ANALYSIS/OPINION:
The raucous atmosphere at the Xbox Wednesday night between Maryland and Virginia was everything you would expect from a rivalry game — a game with history, a game with tradition, a game that meant something when you watched it with your father as a child.
“It was an intense atmosphere, what you would expect from a rivalry,” Virginia coach Tony Bennett said following his team’s smothering 76-65 win over previously undefeated Maryland.
“I was amped,” said Maryland freshman guard Dion Wiley, who had been told that a game against Virginia, even in December, meant more than a typical game. “I went into the game knowing it was a rivalry.”
That concludes the rivalry portion of the Maryland men’s basketball schedule for this season.
The game was intense enough that you could almost forget that this was part of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, and that Maryland was representing the Big Ten in that challenge. For one night, the ACC returned to College Park in the 181st meeting between these two teams.
SEE ALSO: No. 7 Virginia downs No. 21 Maryland, 76-65
“It didn’t feel like they were out of the ACC, to be honest,” Virginia junior Evan Nolte said. “It just felt like one of those tough games you have to grind out with a really good opponent.”
Now it’s on to Minnesota and Illinois and Purdue — novelty games.
Maryland fans may have chosen to bury their pain about their school’s heavy-handed, clandestine switch from its home in the Atlantic Coast Conference to a new home in the Big Ten, with new neighbors.
It was easy during football season, because after all, ACC football was something Terps fans did to pass the time until the ACC basketball season started. This is why Maryland football coach Randy Edsall loved the move to the Big Ten — and why Mark Turgeon hated leaving the ACC.
But now it will start to hit home, deep inside your Terps heart, as those ACC banners that hang from the rafters at the Xbox get dusty with the passing of time and tradition.
The stories that lead up to the rivalry games like Virginia — like when Adrian Branch hit the game-winner in Maryland’s 47-46 upset over top-ranked Virginia and Ralph Sampson in 1982 — will be buried. “They always seemed to think they were a little bit better than everyone else in the ACC,” forward Mark Fothergill told reporters following that game, according to the book “Cole Classics.”
You don’t even have to go back that far to tap into the passion of longtime ACC rivalry basketball between these two teams.
Maryland won its last ACC regular-season game last season with an upset over No. 5 Virginia 75-69 in overtime — back in the days when the home court was known as the Comcast Center.
“Today wasn’t just an ordinary game. It was a lot of things,” Turgeon told reporters after that game. “We always play for Maryland, but today we played for former players, former coaches, all our fans.”
I doubt that a win over Nebraska this season will mean that much to the former players, coaches, and fans.
Everyone wants to move on, because there is nothing anyone can do about it now. The only mention of the longtime rivalry between Maryland and Virginia in the game notes Wednesday night was the upset over the Cavaliers last season.
In the listing of All-Time Series between Maryland and its 2014-15 opponents, there is Virginia (107-73) — and then Michigan State (2-3), Northwestern (2-0), and Iowa (2-1).
So Wednesday night, tradition made a one-night return to College Park. Now reality sets in.
What can ease that pain is an exciting, young Maryland team, and they just may have that at College Park. What can ease that pain is an exciting, young star player, and they just may have that at College Park in freshman Melo Trimble.
You saw that Wednesday night as this young squad battled a physically tough and veteran Virginia team, scoring 65 points when Rutgers scored just 26 against the Cavaliers. If Dez Wells had been healthy and on the court, Maryland would have given Virginia everything it could have handled and more.
That’s a lot to ask from this Maryland team — to make everyone forget what has been lost.
• Thom Loverro is co-host of “The Sports Fix,” noon to 2 p.m. daily on ESPN 980 and espn980.com
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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