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

by Josh Barr (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
... Nobody knew this team better than Josh.... He knows the story inside and out. And it's an amazing story. -- Michael Wilbon, from the Foreword

If you like basketball and enjoy big-time college hoops competition, you will enjoy this read. -- Dick Vitale, ESPN

Josh Barr recounts the 2002 Maryland Terps' special season with unmatched eloquence and insight. -- Mike DeCourcy, The Sporting News

Product Description
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 in Good Enough to Be Great, it was never an easy road.

Barr, who has spent four years on the Maryland beat, had unrivaled access to Terrapin coaches and players, and here he provides the extraordinary behind-the-scenes story of Maryland's rise to glory.

This was a season marked by daunting expectations, unwanted distractions, even tragedy. Barr shows how the Terrapins coped with it all-from the devastating phone call

Coach Gary Williams received before the biggest game of the year to the shocking news that the brother of starting forward Byron Mouton had been murdered.

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.

Good Enough to Be Great is a remarkable story of talent and determination at college basketball's highest levels.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing, Inc. (February 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0895261154
• ISBN-13: 978-0895261151
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #148,447 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written book about a Cinderella team., January 21, 2003

By	D. R. Schryer (Poquoson, VA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I went to graduate school for a couple of years at the University of Maryland and have followed their athletic teams ever since then. Believe me, rooting for Maryland's basketball teams has often been a very frustrating experience. Although Maryland has had some excellent players (many of whom have gone on to success in the NBA) and some very good teams, they have seldom won the championship of the basketball-powehouse Atlantic Coast Conference, let alone an NCAA championship, But last year perennial Cinderella Maryland, with a team of lightly-recruited but highly-motivated overachievers, overcame all obstacles and convincingly won the NCAA Division I men's basketball championship. Josh Barr does an excellent job of telling how it happened. This is a very good read for basketball fans in general and, especially, for long-suffering Maryland fans.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A hell of a read, January 22, 2003

By A Customer

This is a great book. I'm not even a big Maryland fan, and I found the whole story riveting. Josh Barr is an excellent reporter who was able to get all sorts of insider details that other reporters couldn't. He clearly knew the coaches and the players really well, but he also doesn't pull any punches. The road to a national championship is always a tough one, but it's amazing what this team had to go through along the way. The book really reinforces what an incredible player and leader Juan Dixon was. Lots of stories I had never heard before.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Treat for Basketball Fans, January 16, 2003

By	Mark Thomas (Laurel, MD) - See all my reviews

I've got the book and this is one of the better championship review type books I've read. This isn't an author who jumped on the bandwagon after the season and is trying to write about something he didn't follow through the season.

Barr was with the team the whole way and the season before. He knows the players, he knows the team, he knows their story.

Anyone who likes college basketball will enjoy this book. Anyone who can appreciate the saga of a school that suffered heartbreak after heartbreak, only to one day have a storybook ending will enjoy this book.

It is a very easy read and a wonderful trip down memory lane.