If it seemed like it took forever to get here, it did.

The Maryland Terrapins and about 100 other Division 1 basketball programs were completely robbed of March Madness in 2020. For a Maryland team that had just won a share of its first ever Big Ten championship it was a particularly painful end to a fabulous season. As difficult as it was for the Terps you have to keep in mind that there were some programs that qualified for the Big Dance who had not been there in decades. As it turned out their droughts would continue.

(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)

Fast forward to 2021. Full disclosure…. I never thought we’d get here. There were so many obstacles and so many things that could go wrong. To think that Maryland could get in all of the games they did- with no interruptions- is nothing short of remarkable. When you ask a group of 18–22-year-old guys to exercise the kind of discipline that was requested of them you cannot possibly imagine they’d comply.

Tonight, we actually had a selection show on CBS. I, for one, was ecstatic to just watch it- regardless of Maryland’s involvement. The Terps drew a good UConn squad who finished third in a top-heavy Big East and lost a heartbreaker to Creighton in their tournament semifinals. Tough game. Winnable. I’m not a gambler and never will be but the first thing I thought was ‘take the under’. I cannot imagine this game gets out of the 50’s.

When I was in my first few years of doing analysis for Terp broadcasts I remember interviewing the voice of the Final Four – CBS’s Jim Nance- and I suggested that CBS had a hand in the matchups that the tournament committee had set up. Some of the games and the potential games were just too good to be true. Needless to say, he completely bristled at my conspiratorial line of questioning and the interview ended shortly thereafter.

I know way too much time has passed to think that there was something particularly sexy to the committee about Maryland-UConn but anybody who has spent any time following Maryland over the past few decades totally gets the significance of playing UConn and is also intimately involved with the history surrounding UConn Head Coach Danny Hurley.

When Hurley was the Head Coach at Rhode Island in 2015 his Rams had played Maryland in the finals of the Cancun Challenge and it went poorly for him and the Rams. The Terps raced out to a huge lead in the first half and led by 29 at one point before winning the game in a rout 81-57. What was notable about the game was the fireworks in the handshake line after the game. Hurley was heard to call Maryland’s Jake Layman a derogatory term and players from both teams had to be separated.

Eventually cooler heads prevailed and both coaches took a ‘it was the heat of the battle and things got out of control given that a trophy was on the line’.  I was there, courtside, waiting to talk to the players and coaches when it all happened. I believe then – and still do – that if he had wanted to, Maryland’s Head Coach Mark Turgeon could’ve gotten Hurley fired had he pursued things.

But of that is ancient history now and it seems like twenty years ago.

All things considered the Terps actually had a very positive season in a completely loaded Big Ten Conference. Michigan, Illinois and Iowa compare favorably with any teams in the country and Maryland held their own with the top of the league. Watching Illinois win the conference tournament and thereby becoming a trendy pic to get to the Final Four it was hard not to remember that Maryland had not only won at Illinois but did so without arguably their Most Valuable Player – guard Eric Ayala.

There were definitely some difficult losses to endure- two to Penn State, one to Indiana without Darryl Morsell and a loss on Christmas Day to Purdue where the team’s free throw shooting completely deserted them but, all in all, this team may probably got to as good a situation as they could have hoped for on Selection Sunday as a 10 seed.

Enter UConn as the seventh seed to play the Terps. The Big East might not bee what it used to be, but the conference was very good at the top and UConn was in that conversation all year long. Once Villanova’s Colin Gillespie was lost for the season the league became anybody’s game – and the rest of the league played like it!

The Huskies feature two really good guards in James Bouknight and RJ Cole and impressive depth- ten players average double figure minutes. That said, the Terps appeared to catch a bit of a break with this matchup. For all of their talent and depth UConn does not present the Terps with the one problem that has plagued them all year – a dominant offensive talent inside. UConn’s three leading scorers are all perimeter players and their biggest threat inside, Adama Sanogo, only averaged 17 minutes per game.

If you take a dominant opposing big out of the equation, then the solutions become just a little bit clearer for these Terps. They will probably always be a little challenged on the backboards- they just can’t be dominated. They also need to handle the ball well. When you have slim margins for error (a common denominator for most teams in the tournament) turning the ball over is an absolute killer.

Hopefully some of the offensive mojo the Terps had this past weekend at the Big Ten tournament will stay with them in Indianapolis. They were really solid in the last thirty minutes of their first-round game against Michigan State and certainly played well enough offensively to be competitive with Michigan in round two. Their droughts continue to haunt them, and you can’t expect them to disappear at this point. They just have to be weathered. Further- as much as I love the Aaron Wiggins we have seen the last three weeks it probably isn’t a good thing if he’s dropping 25 in a game and the rest of the core is getting 6 or 8 points. The more democracy for this group, the better. Balance seems to fit some teams particularly well and that is true for the Terps.

We were all robbed of the opportunity to enjoy all of the trappings of March Madness last year. After some fits and starts we finally came to this point and it actually looks like we’re going to pull this thing off.  The Maryland Terrapins were fortunate in so many ways – they were one of a few teams that played a full schedule and they came out better for it on the other side. The path given them by the NCAA tournament selection committee is probably as favorable as they could have hoped. They won’t be a favorite in any game they play the rest of the way but, given the brutal run of Big Ten games they endured over the past ten weeks they have to be used to it.

Chris Knoche
Chris Knoche

Terps Analyst

A fixture in the Washington sports scene since his days as a player and a coach, Chris Knoche has accumulated a diverse resume as a media presence in town for more than two decades. That resume has earned him opportunities on both national and local stages and made him a Washington DC staple on radio, television and in digital media.

X