The only Maryland comeback better than this was 20 years ago when the football team came from 31 down at halftime to beat Miami in the Orange Bowl.
And the last time a Maryland basketball team had a better victory in the ACC tournament was probably never. In the storied history of this conference tournament, no team has ever come from 19 points down at halftime to win. Never had it happened until Maryland did it Saturday to North Carolina State in the tournament semifinals. The guys sitting way down front wearing the Terrapin red sweaters and baseball caps, guys who have been coming to this party for 30, 35 years, guys with white hair and long memories, said afterward Maryland has never had a more thrilling victory in 51 years of competing in the ACC tournament.
Down 21 in the first half and 19 at intermission, Gary Williams was worried about salvaging some respect in the second half so that his players could head home in a better frame of mind. He said he didn't want to get beat so decisively on national TV, didn't want his team to enter the NCAA tournament off a trashing. "It's not like you walk out of the locker room thinking we're going to win the game," he said. "But you know you're going to come to play."
Oh, Maryland played. A sophomore point guard named John Gilchrist played the game of his young life. He put up 30 points, created chances for his teammates that resulted in seven assists, and played nose-to-nose with N.C. State all-American Julius Hodge. "We had as many as four different players guard him tonight," Wolfpack Coach Herb Sendek said.
Gilchrist led the way, but he wasn't alone. Jamar Smith played, too, as evidenced by his 23 points and seven rebounds. Each and every Terrapin played, as evidenced by their 68 percent shooting in the second half while holding State to 36 percent shooting after intermission. They played so hard and with such purpose and conviction those last 20 minutes, Williams wound up momentarily looking at the action as if he was having an out-of-body experience. "There was just this calm," he said afterward.
You look back, though, and there was evidence of something special. Very nearly the worst free throw shooting team of 326 Division I schools, Maryland made 81.8 percent of its foul shots, edging out N.C. State, conversely the best foul shooting team in the country, which made 77.3 percent.
You want more nuts and bolts of the comeback? Maryland used six players for 20 minutes or more, another for 17 minutes and two for eight minutes. State, because one starter and one reserve are injured, used six players nearly exclusively. And that doesn't work against 20 minutes of full-court pressure.
"We knew going in," Gilchrist said, "that their rotation wasn't that deep. You're not super human. Fatigue is going to set in."
And when it did, freshly rotated Maryland players got just about every key rebound and loose ball, and had legs strong enough to finish jumpers or spring to the rack. "I was stupid," Williams said, "not to have tried [the press] in the first half."
But it's not like Williams went to the press too late. Maryland erased 17 points of the 19-point deficit in six minutes and 22 seconds. After only 7:55 of the second half had elapsed, Gilchrist put Maryland ahead with one of his five three-pointers. The kid whose parents wanted him to go to N.C. State, who was Sendek's No. 1 recruiting target to play point guard, broke State's heart again Saturday. It's said in these parts to be one of the low points of Sendek's tenure, losing Gilchrist to Maryland. Asked by reporters here about his decision to attend Maryland instead of N.C. State, Gilchrist told the story of winning an MVP trophy at the age of 10 at one of Gary Williams's summer youth basketball camps. "Don't tell John this," Williams said, "but we give every kid a trophy."
But every kid doesn't have a game like this in his back pocket. Every kid doesn't enable Maryland to do something in ACC play that Duke and North Carolina have never done.
The only way Maryland can top this would be to beat Duke on Sunday to win the school's first ACC title since 1984, when Adrian Branch, Keith Gatlin, Jeff Adkins, Herman Veal, Ben Coleman and the late, great Len Bias beat N.C. State, Wake and Duke to make a winner of Lefty Driesell.
Gatlin and Branch were courtside Saturday screaming their brains out. We started reminiscing about Maryland performances in this tournament, trying to find a better win. Everybody knows Maryland played that fabulous game against N.C. State in 1974, but Maryland lost that one. We were looking for a better win. Gatlin, who grew up down here, has been watching this tournament since he was knee-high to a duck and he said he had never seen his school have as thrilling a victory. Branch said the same thing. I've been coming to the ACC tournament since 1982, and I've never seen Maryland have as impressive a victory in this tournament.
Of course, as well as Maryland played Saturday, Duke played just as well. It's just that we're so accustomed to seeing Duke be great.
In fact, Duke has been so good, for so long, against such good competition, we tend to yawn at their day-in-day out success. The Blue Devils have to do sublime to make us take real notice; that's how great the program is. And the Dukies did just that Saturday. They systematically dismantled a good Georgia Tech team that might just make an impressive run in the next couple of weeks.
If Duke has been lacking anything the last couple of seasons, since Carlos Boozer left, it's been an inside presence, the kind of player who will allow the Blue Devils to survive a cold-shooting tournament game. But that very player may have evolved in recent weeks. Shelden Williams scored 20 points, grabbed 18 rebounds and blocked three shots on Saturday.
Duke has the best coach in Mike Krzyzewski, the best perimeter shooter in J.J. Redick, and the most reliable playmaker in Chris Duhon, who is also that rare talented college senior who can take the tournament by the throat and shake it until his team is cutting down the nets. The Blue Devils are a clear and heavy favorite in the ACC final, and Maryland, having beaten three ranked opponents in the last 10 days, appears to be a very willing and capable underdog.
