DURHAM, N.C. — The ball hung on the edge of the rim for what seemed like an eternity, bouncing from the back rim to the front rim and then resting after it left Charles Mitchell’s hand.
Instead of falling backwards into the hoop, it fell forward. And with that, the Terrapins men’s basketball team fell to Duke, 69-67, in the final regular-season edition of the storied ACC rivalry before 9,314 raucous fans at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Saturday night.
It was deflating, devastating, gutting — nearly any word will describe the heartbreaking ending for the Terps. A heroic effort by guard Dez Wells fell short, and the Terps were left to move forward, 6-7 in ACC play with the odds on an NCAA tournament berth lengthening by the day.
But the split-second of the ball resting on the iron — almost debating which way to roll — was seemingly drawn out into perpetuity, and in that moment, so much was weighing on the 20-ounce sphere.
“We played tonight for Maryland,” coach Mark Turgeon said. “We didn’t play for ourselves. We played for all the former coaches, all the former players, all the former students. We played for Maryland because we knew we weren’t getting them at our place. We knew this was our one chance.”
Turgeon emphasized to the team how much was riding on this game in the run-up to Saturday, and with a mix of local players and students of the game’s history such as Wells, they knew that.
The knew that when they stepped out before the Cameron Crazies wearing black jerseys commemorating the program’s history before a national television audience on ESPN, all eyes were on them, and they were expected to deliver.
“[Turgeon] was just stressing to us that this game is bigger than us,” forward Jake Layman said. “I mean, all the fans want to see out there tonight is just a team that’s together and that believes each other and that are playing for each other, and I think we did that.”
Much was made this week about the rivalry’s fever pitch in the early 2000s when it seemed like every game was an instant classic or held implications in the national title hunt. A whole generation of Terp fans and students at this university were weaned on those contests between Juan Dixon and Shane Battier, between Steve Blake and Jason Williams, between Gary Williams and Mike Krzyzewski.
But it went so much deeper than that, involved so many more of the players whose numbers hang from the rafters at Comcast Center and featured so many more contests that current students and even recent alumni weren’t alive for.
“This game, this rivalry is so much bigger than the 13 guys that are on this team,” Wells said. “This goes all the way back to the ’70s when Len Elmore had almost a triple-double against them or Joe Smith scored 40 points. This rivalry is so much bigger than anybody on this team.”
In the end, Wells and the Terps couldn’t deliver. And as the clock showed 0.1 seconds remaining, Mitchell sat with his head in his hands in the lane, an ESPN camera in his face. Wells sank down further upcourt. Near halfcourt, guard Seth Allen bent down, too.
For Terps fans, it’s the final image of a bitter, heated rivalry, an unsavory ending that at one moment seemed poised to be so sweet.
And as Mitchell slowly stood up and started making his way to the other end of the court, Wells walked over and threw his arm around the burly forward, who had carried the Terps in the first half despite foul trouble.
In search of a win to both boost an NCAA tournament resume and captivate a rabid fanbase starving for a postseason bid, they fell short.
“We all know how much it means to Maryland to beat this team,” Layman said. “It definitely felt like we were right there the whole time in this game, just a tough bounce at the end.”
But for one moment, the Terps were poised to pull off a shocker at Cameron Indoor Stadium and return to College Park as heroes. And in a history so storied and with a weight so heavy, these Terps were able to carve out their own niche in its annals.
