanted this championship badly. He's all about Maryland. He wants Maryland to have that national championship.

"The players know he cares about them. They know that he wants them to compete their best and when he gets on them, they know that he's doing that for them to do their best. Sometimes it's good to get yelled at."

That was evident this weekend. Maryland got pushed when the Terps nearly blew a 20-point lead to Kansas before holding off the Jayhawks. Maryland couldn't put Indiana away until the final four minutes. But because Williams never let up, a veteran team knew how to take the demands from one of the most visibly intense coaches in the game.

"We were in awe last year when we got to the Final Four," Patsos said. "We were looking around and said, 'Wow this is great.' We had a big lead to Duke and we lost. But we wanted to win this bad this year."

Dixon said Williams wasn't sure how to react to winning the title. He didn't run around the court. He just finally had a grin on his face, waved to his family and friends in the crowd and hugged his staff and players after Wilcox tossed his hair into a fine mess.

"I've never done this before so I'm not sure what it's like," Williams said. "It was a thrill, no doubt about it."

This has been an emotional season for Williams, losing his father the night before the Duke game in mid-February, dealing with the shooting death of Mouton's brother, playing the last game at his beloved Cole Field House, and the emotions of knowing he'll see Dixon and Baxter depart.

And, of course, somehow dealing with the pressures of being expected to get back to the Final Four and compete for the title, beat Duke at least once, win the ACC outright and get a No. 1 seed, while still coaching as if every play decides the championship.

"I've been very happy coaching teams that never got close to this," Williams said. "Sometimes you're dealt a hand that can never win a national championship. You get tired of hearing Maryland is good, but they haven't won a national championship. Hopefully this puts us on par with most programs and we continue to be successful. Tonight it's a great feeling. It's a new experience. I'm enjoying it so far, at least for a couple of hours."

Andy Katz is a senior writer at ESPN.com.