Good Enough to Be Great: The Inside Story of Maryland Basketball's National Championship Season

By Josh Barr

The 2001-02 season was a magical one for the Maryland basketball team, culminating in the school's first-ever NCAA title. But as Washington Post sportswriter Josh Barr reveals here, it was never an easy road. Barr, who has spent four years on the Maryland beat, had unrivalled access to Terrapin coaches and players, and here he provides the extraordinary behind-the-scenes story of Maryland's rise to glory. He also reveals how, under Williams's leadership, players most observers had sneered at became the best team in college basketball. Barr offers keen insight into just what separated the Terrapins from every other team in the country-and from previous Maryland teams that always came up short. Along the way, we get riveting portraits of unlikely All-American Juan Dixon, who in high school lost both parents to drug-related AIDS; standout center Lonny Baxter, once considered too short and too chubby to play big-time college basketball; sophomore Chris Wilcox, the amazingly talented but frustratingly inconsistent forward; fiery Gary Williams, the coach who, many critics had said, could never win the big one; and many others. This is a remarkable story of talent and determination at college basketball's highest levels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing
• Release date: Feb 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781621571407

Josh Barr

A Washington-area native, perhaps no one is better positioned to write about the region's best basketball players than Josh Barr. After all, he spent much of the past 20 years listening to the debate about who belongs -- or doesn't -- on the list. Barr covered local basketball for The Washington Post for nearly 17 years, including a stint on the University of Maryland beat that produced his first book, Good Enough to Be Great, which chronicled the Terrapins' run to the 2002 NCAA men's basketball championship. He watched and wrote about the area's recent top prospects, a list that starts with 2006 Montrose Christian graduate Kevin Durant. And for those Capital Kings who predated Barr's arrival on the local scene, he knew where to turn for expert insight, from the area's top high school coaches, former teammates and college coaches such as Maryland's Lefty Driesell and Gary Williams and Georgetown's John Thompson Jr. Barr lives in Bethesda, with his wife, Jodi, their daughters Sasha and Chelsey, and their dog, Jeffy.