COLUMBUS, Ohio — A determined voice answers in a familiar tone nearly every time Mark Turgeon asks for a water break, leaving the coach no choice but to blow his whistle and allow practice to continue.
“No, we’re good,” Varun Ram implores, refusing assistance and wishing to carry on with the drill. “We’re good.”
There is no quit in Ram, the pesky, 5-foot-9 former walk-on, and he believes there should be no quit for anyone else, either. A lynchpin of Maryland’s scout-team defense, he causes so much grief during practice by swatting at balls and contesting shots that teammates can grow irritated by his presence.
That voracity has served Ram well at key points during the season, though there have been none more dire than the one he encountered on Friday. Needing a defensive stop to preserve the Terrapins’ three-point lead, Turgeon released his pest with 13.7 seconds remaining, hoping he’d stifle Valparaiso in the same frustrating manner he has done all year.
Ram did just that, preventing Keith Carter from getting rid of the ball and denying what could have been a tying shot in the closing moments of a 65-62 victory, Maryland’s first in the NCAA tournament in five years.
“I feel like it’s every kid’s dream come true,” Ram said. “As a walk-on, you’re always trying to prove yourself, and to make a play like this in a game of this magnitude, it’s unbelievable.”
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Relegated to spot duty for much of the second half of the season, Ram entered the game when Maryland faced a defensive need. He played a handful of seconds at the end of the first half of an eventual victory against Penn State, then did the same in the Big Ten semifinal loss to Michigan State last weekend.
The Terrapins faced a defensive shortcoming during the final 33 seconds on Friday with forwards Jake Layman and Damonte Dodd fouled out, and when Valparaiso coach Bryce Drew called timeout to draw up one last play, Turgeon considered his options.
He turned to Ram, who had not played all evening, and pulled freshman Jared Nickens off the court. Valparaiso’s Alec Peters, the team’s leading scorer, threw the inbounds pass from the coach’s box to Carter, who was supposed to get the ball back to Peters for the tying shot.
Dez Wells and Evan Smotrycz prevented that pass from happening, isolating Peters near the top of the arc and leaving Carter alone with Ram. Panicking, Carter began dribbling down the left sideline, Ram in tow, before winding up in the corner. There, he lost control of the ball — it appeared as though Carter was attempting to square his feet and shoot — and time soon expired.
Ram then sprinted back toward Maryland’s bench, where Nickens and forward Jon Graham caught him and lifted him into the air in celebration.
“What I had left to play, he was clearly one of our top five defenders to put in, and so it was really without hesitation to put him in,” Turgeon said. “I have confidence in him to do the right thing. He’s been with me now three years, so it was pretty easy.”
Valparaiso, the Horizon League champion, pushed the fourth-seeded Terrapins to the limit because of its perimeter shooting. The Crusaders were bothered by Maryland’s length early, and essentially wrote off attempting to drive the lane, except to kick the ball back out or draw a foul, by halftime.
Instead, Valparaiso did the bulk of its work from beyond the arc, unleashing a season-high 27 3-pointers. It made 12 of them, with Peters, who finished with 18 points, making four of seven.
That made Peters, and the 13th-seeded Crusaders, particularly lethal on the final possession. Recognizing that their opponent had a knack for making those contested shots, Maryland knew its only chance to stem a tie was to shut Valparaiso down completely.
“They were definitely trying to get him the ball, and I wasn’t really sure what was happening, but I knew our guys fought through the screens and denied him the pass,” Ram said. “The guy that I was guarding could have made that pass, and I knew he was gonna take the shot, so I tried to get up into him and be aggressive — and it paid off.”
• Zac Boyer can be reached at zboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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