Maryland Basketball

The Maryland Terrapins men’s basketball team represents the University of Maryland in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I competition. Maryland, a founding member of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), left the ACC in 2014 to join the Big Ten Conference.

Gary Williams, who coached the Terrapins from 1989 to 2011, led the program to its greatest success, including two consecutive Final Fours, which culminated in the 2002 NCAA National Championship. Under Williams, Maryland appeared in eleven straight NCAA Tournaments from 1994 to 2004. He retired in May 2011 and was replaced by former Texas A&M coach Mark Turgeon.

Maryland Terrapins Men’S Basketball

The Terrapins played in what many consider to be the greatest Atlantic Coast Conference game in history — and one of the greatest college basketball games ever— the championship of the 1974 ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament, in which they lost 103–100 in overtime to eventual national champion North Carolina State.

The game was instrumental in forcing the expansion of the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship, thus allowing for at-large bids and the inclusion of more than one team per conference. That Maryland team, with six future NBA draft picks, is considered by many to be the greatest team not to have participated in the NCAA tournament.

Maryland Basketball Roster

University Of Maryland Basketball

The Duke–Maryland basketball rivalry is a dormant college basketball rivalry between the Duke Blue Devils men’s basketball team of Duke University and Maryland Terrapins men’s basketball team of the University of Maryland. The basketball series has been called one of the most intense intercollegiate rivalries of modern times by some.

A Harris Interactive poll of Marylanders ranked it the third-best in the state behind the Redskins-Cowboys and Ravens–Redskins rivalries in 2003 (before the Beltway Series of the Orioles and Nationals was possible). In 2014, Maryland left the ACC for the Big Ten and regular-season games between Maryland and Duke are no longer scheduled regularly.

Virginia

Thanks to the proximity of these two long-time ACC members, and their status as Tobacco Road outsiders, Maryland and Virginia have a long-standing rivalry that spans many decades. Traditionally, these two schools would meet in the last game of the season, and they both acted as spoilers to the other as they sought conference championships and NCAA tournament appearances. This rivalry has been dormant in recent years, however, thanks to Maryland’s move to the Big Ten Conference, though they did match up in the 2014 ACC-Big Ten Challenge, a 76–65 win for the Cavaliers in College Park, Maryland. The Terrapins lead the all-time series 107–76.

On November 28, 2018, the rivalry was again renewed for the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, with Virginia winning by a score of 76-71.

North Carolina

The Maryland-North Carolina rivalry peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s when both programs were fixtures in the AP poll and legendary coaches Lefty Driesell of Maryland and Dean Smith of the Tar Heels patrolled the sidelines. Although the rivalry cooled towards the end of the Terps ACC era, it still produced some memorable moments. The schools reunited for an ACC-Big Ten Challenge matchup in 2015, with the Tar Heels winning the top ten battle 89-82. In 2017 the rivalry was renewed off the court, as part of the wider University of North Carolina academic-athletic scandal. Maryland president Wallace Loh stated that he believed UNC basketball should receive the Death Penalty as punishment. In response, UNC coach Roy Williams called Loh a “double idiot”.

Georgetown

Maryland and Georgetown have competed 49 times, the 10th most played opponent all-time for both Georgetown and Maryland. Maryland leads the all-time series 34-15. The two schools played each other every season from 1950 to 1980. The schools stopped playing in 1980 because of bad blood between head coaches John Thompson and Lefty Driesell, the two resumed playing for one season in 1993 before taking a 22-game scheduled hiatus. The teams met twice in unplanned games during the gap, 2001 NCAA Tournament for a sweet sixteen matchup, and again in 2008 for an old spice classic early season matchup. In 2015 and 2016 the rivalry was renewed for the Gavitt Tipoff Games.

Maryland Basketball Recruiting

Wide receiver Chris Jones, linebacker Nnamdi Egbuaba and defensive tackle Cam Spence are no longer a part of Maryland’s playing roster, head coach Michael Locksley announced following Monday’s afternoon practice.

All three players were medically disqualified and will no longer count against the 85-player scholarship limit. Jones and Spence will remain a part of the program as student assistants, while Egbuaga will finish up his master’s degree in supply chain management next semester.

“All three of those guys were great Terps, great student-athletes [that] have done things the right way,” Locksley said.

Spence is perhaps the most notable loss. One of the highest-ranked recruits in the Terps’ 2017 class, the former St. John’s (DC) standout battled knee problems throughout his career and never suited up for the Terps. If healthy, he could’ve added depth to the defensive line, arguably the team’s thinnest position group. He ranked as the 278th-best player and the 20th-best defensive tackle in the 2017 recruiting class.

Egbuaga missed the 2017 season with an injury but returned to make eight tackles last year, half of them coming in his first career start against Rutgers in October. The three-time academic all-Big Ten honorees graduated with a degree in information science and were granted a sixth-year of eligibility this spring. He likely would’ve contributed primarily on special teams in his final season.

Jones committed to Wisconsin out of high school but never suited up for the Badgers. He arrived at Maryland as a walk-on in 2016 after spending a season at Iowa Western CC, reuniting with former DeMatha teammates DJ Turner, Tino Ellis, and Lorenzo Harrison, as well as former Badgers wide receiver coach Chris Beatty. Jones never appeared in a game for the Terps and graduated with a degree in family science.

Maryland Men’S Basketball

Before basketball became a permanent fixture in College Park, the school—then known as Maryland Agricultural College—met with little success in its intermittent attempts to establish a basketball team. A team-first appeared in 1904–05, playing only two games in an intramural/club setting. Games were played sporadically during the 1910–1911, 1912–13, 1913–1914, and the 1918–1919 seasons, going a combined 7–36. Basketball returned to stay for the 1923–24 season, when the school convinced former star quarterback H. Burton Shipley, who had been coaching at the University of Delaware, to come back to his alma mater. The Old Liners, as they were then known, joined the Southern Conference in their inaugural season. The team met with moderate success that year at 5–7 and also played its first games against future ACC rivals North Carolina and Virginia. The Old Liners had their first sustained success over the next four seasons, finishing at or above .500 in each of them and putting together an outstanding 24–9 record against Southern Conference foes. The Aggies also played their first games against what would become their two other biggest rivals in the future during that time, North Carolina State and Duke.

The school’s biggest success during its formative years took place in the early 1930s, around the time it adopted its current nickname, Terrapins. After finishing second in the conference in 1930–31, Maryland won the Southern Conference tournaments, beating Louisiana State, North Carolina, Georgia, and Kentucky over five days, a feat they followed by winning the conference regular-season crown the next year. The team also had its first individual star in Louis “Bosey” Berger who was named to All-America teams both seasons. It was during this stretch that the school erected a new home for its basketball teams, Ritchie Coliseum, which housed the team until Cole Field House replaced it a quarter of a century later.