The home men’s basketball game against Duke is Feb. 2. It is bigger and more important than the College Park City Council, it is bigger than Provost Nariman Farvardin leaving, and it is definitely more important than the start of classes. This is the Maryland-Duke men’s basketball game that I’m talking about. This is big.
Yet as we emotionally prepare for this game, many of us are stricken by the thought Duke is not our true rival (I know, blasphemy). According to Duke fans, players and coaches, we are not their true rival. My friends — or former friends, now that they go to Duke — tell me all the time their true rival is North Carolina and not the Terps. They say the game against the Terps is just another game and that Duke is on another level than us. They cite the huge edge in Duke’s all-time record versus the Terps (108-61). They say the Tar Heels are their true rival due to the history of the matchup and the geographical proximity. To them, the Terps are just a pesky team with inferior talent that is, most years, not worthy of Duke’s vaunted lineup.
For obvious reasons, this bothers Terp fans to no end.
Why Terp fans hate Duke so much is seemingly obvious. Duke students are perceived as arrogant, rich and condescending. The Blue Devils have had huge success, run a clean program and put a bunch of players into the NBA, and they are media darlings. Their cheers are clever, and their fans are some of the best in the country. They camp out for days for home games, which serves to show their fervor and fandom. And while that would seemingly be enough to dislike a team, what really angers us is the seemingly inopportune fouls called against their opponents, perceived media bias toward Duke (see Dick Vitale, Jay Bilas and nearly any other college basketball commentator) and, most importantly, their refusal to acknowledge us as rivals.
For me, the reason I love this rivalry so much is it truly feels like a story of David vs. Goliath, no matter how good our team is. Duke will always be Goliath due to better recruiting and more national television exposure, while the Terps will always be the scrappy “blue-collar” team that will have to fight, claw and outwill Duke in order to win.
If you have ever been to a Maryland-Duke basketball game, you can understand why it is the biggest game on the schedule, why when the schedule comes out it is the first game you look for and why you judge everything off of it. This game will be my fourth, and I still am overwhelmed by the unrivaled energy that pulses through Comcast Center and unifies the crowd, the university and the larger community. All prior records go out the window, the edge Duke possesses on paper dissipates, and a sense the Terps can and will win the game pervades every nook of the arena.
ESPN’s Michael Wilbon, who wrote for The Washington Post for three decades, once said, “I want to be front-and-center for Duke visiting Maryland, for one of the best rivalries in one of the best basketball leagues in the country.”
If you have ever been to a Maryland-Duke basketball game, you can understand why it is one of the greatest rivalries in sports, regardless of what Duke fans say. Go Terps!
Cory Kutcher is a senior kinesiology major. He can be reached at kutcher at umdbk dot com.
