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: 41,725, with 31,133 undergraduates as of August 2025.
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.
Oh, right, I forgot: Yes, it’s considered to be good luck to rub the nose of the terrapin statue.
We Didn’t Start The Fire: There’s a Point Of Failure on campus, or at least that’s how the official university website describes it in the heading above this:
A brick and concrete circle nearly 40 feet across in the pavement between Shoemaker and LeFrak halls designates the center of campus activity at the time of the Great Fire of 1912. It leveled the two largest campus buildings, as explained in historical plaques placed near the site on the fire’s 75th anniversary. With lines radiating in the direction of each of the buildings that existed at the time of the fire, the circle looks like a carelessly sliced pie. It’s probably not campus history that keeps the circle in the minds of current students, however. Legend has it students who step on the center of the circle where the lines intersect won’t graduate in four years.
Okay, well, obviously we have to go look at Google Maps.
Well, look at that.
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: 27-9, with a 14-6 record in the Big Ten. Head coach Kevin Willard led the Terrapins to their best win total since 2016 and their first Sweet 16 since the same season. Willard’s the head coach at Villanova now.
Final 2024-25 KenPom.com Ranking: #10 out of 364 teams
Final 2024-25 BartTorvik.com Ranking: #9 out of 364 teams.
Preseason Poll: The Big Ten doesn’t do a team poll. However, the Columbus Dispatch and Indianapolis Star think that’s trash, so they put together a media poll. Maryland was picked to finish 13th in the 18 team Big Ten.
This Season: 2-1, with wins over sub-300 KenPom teams Coppin State and Alcorn State and a 70-60 home loss to Georgetown. That game started off 11-0 for the Hoyas and they broke it open with an 18-3 run to start the second half.
Current KenPom.com Ranking: #60, down from their season opening position of #34
Current BartTorvik.com Ranking: #53, down from their season opening position of #42.
Returning Stats Leaders
Points: Lukas Sotell, 0.2 ppg
Rebounds: Lukas Sotell, 0.3 rpg
Assists: No one with an assist in 2024-25 returns for Maryland.
Waaaaiiiiiit a minute: Yeah, because Kevin Willard left, the roster emptied out. Lukas Sotell played 13 minutes across 10 games last season, totaling two points and three rebounds. He’s literally the only guy who saw action last season that’s back.
Current Stats Leaders
Points: Pharrel Payne, 20.0 ppg
Rebounds: Pharrel Payne, 8.0 rpg
Assists: David Coit, 2.3 apg
Head Coach: Buzz Williams, making his return to Milwaukee for a game for the first time since he quit his job at Marquette in the spring of 2014. That was the first time he followed through on his threats to quit his job after threatening to leave for Oklahoma and SMU in previous seasons. With Maryland off to a 2-1 start, he has a career record of 375-229 as a Division 1 head coach after stops at New Orleans, Marquette, Virginia Tech, and Texas A&M. His run as head coach of the Aggies lasted six seasons, just as long as his time in charge at Marquette.
By The Way: I will be booing Buzz Williams on Saturday. You can make your own choices. Buzz made his choices about how he wants to be perceived. Maryland fans, if you’re reading this? Hope your AD is preparing for a coaching search in 2030 or 2031, because Buzz won’t be in College Park longer than that. But I’m guessing you’ll be fine with him leaving by then.
Bigs? I think we can ignore the two guys on the roster who are 6’9” and 6’10” and didn’t play against Georgetown. That makes Pharrel Payne, the aforementioned leading scorer and rebounder, the biggest guy in the rotation for the Terrapins. He’s listed at 6’9” and 250 pounds, so he definitely qualifies as Big Man. He followed Buzz Williams from Texas A&M to Maryland after putting up 10.4 points and 5.1 rebounds in about 20 minutes a game for the Aggies last season. By average, he’s having a career year so far, easily beating out what he did in two seasons at Minnesota as well. Payne had a double-double on 17 points and 11 rebounds against Georgetown, but y’know, big empty calories warning on that one given how that played out.
Elijah Saunders (6’8”, 240 pounds) has started all three games alongside Pharrel Payne, so there’s no reason to think that won’t happen again. He’s averaging 10.3 points and 4.0 rebounds per game after averaging about that for Virginia as a junior last year. He’s also a little bit of a shooter, connecting on nearly 35% of his 3.3 attempts per game last year. He’s only hitting 29% this season, so we’ll see how that goes at Fiserv.
That’s it, though. Payne played 38 minutes against Georgetown, so this isn’t really a situation where they both start and then rotate in and out at the 5. Maybe we see the Buy Game Bigs if there’s foul trouble, but it seems clear that Williams doesn’t trust either of those guys in a big game at this point of the season.
Shooters? Based on numbers so far this season, Marquette has to keep tabs on both Andre Mills and David Coit at all times. Mills has started all three games, and he’s hitting 44% of his 5.3 long range attempts per game. Coit started for the first time this season last time out against Alcorn State, but he is averaging over 30 minutes a game. He’s also hitting 37% of his team high 6.3 three-point attempts this season. With that said, Mills was 1-for-3 against Georgetown and Coit was 2-for-9 as the Terrapins shot 4-for-21 as a team in that one. Mills is a freshman, while Coit is a career 36% shooter after two seasons at Northern Illinois and one at Kansas.
Other than those two? Not much to worry about here in terms of what we’ve seen this season. Isaiah Watts shot 36% in 54 career games at Washington State before transferring, but he’s 2-for-14 this season. Do you want to worry about Elijah Saunders at 2-for-7 this season after a 35% year at Virginia… but a 31% success rate in 53 games at San Diego State before that?
What To Watch For: Through three games, Maryland looks like they’re trending in the direction of all of Buzz Williams’ Texas A&M teams on the offensive end of the floor. Namely: They can’t shoot the ball, they turn the ball over a little bit too much, they get a ton of offensive rebounds, and they get to the free throw line a whole bunch. Therefore, Marquette’s game plan is simple: Don’t foul them to the point where they’re going to the free throw line a bunch — they can’t hit threes and they’re only middle of the country on twos, but they are sinking 82% of their freebies — and don’t let them get the 35% of their offensive misses that they’ve been averaging this season. This unplugs whatever offensive efficiency that they can muster.
Now, obviously: Easier said than done. Everyone knew the Aggies couldn’t shoot for the last six years. Everyone knew that the Aggies loved to rebound their misses for the last six years. Everyone knew the Aggies loved to get to the line for the last six years. None of this actually stopped A&M from having a top 70 offense in Williams’ last four years there and top 50 in each of the last three, all of which were NCAA tournament teams. Georgetown did it, though. The Hoyas held the Terrapins to just 28.8% effective field goal shooting and 29% offensive rebounding rate. They gave up a tooonnnnnn of free throws, 37 of them to be precise, 15 to Pharrel Payne and 10 to Myles Rice. However, that was the only game this season that Rice played, spending the other two in a walking boot. Still, even with all the free throws — and the Terps made 81% — Georgetown held them to 0.87 points per possession even without too much in the turnover department.
Oh, right: Rice also threw his shoe at Georgetown’s Vince Iwuchukwu.
I presume the tape on his foot is the reason why he lost his shoe and was holding it, seeing as that’s the foot that was in the boot on Tuesday night. Serious question: Should throwing your shoe be a technical foul? The PBP (0:57 left in the first half) says that was a common foul. Maybe the refs gave him a break because it’s believable that he just forgot he was holding his shoe because why would you remember you’re holding your shoe?
All-Time Series: All tied up at one game apiece. Maryland won the first meeting back in 2019, and Marquette won in College Park last year.
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