The Terrapins men’s basketball team streamed through the makeshift fan tunnel stationed in front of the Xfinity Center steps, with sleepy eyes and headphones over their ears.
After grinding through two taxing NCAA Tournament games and a flight home from Spokane, Washington, this was what the Terps returned home to Monday.
Though the Terps looked spent — and for good reason — the excitement was palpable. Forward Robert Carter Jr. whipped out his cellphone to videotape the festivities, and several players stopped for photos with fans.
Amid the commotion, coach Mark Turgeon, whose Terps advanced to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 2003 on Sunday night, offered a few words from the steps before ceding the stage to graduate transfer guard Rasheed Sulaimon.
“I’ve only been here for a year, but you guys have been tremendous for us all year. We do it for you guys,” said Sulaimon, wearing a backward gray hat reading “The Big Dance.” “We’re not done yet.”
The Terps have at least one more game on tap, a Thursday night bout with No. 1 overall seed Kansas. But looking over the resumes of the respective teams prompts the question: Is the end near for the Terps? Is their ceiling the Sweet 16?
And if so, is that necessarily a bad thing?
For many fans, it would be. Consider the preseason hype surrounding this team. Consider the bevy of NBA prospects taking the floor clad in this state’s colors every game. One might be within reason to suggest that a season ending in Louisville, Kentucky, and not in Houston would be a disappointment.
But maybe we should re-evaluate how we judge things. Terps fans went bananas last night. My Twitter feed and Facebook timeline gave way to celebratory memes, highlights from the game and fans proclaiming their love for all things Terps.
And I wasn’t watching the game at Cornerstone Grill & Loft, but I’ve seen videos. It looked, as some might say, lit.
But Vegas doesn’t like the Terps’ chances Thursday. The Terps opened as seven-point underdogs to the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed.
While no one team dominated the regular season as Kentucky did last year, Kansas has made as good a case as any to be the title favorites at this point.
They’ve steamrollered through their first two tournament games, knocking out No. 16-seed Austin Peay by 26 points and No. 9-seed Connecticut by 12. The Terps, meanwhile, avoided disaster in the first round against No. 12-seed South Dakota and made up for a sloppy start to escape against No. 13-seed Hawaii.
The Jayhawks did drop four regular-season games, but haven’t lost since January and navigated a generally smooth ride to the Big 12 Tournament title.
SBNation.com‘s Mike Rutherford wrote: “Even though the Terps actually might be the more talented overall team, the Jayhawks have been the most consistent team in college basketball since the start of conference play.”
The fans swallowing the Terps as they came off the bus hardly seemed to be looking forward to Kansas, however. “Let’s go Terps!” they chanted, rejoicing over something as simple as a high-five from reserve forward Michal Cekovsky.
Joanne Vogel, whose children attended this university, posed for a picture with center Diamond Stone.
“It’s exciting! You see him on TV,” Vogel said. “You don’t get this close.”
Her friend, Regina Gratton, a university alumna, chimed in: “It’s always exciting when you have a team from your home state. It’s just such a big tournament.”
Spectator sports, at their very best, serve an important role in the public sphere. Athletes provide hope for the community at large, affording ordinary people the opportunity to live vicariously through their favorite team’s successes and failures.
Sure, you can whine that these Terps have underperformed, that Turgeon hasn’t gotten enough out of this team’s talent.
If the Terps don’t get through to the Elite Eight, some might call the season a failure.
Do yourself a favor and set aside your cynicism for a few minutes. Look around. Take in the moment. The Terps are back.
