Images of the Terrapins men’s basketball team at the end of games during the regular season always seemed to follow a consistent pattern: downtrodden players walking slowly off the court after yet another bitter defeat in the final minutes of play.
Guard Dez Wells after Oregon State, forward Charles Mitchell at Duke and guard Nick Faust after Syracuse — their reactions all embodied the Terps’ season, one brimming with almosts and maybes.
After Sunday’s overtime win over then-No. 5 Virginia at Comcast Center in the ACC finale, though, it appears things have started to change. Coach Mark Turgeon decided to do things differently; the Terps made big shots down the stretch; and the team overcame a demoralizing play at the end of regulation to exit the regular season with a 75-69 victory.
Entering tomorrow’s ACC tournament second-round matchup with No. 9-seed Florida State on a two-game winning streak, it seems like things have turned around at the perfect time for the No. 8-seed Terps.
“It gives us confidence. We won our last two games, so we’re going into the ACC tournament with some momentum, with some swagger,” said guard Seth Allen, who scored a game-high 20 points Sunday. “So we’re going to go in and play our basketball, and when we share the basketball like we did, we’re unbeatable.”
The Terps were in play for the No. 7 seed in the tournament until N.C. State clinched it with a victory over Boston College later Sunday. It dropped the Terps down a peg, but it put them on a favorable side of the bracket.
The Seminoles routed the Terps by 24 points in January — in what Turgeon calls the last time the Terps were “embarrassed” — but they came back with a 12-point victory last month at Comcast Center. In the second half, the Terps led by as many as 20, as Allen scored a career-high 32 points in the win.
The two teams will meet again tomorrow at noon, and if the Terps manage to come out on top, they’ll have yet another familiar foe awaiting them in No. 1-seed Virginia. While the Cavaliers entered Sunday’s game on a 13-game winning streak and seem poised to be one of the top teams in the NCAA tournament, the Terps played them tough in Charlottesville, Va., in early February, in addition to their victory.
In that matchup at John Paul Jones Arena, the game turned on two plays — when guard Roddy Peters was blocked from behind on a fast break and when forward Evan Smotrycz missed an open 3-pointer. Though the Terps lost by eight, they still hung with a team that was about embark on a significant run through the rest of the ACC.
Then, of course, came Sunday’s win.
“This is a big relief,” Allen said. “It shows everybody how good we are and how good we can be going into the tournament. Our fans were great; you got to give credit to them. It was really relieving.”
No. 4-seed North Carolina and No. 5-seed Pittsburgh are two of the other teams on the Terps’ side of the bracket that they could face down the road. Though the Terps have an 0-3 record against the Tar Heels and Panthers, those matchups came at different points in the season.
Pitt blew out the Terps in early January, but when the two teams met later that month, the Terps fell by only four. In February, North Carolina jumped out to an early lead that seemed insurmountable, but the Terps came within three and played an unpredictable Tar Heels team relatively even down the stretch.
So while the Terps might not have wins to show for those matchups, there are some encouraging signs entering the weekend.
If the Terps want to return to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2010, they’ll likely have to win four games in four days to capture the ACC’s automatic bid. And waiting in the championship game could be No. 2-seed Syracuse or No. 3-seed Duke. It won’t be easy.
The way the Terps have played at the end of the season is encouraging for anyone hoping for a deep ACC tournament run. They’ve gone toe-to-toe with some of the best teams in the conference — and in the nation — in the season’s final month, giving them the opportunity to make something happen one last time in Greensboro, N.C.
But we’ve also seen the erratic side of the Terps, a team that dropped back-to-back conference road games by at least 20 points in early January and dropped home games while favored to Oregon State and Boston during the nonconference slate. Though that version of the Terps hasn’t appeared recently, it’s still lurking and could appear when the pressure turns on.
“We do our best,” Wells said. “We play our best in tournament games. Last year, that’s been shown for us. But we got to go out there and execute and defend when we can.”
The Terps have one last chance to etch their names in the ACC history books before leaving for the Big Ten this summer. They haven’t won the ACC tournament crown since a remarkable run 10 years ago.
Right now, though, anything seems possible.
