NCAA Tournament: Everything you need to know about Maryland men’s basketball

The Maryland men’s basketball team sat shoulder-to-shoulder in front of a TV on Sunday night to watch the NCAA’s selection show announce their postseason fate. Donning red long-sleeve shirts that read “Doubt Us,” the Terps feel they have more to prove.

As coach Kevin Willard said after the announcement, “We’ve got a little bit of an edge to us, too.”

Here’s everything you need to know about the Terps going into the NCAA Tournament:

When is the NCAA Tournament?

March Madness officially tips off Tuesday, opening two days of preliminary play-in games. The first two rounds run Thursday through Sunday — that’s four immaculate days of next-to-nonstop college basketball in gyms across the country.

The Sweet 16 is scheduled for March 27-28. The Elite Eight is the two days after. And the Final Four is in San Antonio on April 5 with the championship game on April 7.

Who does Maryland play?

The Terps, the No. 4 seed in the West Region, tip off at 4:35 p.m. on Friday against No. 13 Grand Canyon at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle.

Is Maryland expected to go far?

Maryland is a double-digit favorite against Grand Canyon in the first round. Should they win, the Terps will likely be favored against the winner of No. 5 Memphis vs. No. 12 Colorado State, too. A pair of wins this weekend would mark the program’s first Sweet 16 appearance since 2016 when they were a No. 5 seed.

March Madness: Here’s the bracket for the men’s NCAA Tournament

What’s the Crab Five?

It’s a darn clever nickname for Maryland’s starting five of Derik Queen, Ja’Kobi Gillespie, Rodney Rice, Julian Reese and Selton Miguel. A Maryland alumna who runs the X account @LimNeeson posted that simple tagline on Feb. 14, a day after each Terps starter scored in double figures, combining for all 83 points in a win over Nebraska.

The Crab Five is a play off of Michigan’s Fab Five — the 1991-92 Wolverines team that became the first all-freshman starting five to play in a national championship game. They also set off a cultural revolution. Maryland’s starting group has only one freshman and won’t be rewiring the fabric of the game but they have had uncommon levels of isolated success.

Maryland is one of four major conference programs with all five starters averaging double figures. The quintet is averaging 69.5 points per game, the highest among major conferences.

On senior day earlier this month, players wore Crab Five T-shirts in warmups. ESPN analyst and Maryland alumna Scott Van Pelt teamed up with Under Armour founder Kevin Plank to fill the stands with Crab Five tees that afternoon. College basketball personality John Fanta shared on social media last month, “The Crab Five is outstanding and can do serious damage in March.”

I haven’t watched much college basketball this season, what’s the SparkNotes summary of how the Terps did this year?

Queen, a five-star freshman from Baltimore, posted a historic 20-20 double-double in his first college game. A mid-November matchup with No. 15-ranked Marquette was Maryland’s first real test: a narrow four-point loss at home. Three weeks later, the Terps beat the brakes off Ohio State in a sign that this team could be for real. A few days later, they went wire-to-wire with No. 8 Purdue, buried by clutch shooting in the final minutes for a five-point loss — a moral victory if there ever was one.

Maryland bulldozered Syracuse and Maryland-Eastern Shore before a West Coast trip — the new norm of the Big Ten Conference — ended with losses at Washington and then-No. 9 Oregon. The Terps won 10 of their next 12 games, including three against ranked teams. Then Maryland fell to No. 8 Michigan State in late February at the buzzer on an improbable half-court heave. After which, Spartans coach Tom Izzo called Xfinity Center “electric” and “a tough place to play.”

The Terps wrapped the regular season with a senior day win over Northwestern, pushing them to 24-7. A 17-2 mark in home games is the program’s best in a decade. Fifth-year senior Jordan Geronimo left a sold-out Xfinity Center crowd with a parting message: “We’re going far.” They went 1-1 as the No. 2 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, falling to eventual champions Michigan by a point on a layup in the final second.

What’s coach Kevin Willard like?

This is Willard’s third season at Maryland, and he’s not going anywhere anytime soon as he is nearing a contract extension with the university, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation. He isn’t one to flash much emotion and is one of the few coaches left in college hoops who wears a suit. He’s part of Rick Pitino’s coaching tree, working on the Hall of Fame coach’s staff, first with the Boston Celtics then at Louisville.

Willard, who was the coach at Iona and Seton Hall before Maryland, steered the Terps to 20 wins in his first season, a national ranking and a berth to the NCAA Tournament. No Maryland coach had ever done that in Year 1.

Last season was a dud — Maryland’s second under .500 season in three years. Willard course-corrected by building out a more experienced roster via the transfer portal. It worked.

Legendary Terps coach Gary Williams had this to say about Willard: “Kevin knows what he is doing. He came from Seton Hall where you don’t have everything that some of those teams in the Big Ten have in terms of a bunch of resources and things like that. He had to battle the whole time while he was there, and I think he’s brought that attitude to Maryland, which I think is our similarity. We both coach with kind of a chip on our shoulder — in a good way in that we’re trying to prove that Maryland can be as good as any team in the country.”

Who am I flipping the channel to watch?

Queen hadn’t played a single game of college basketball yet and his coach was already calling him the “best young player in the country.” After a few weeks of practice, one teammate called Queen the “best freshman I’ve ever played with,” and another lauded the then-19-year-old’s “professional mindset.”

Queen, who was recently named Big Ten Freshman of the Year and All-Big Ten first team by the conference’s coaches, met every lofty expectation from the start.

Queen became the second player since 1996-97 to post a 20-point, 20-rebound game in his college debut. He finished the regular season averaging a team-high 15.7 points and 9.2 rebounds. He showcased a feathery touch around the rim, ballerina-like footwork and intriguing passing capabilities for his position. He’s arguably at his best catching the ball with his back to the basket, spinning around then picking from a deep knapsack of nifty post moves.

Some NBA mock draft boards have Queen as high as a top-eight pick. Others project him later in the first round. His next-level comparisons aren’t super clear and there are fair criticisms about how his game translates but his success in one year at Maryland is the catalyst that earned this team a No. 4 seed.

If Maryland finds itself in a close game, can I trust them?

History says no. Maryland has four losses in the past two months. All of them have ended with gut-wrenching shots in the final eight seconds. There was Northwestern when Nick Martinelli dropped in a 10-foot leaner at the buzzer in overtime. Ohio State’s Bruce Thornton banked in a decisive 3-pointer with 7.8 seconds left. Tre Holloman’s prayer was answered on a half-court heave to push Michigan State past Maryland. And in the Big Ten Tournament, the Terps were knocked out in the semifinals by a Tre Donaldson layup with less than a second remaining after Queen made two free throws for the lead.

Maryland can hang in close games but they’ve suffered a few maddening endings.

What’s one quirky stat I can tell my friends while we watch the game?

Tell them about Maryland’s kill shot margin. A kill shot in college basketball is when a team goes on a double-digit scoring run without giving up a point. It can be a resuscitation after falling behind or a way to put the game out of reach. The term for 10-0 sprints was coined by data scientist Evan Miyakawa in 2022. According to Miyakawa’s research, a team with at least one 10-0 run wins 71% of the time, and a team with more kill shots than their opponent wins 81% of the time.

This season, the Terps average 0.9 kill shots per game and concede 0.29, according to EvanMiya.com. Their average kill shots margin — how many more 10-0 runs a team has per game than their opponents — is the 12th-best mark in the country at 0.61.

Who’s coming back after this year, and who isn’t?

In the current landscape of college basketball, a carousel of transfers and monetary opportunities, the water of this question is as murky as ever. But on Maryland’s senior day, the team honored senior Julian Reese, Selton Miguel, Jordan Geronimo, Jay Young and Ben Murphy.

All five have exhausted their eligibility and will not return.

Queen is unlikely to return after one dominant season in College Park. He appears destined for the NBA.

Junior Ja’Kobi Gillespie and sophomore Rodney Rice, who proved a formative backcourt pairing, are the two starters who could return in the fall. Sophomore Deshawn Harris-Smith and junior Tafara Gapare could also step into bigger roles should they return. That said, Willard proved this offseason that he’s more than capable of building out a competitive roster via the portal.

Have a news tip? Contact Sam Cohn at scohn@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/samdcohn.

NCAA Tournament first round

No. 4 seed Maryland vs. No. 13 seed Grand Canyon

At Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle

Friday, 4:35 p.m.

TV: TBS

Radio: 105.7 FM