Pattern is proof: Terps among elite

Gary Williams arrived at Maryland with a blueprint for rebuilding the Terrapins: emulate Duke and North Carolina.

In doing so, the Terps basketball coach founded his own powerhouse.

The Terps showed a national TV audience and a capacity crowd at Comcast Center that this mercurial season won’t end without another trip to the NCAA tournament.

Maryland (15-7, 6-5 ACC) beat No. 7 Duke 99-92 in overtime Saturday for its second victory over the Blue Devils in 17 days. A team that once seemed bound for the NIT is squarely back in the NCAA tournament selection committee’s plans.

Williams’ thoughts after Saturday’s victory drifted to his arrival at Maryland in 1989, when the program was reeling from the drug-related death of forward Len Bias three years earlier, then faced NCAA sanctions for the actions of former coach Bob Wade.

The Terps would weather some tough times, but Williams knew patterning the program after Maryland’s two biggest rivals ultimately would return it to prominence. Sixteen years, 11 NCAA tournament appearances, two Final Fours and one national championship later, Maryland no longer has to use any team as a model.

“When I came here in ’89, we had to set our sights high if we were ever going to get out of the mess we were in,” Williams said. “Duke and North Carolina were the two we looked at. They’ve been two of the top programs in the country. I always think about that because to compete against those teams — until we got good enough to compete against them — we learned a lot by competing against them.”

Certainly, Comcast Center has come of age in its third year. The volume of crowd noise in the 17,950-seat facility had never matched that of Comcast’s smaller predecessor, Cole Field House.

Until Saturday night, that is. The decisive free throws in overtime were followed by thunderclaps.

The ugliness of last year’s Duke game — fans directed a loud and sustained obscene chant at Blue Devils players — was absent. Signs held aloft by students sought to be clever rather than vulgar. Fans still used profanity as they sang the banned “Rock and Roll, Part II,” but it sounded more like a theme song than a threat.

“It’s one of the best crowds I’ve seen since I’ve been here,” junior guard John Gilchrist said.

Gilchrist left the court sobbing at the end of the game and wandered through the crowd following a splendid performance.

Gilchrist scored 10 points before the first TV timeout and 16 by halftime. After halftime, the Blue Devils focused on stopping Gilchrist, who began finding his teammates instead. He finished with 19 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists.

The disagreement last month between Williams and Gilchrist over how to run the offense seems a thing of the past. Gilchrist has traded shots for assists, and the offense again is flowing freely.

Still, when Maryland needed a leader on a night in which six players scored in double figures, Gilchrist emerged once more.

“John struggled, we all struggled, but nobody quits,” Williams said. “That’s not part of us. You just keep playing until you work it out. John had the courage to do that.”

Gilchrist and the Terps showed their tenacity by overcoming a bad week in which they lost on the road to Clemson and Miami. Those losses were followed by victories over Virginia Tech and Duke, which could land Maryland back in the Top 25 today.

The Terps probably need only one or two more victories to ensure an NCAA bid. The wins over Duke will carry heavy weight with the NCAA selection committee.

“We’re going to get respect throughout college basketball,” Gilchrist said. “We just continue to get better. Once we reach tournament time, we’ll be clicking. That’s what happened last year.”