COLLEGE PARK — “I’m not happy at 18! You shouldn’t be happy at 18!” shouts Maryland head coach Kevin Willard, alluding to his team’s ranking in the latest AP poll. It is a Monday afternoon at the Xfinity Center and the way the Terrapins are practicing, no one appears to be happy at 18. With a 17-5 record (7-4 in the Big Ten), Maryland is in the top 25 for the first time since February 2023, but that hardly seems to matter to the coaches and players. “We set the bar that we just got to keep building off of,” 6-foot-10 freshman center Derik Queen tells Hoops HQ. “And not get satisfied.”
Among the Maryland faithful, excitement is starting to swell. The team had its first sellout of the season when it hosted then-No. 17 Wisconsin last Wednesday. Nearly 18,000 people packed into Xfinity to watch the Terrapins put the exclamation point on an inspiring January with a 76-68 victory, their fourth in a row. After losing to Washington and Oregon to begin the month, Maryland has won six of its last seven, including two on the road against Illinois and Indiana, heading into Thursday’s game at Ohio State. The Terps have a balanced attack led by Queen, the second-highest rated recruit ever to sign with the school. All five starters — Queen, 6-foot-9 senior forward Julian Reese, 6-foot-1 junior guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie, 6-foot-4 sophomore guard Rodney Rice and 6-foot-4 senior guard Selton Miguel — average at least 11 points per game.
There is optimism around campus about this team’s prospects and the overall direction of the program, but it is cautious optimism. Rooting for Maryland has been a roller coaster over the past 15 years. Former head coach Mark Turgeon led the Terps to a Big Ten regular season title in 2020 and five NCAA Tournament appearances in a decade, but his teams never advanced past the Sweet 16. Turgeon stepped down amid a disappointing 2021-22 campaign in which boos had begun to drown out cheers in Xfinity. Even in Willard’s brief time at the helm, there have been extreme highs and lows. Maryland went 22-13 and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament in his debut season, then finished 16-17 and 12th in the Big Ten last year.
This season has the feel of a new beginning. It is the product of a modernized approach to running the program, one informed by last year’s struggles and the immense changes to the college basketball landscape. In Willard’s eyes, it was either adapt or keep losing. And the latter is not an option in College Park.
The first thing you see when you walk into Willard’s office at Xfinity is the “Fraternity of Greatness,” a portion of the wall dedicated to Maryland basketball legends. Lefty Driesell, Gary Williams, Len Bias, Steve Francis, Juan Dixon, Greivis Vasquez — the list goes on and on. It is a reminder of the program’s proud history and of the expectations that come with Willard’s position. At his introductory press conference in 2022, Willard called it “a top 10 job in college basketball.”
About a year ago in this office, at a large table beneath the “Fraternity of Greatness,” the seeds for this season were planted. Willard gathered his staff following a 56-53 loss to Rutgers in which his team shot 31.5 percent from the field and 11 percent from three. By then, the evidence was clear: Maryland just didn’t have the offensive firepower to compete in the Big Ten. Willard knew it. “I was like, ‘Let’s enjoy coaching them. They’re working hard, they’re playing their asses off, we just can’t score,’” Willard says. “The biggest thing was, ‘Let’s learn from this year. What went wrong? What did we do right? What can we change?’”
Willard, who was the head coach at Iona (2007-10) and Seton Hall (2010-22) before joining Maryland, admits that the Big Ten “humbled” him. There were a number of adjustments that he needed to make, beginning with his approach to NIL and constructing a roster. Initially, his plan to build up the program was to bring in a new class of four freshmen each year, utilizing the school’s location in one of the best basketball regions in the country to his advantage. It was an outdated strategy that overlooked the importance of the transfer portal. Even if Willard could convince top high school players to commit to Maryland, getting them all to stay for several years would be a great challenge.
In the 2023 offseason, Maryland had a very small NIL budget simply because the program had not made it a priority. “That was my fault,” says Willard, “because I went into it with the idea of let’s bring freshmen in and build it and build it and build it. And the transfer portal was just like, ‘You’re a dumbass.’”
The 2023-24 team indeed had four freshmen, two of whom were prominently featured in the rotation (DeShawn Harris-Smith, Jamie Kaiser) and really struggled. There was only one transfer (Jordan Geronimo) who played more than 10 minutes per game.
Much of Willard’s focus shifted from recruiting freshmen to recruiting transfers before the 2024 offseason. His attention to fundraising allowed the program to be a much bigger player in the portal. The Terps had the money; now they just had to figure out how to use it.
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Thus, the priority was to build around Queen and Reese, two more traditional bigs, by adding shooting. “It was a non-negotiable,” Willard says. “Whoever the staff brought me out of the portal, they had to have 40 percent catch and shoot. They had to be able to shoot off the dribble. That’s how we went about it. Let’s make sure that we protect these two big guys and that whoever we bring in is going to benefit from having a forward that’s a senior in this league and one of the best freshmen that’s probably ever played here.”
Maryland signed three guards who now round out the starting lineup, all of whom are shooting 36.9 percent or better from behind the arc: Gillespie from Belmont, Miguel from USF and Rice from Virginia Tech. The pieces have meshed perfectly. Queen and Reese, who combine to average 28.7 points and 17.4 rebounds per game, can dominate down low if no help comes. When the defense collapses, they can kick it out to one of the many shooters. Gillespie, who is averaging a career-high 4.7 assists, has been a maestro in pick-and-rolls. “The coaches definitely did a good job with who they brought here,” Gillespie says. “I feel like we all fit together in the way we play, one through five.”
The results have been impressive. Maryland has gone from one of the worst offensive teams in the country to one of the best. The team is averaging 83 points per game, which ranks 20th nationally, and is hitting 37.2 percent of its threes. “Everybody knows their role,” says Reese. “Everybody falls into their role. We all have the same goal. I feel like that’s where the difference is [from past years].”
Maryland’s four losses in conference play — to Purdue, Washington, Oregon and Northwestern — came by an average of 4.3 points and were all on the road. That built an uncomfortable narrative for Willard, whose teams have performed poorly away from home, but the Terps not only survived the most challenging part of their schedule, they came out of it with their highest ranking since December 2022.
“We’re not even really playing our best basketball right now,” Reese says. “We could play a little better defensively, execute a little bit better. I feel like we haven’t reached our potential.” That may be true, but other issues, primarily a lack of depth, could plague the team going forward. The Terrapins average just 16.9 bench points per game, which ranks 293rd in Division I.
It is understandable if Maryland fans are a bit wary of where this is heading, given all the ups and downs this program has experienced. But this is not the same program.
At this time a year ago, Willard was resigned to the fact that his team couldn’t make a run. Today he projects only confidence about the road ahead. Whatever reservations exist, they haven’t made their way into the Maryland locker room. “I know how good my team is,” Willard says. “And I know how good we’ve played. I’ve been a head coach now for 18 years. I use the fact that I’ve been through some really bad stretches as a coach, and I’ve been through some really good stretches as a coach. It’s irrelevant what the fans say, it’s irrelevant what the media says. All that matters is what your team thinks going into that game.”
And right now, this team thinks it is better than 18.
