The Golden Eagles head to College Park for the first time ever.
Name: University of Maryland, College Park
Typo! Nope. It’s supposed to be a comma, not a hyphen like a normal state college system. Why? No idea, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to try and figure out punctuation decisions that were made over 100 years ago.
Founded: 1856
Location: College Park, Maryland
That’s not helpful. As is often the case when it comes to a lot of schools, no, it is not. As you might expect, College Park is the city that grew up around the university. Development began in 1889, long after the school started, and it wasn’t officially incorporated as an actual town in Maryland until 1945.
Okay, but you still didn’t tell me where it is. Oh, right. It’s essentially a suburb of Washington, D.C., with Maryland’s campus sitting at a 17 mile drive away from Georgetown.
A Long and Very Weird History For A Flagship School: The school that we identify as “The University of Maryland” or just “Maryland” in the college sports landscape is not the founding school in the University of Maryland system. That honor belongs to University of Maryland, Baltimore, which was founded in 1807. College Park started as Maryland Agricultural College (this is why they’re actually a perfect fit for the Big Ten), and went into bankruptcy by the end of the Civil War. The state took half-ownership of the school in 1866 (it was technically a private school up until then!), but they wouldn’t take full ownership until 1916, when it was renamed Maryland State College. Even then, it didn’t become part of what you would call the University of Maryland System until 1920.
Enrollment: 40,813, with 30,608 undergraduates. When is this data from? No idea, but it’s straight off of the UMD website.
Nickname: Terrapins
Why “Terrapins?” Get this: In 1932, university president, athletic director, football coach, and basketball coach (no, seriously) Curley Byrd suggested going with the diamondback terrapin as the school mascot. In 1933, a bronze statue of a terrapin — named Testudo, which is classical Latin for tortoise — was placed on campus, and that was that.
Actually, there’s more, because the Maryland General Assembly made the diamondback terrapin the legal mascot of the school (and the official state reptile) in 1994. NINETEEN NINETY-FOUR. SIXTY-TWO YEARS LATER.
Turtles, Tortoises, and Terrapins: Okay, so if I’m following this correctly, terrapins and tortoises are both kinds of turtles. However, terrapins live in watery areas while tortoises are land-dwelling. I think this means that naming the UMD mascot with the Latin word for tortoise is actually a misnomer. I think. I’m not a herpetologist, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once.
Notable Alumni: Curley Byrd, noted terrapin lover; Parren Mitchell, Maryland’s first black U.S. Congressman; Herbert Hauptman, the only non-chemist to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry; actress Karen Allen, best known as Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark; Robert Briskman, co-founder of Sirius Satellite Radio; television writer/producer Liz Lemon; cartoonist Frank Cho; Sergei Brin, co-founder of Google; Jeff Kinney, writer of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series; Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm creator Larry David; Galo Plaza, President of Ecuador (1948-1952); Jim m’f’ing Henson; radio host Art Bell; CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King; ESPN host Scott Van Pelt; Aaron McGruder, creator of The Boondocks comic strip and animated television show; Leonard T. Schroeder, Jr., the first soldier ashore on D-Day; Robin Quivers, long-time co-host of The Howard Stern Show; David Simon, former Baltimore Sun reporter, author, and creator of Homicide: Life On The Street and The Wire; FBI agent Dana Scully; Kevin Plank, founder of Under Armour; two-time Academy Award winning actress Dianne Wiest; television news reporter/anchor Connie Chung; ESPN baseball analyst Tim Kurkjian; Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein, most famous for his work on reporting the Watergate scandal; boxing writer and historian Bert Sugar; and finally, Len Elmore.
Last Season: 16-17 with a 7-13 record in Big Ten play. That was Maryland’s second losing season in three years and the first losing season since Gary Williams went 12-16 in 1992-93 that didn’t involve the coach quitting in the middle of the season. Rough look for whoever the head coach is, huh?
Final 2023-24 KenPom.com Ranking: #62
Final 2023-24 BartTorvik.com Ranking: #68
2024-25 Preseason Poll: The Big Ten doesn’t release a preseason poll with a predicted order of finish for their teams. However, the Indianapolis Star said, “hey, screw you guys,” on that topic and they’ve been doing one ever since the league stopped. The point of the story is the 33 people who voted in that collectively placed Maryland 10th out of 18 teams.
So Far This Season: 3-0 with three 30+ point wins over teams currently ranked no higher than #282 in the KenPom.com database.
Current KenPom.com Ranking: #30
Current BartTorvik.com Ranking: #38
Returning Stat Leaders
Points: Julian Reese, 13.7 ppg
Rebounds: Julian Reese, 9.5 rpg
Assists: Deshawn Harris-Smith, 2.2 apg
Current Stat Leaders
Points: Rodney Rice, 16.7 ppg
Rebounds: Julian Reese, 8.0 ppg
Assists: Ja’Kobi Gillespie, 2.7 apg
Bigs? This is probably where Marquette’s scouting report/game plan starts. Freshman center Derik Queen measures in at 6’10” and 246 pounds, while Senior forward Julian Reese is listed at 6’9” and 252 pounds. They both start for Maryland and so far this season, they’re both averaging over 21 minutes per game. Reese averaged over 31 minutes a night last season, so I suspect his minutes downturn right now is more about the Terrapins winning each of their three contests by at least 30 points than anything else. Queen has the scoring edge at 13.7 to 13.0, while Reese has the rebounding advantage at the previously mentioned 8.0 per game against Queen’s 7.7.
Queen’s not just a big dude, by the way. He’s actually second on the team in both assists and steals. Are you surprised to find out that he’s a top 15 freshman according to 247 Sports now? No, you are not.
Georgia Tech transfer Tafara Gapare is 6’9” but only 215 pounds, and he’s averaging 13 minutes a night right now. Redshirt freshman Braden Pierce is seven feet tall and 245 pounds, but he’s only played 16 total minutes this season so far. Seems like he’s more of a project type big for Maryland, but he’s there and playing if the Terrapins need minutes covered on Friday night.
Shooters? This appears to be a “worry about these guys, but maybe not so much those guys” situation to this point of the season. Rodney Rice and Ja’Kobi Gillespie are both attempting at least five three-pointers per game this season, and they’re both connecting on at least 40%. Rice is a sophomore who had an injury riddled 2022-23 season at Virginia Tech and then left the program in late October and didn’t play last season. Gillespie is a transfer from Belmont who shot 39% on over 100 attempts a year ago.
And that’s it. Okay, yeah, Selton Miguel shot 39% for as a senior for South Florida last year, Jay Young was a 36% shooter in 2022-23 for UCF, but barely played for Memphis last season, and Chance Stephens knocked down 37% of his attempts for Loyola Marymount as a freshman a year ago. None of them are doing anything helpful for the Terrapins through three games. Could they get hot and return to what they’ve done in the past? Maybe, but they’re also a collective 7-for-28.
Then again: We’re expecting Ben Gold to figure his shooting out, so maybe I shouldn’t be so critical of these guys.
Head Coach: Our old friend Kevin Willard, in his third season in charge at Maryland. You remember him from his 225-161 record as Seton Hall head coach from 2010 to 2022, when he turned into the most consistently successful coach in Pirates history over his last seven seasons. He’s 41-30 with Maryland so far after posting his first losing season since 2012-13 last year, bringing his career Division 1 head coaching record to 311-240.
What To Watch For: The biggest thing for Marquette here is how Maryland uses Derik Queen and Julian Reese. If it’s a situation where those two guys play together a lot — again, they start together — then MU’s going to have to figure out how to defend both of them at the same time. Is that an assignment that David Joplin’s ready to take on, or are the Golden Eagles going to have to turn to playing some combination of Ben Gold, Caedin Hamilton, and Royce Parham for most of the contest in order to match UMD’s size? If they don’t play together, is that a spot where Gold and Parham have an advantage because Marquette is clearly looking for the two of them to play inside/outside on the offensive end of the floor?
Next up on the list of things to pay attention to is Maryland’s ability to keep track of the ball. They’re currently only turning it over 10.3% of possessions. That may be partially because they haven’t been truly tested by any of their first three opponents, because Princeton was the best turnover rate team in the country last year at 12.0% and MU was #30 at 14.3%. The Terrapins won’t be able to keep that up all season long, but they’re doing great at getting a shot in the air for now. Marquette’s defensive system is predicated on creating dysfunction in an opponent by way of deflections, but if Maryland’s going to be pretty safe with the ball for 40 minutes, the Golden Eagles have to find a different way to make life miserable for the Terps.
One way to do that might be a “everybody glue yourself to your man, because they ain’t passing it” mindset. I did highlight Derik Queen as second on the team in assists, but as you can see, it’s not like Ja’Kobi Gillespie is running away with the title with less than three helpers per game. This is a trend for Kevin Willard’s Maryland teams, as they’ve been sub-250 in the country in assist rate for each of his first two seasons. Heck, his last Seton Hall team was objectively terrible at recording assists. If the Golden Eagles can find a way to be a problem for individual players as they try to create a shot for themselves, it has the potential to stagnate Maryland’s entire offense.
All-Time Series: Maryland leads 1-0 because it turns out that the #5 ranked team in the country is pretty good at winning a third game in four days.