Remote learning

Practice is long since over. So is any extracurricular shooting once the coaches have left the court. Dinner and studying are long since finished.

So what does it leave a college basketball player to do on any random night?

How about watching more basketball?

Maybe the Wizards are on, or the Mavericks or the Suns or the Spurs. Perhaps there’s a chance to see a college team still looming on the schedule, or — thanks to a mixture of confidence, optimism and hope — a potential opponent when the NCAA tournament arrives.

“I’m switching channels every night,” Maryland forward James Gist says. “I wish we had more than just Comcast so I could have NBA League Pass or something like that so I could just watch all types of games.”

Some option is almost always present. The proliferation of televised games in the last 15 years has made the game’s presence so ubiquitous that it’s hard to remember when chances were a major conference game wasn’t on TV and the chances of seeing a Missouri Valley or Horizon League game outside of the arena were infinitesimal.

Today’s game between Maryland (21-7, 7-6 ACC) and No. 5 North Carolina (24-4, 10-3) at Comcast Center is part of the ACC’s Sunday night package with Fox Sports Net. It has long enjoyed a relationship with ESPN, so much so that one of network’s presentations is dubbed “ACC Wednesday.”

But there’s more to this than a blossoming of the sport or a chance to plop in front of the TV and unwind after a hectic day. The extra time around the game provides an opportunity to pick up on nuances, both to tuck away for future use and to burnish their individual games.

“If you’re a fan of the game, you have to watch it, you have to study it,” Maryland guard D.J. Strawberry says. “You have to know what other teams do. You never know who you’re going to play against.”

In tune

Boston College forward Jared Dudley says he watches seven or eights hours of basketball in his spare time each week — sometimes more. Strawberry isn’t too far behind, noting guard-heavy Villanova of a season ago and this year’s steady group at Wisconsin as teams he has learned a lot from.

He can’t see everything, though. During an off weekend in January, he watched a chunk of a Georgia Tech-Clemson game before the Yellow Jackets built a healthy lead and he decided to go out.

“I’m in the mall and coach [Gary] Williams calls me and he’s like ‘Did you see that, did you see that?’ ” Strawberry says. “I’m like, ‘I didn’t see it.’ He’s like ‘Oh man, [Clemson’s] James Mays went coast to coast and laid it in and they won. They’re undefeated.’ He was going crazy. I thought we were playing.”

Williams says phone calls about an ongoing game have been reserved for “a couple, not many” players over the years. And it’s little surprise the player who called Williams the most was Juan Dixon, Maryland’s all-time leading scorer.

Dixon was known to spend extra time in Cole Field House honing his shot deep into the evening. But he would have to go home eventually, and when he did chances were he would turn on a game.

Story Continues →