Oh, and that pupil physique, slithering down from the wall of seats past the baseline because the clock ticked down. When the buzzer sounded, the courtroom was going to be a hazardous place.
“I was trying to get out of there, man,” Kevin Willard mentioned. “Everybody was trying to rub my head. I was just trying to get back to the locker room, to be honest with you.”
Safety trumps celebration. Remember: This is what Maryland males’s basketball could be. No, scratch that. Remember: This is what Maryland males’s basketball should be.
Willard is in his first 12 months on the helm of the Terrapins, and Thursday evening’s 68-54 victory over third-ranked Purdue offers him not solely a résumé-enhancing accomplishment to indicate the NCAA match committee however a victory that resonates with all these college students who flowed onto the ground, the wrinkly-faced alumni who high-fived all evening and the legends from years previous who hugged one another and smiled from ear to ear.
“We’ve been waiting for this for so long,” mentioned Lonny Baxter, the middle on the Terps’ 2002 nationwide championship staff, straining his voice to rise above the din. “There have been so many down years, with ups and downs, things not quite clicking.
“This right here,” and he appeared out on the sea of scholars on the courtroom named after his previous coach, Gary Williams. “You can see: They’ve done a great job coaching these guys up, getting the right guys in here. I just can’t wait to see what the future’s going to bring for this Maryland team.”
A program isn’t in-built one evening, and a victory over one top-five staff doesn’t full a season. But it’s crucial, as Willard solidifies his basis, that each one his constituents have a cause to puff their chests from out beneath their hardened terrapin shells and say, “Yep, that’s what being a Terp is supposed to be like.”
Williams was there Thursday, sneaking out the exits earlier than bedlam ensued. So had been Baxter and Tony Massenburg, Greivis Vásquez and Johnny Rhodes. They watched the Terps suffocate the Boilermakers within the second half, turning a 37-29 deficit right into a 58-41 lead with contributions from each participant who set foot on the ground. If any of those Terps questioned what Xfinity Center is like at its finest, marvel no extra.
“It was kind of crazy,” Reese mentioned. “ … I saw people falling.”
“I got caught,” mentioned guard Jahmir Young, who led the best way with 20 factors. “It was hot. Everybody was jumping.”
“Somebody was on the backboard, I think,” Reese mentioned.
Yes, any individual was on the backboard. We’ll get to that.
Willard downplayed his position in offering the second — and appropriately so. But he brings somewhat little bit of the East Coast swagger that so outlined Williams again to College Park. Purdue, Willard mentioned, “is a team that can win a national championship,” and Boilermakers middle Zach Edey “is probably the best player in college basketball.”
Yet when Willard and assistant Grant Billmeier completed watching tape Thursday morning, the coach turned to the his aide and mentioned, “There’s no doubt we’re going to win this game.”
“This isn’t a surprise to me,” Willard mentioned.
That perspective filters by means of this system — already, after solely 26 video games.
“We can’t ask for a coach that believes in us any more than he does,” Young mentioned.
This shouldn’t be, in fact, a completed product, and the potential right here isn’t totally realized. The victory pulled the Terps to 9-6 within the Big Ten, tied for third with Indiana and Iowa, trailing Purdue and Northwestern.
There is figure to be completed. But attempt to entice Willard into an it-doesn’t-happen-overnight evaluation of his program. He can’t and he gained’t, as a result of it’s not what he believes.
“We’re going to sustain this,” he mentioned, rapidly and certainly. “We’re there. We got the No. 13 recruiting class in the country. …
“That group has laid the foundation now,” he mentioned, pointing to the locker room, the place his staff celebrated. “Every recruit that came and watched us work, every recruit that came and watched us practice, every high school coach that watched us practice — they all love it. They all love what we’re doing.”
Now the followers do, too. College basketball is meant to be skilled, to be felt, to supply feelings that make you wish to body the second. Kevin Willard’s first Maryland staff has completed that.
“Kevin’s going to do a great job,” Purdue Coach Matt Painter mentioned. “He’s doing a great job.”
About that raucousness that resulted: As Willard someway discovered his method by means of the group and to the security of the locker room, one Maryland pupil efficiently hoisted himself onto one rim. He stood up and pointed to the skies — to No. 1 fingers that introduced delirium from his classmates under. With that, one other grabbed the online and commenced to tug himself up.
“Once again, fans,” the general public deal with announcer pleaded, “please do not touch the baskets or the backboards. We do need them for the remainder of the season.”
What subsequent? Tell the youngsters to cease torching stuff in College Park after wins like this?
This is a step. A joyous, crucial step.
“You always hear people get mad on court storms,” Painter mentioned. He counted the Boilermakers’ street losses the previous two years: eight. “We’ve had eight court storms in two years.”
That’s the following step. Willard will know the Terps are totally fashioned — that they’re the height model of what they’ll and should be — when he goes on the street within the Big Ten, suffers a loss and the coed physique at Purdue or Wisconsin or wherever storms their courtroom.
It felt nice to be in College Park on Thursday evening. What the Terrapins — this 12 months’s model, subsequent 12 months’s and past — must do is reproduce that repeatedly and once more. It’s what Maryland males’s basketball could be. It’s what Maryland males’s basketball should be.