It is strange to talk about a college basketball team that boasted the conference freshman of the year and achieved its first Sweet 16 appearance in nine seasons as if it had disappeared and no longer existed.
Yet that is exactly what happened to Maryland.
There will be no flashy banner raising, no tribute to NBA Draft lottery pick Derik Queen’s sensational, lone season in College Park. Any commemorations of the Terrapins’ memorable “Crab Five” campaign are not planned, at least not in the immediate future.
Instead, Maryland opens its 2025-26 season as a hard-to-recognize program with 15 new faces in an era when that has become the norm rather than the exception.
“There wasn’t a team. There wasn’t a schedule. There wasn’t an [athletic director],” said new Terrapins coach Buzz Williams. “I don’t say any of that in a negative way … I was aware of it because I was living in it each day, but it’s happening at a variety of places.”
In April, Williams left Texas A&M to take the Maryland job in the wake of Kevin Willard’s abrupt, scorched-earth departure for Villanova after two NCAA Tournament appearances in three seasons. He arrived at the barest of cupboards, with only former walk-on Lucas Sotell left after a cascade of transfers.
“It was just an ongoing, per-hour, per-day [process],” Williams said of having to piece together his Maryland roster. “Does this fit? Are they good enough as people? Are they good enough as players? There’s so many more factors now in making decisions than ever before.”
Somewhat of a coaching mercenary, Williams has spent no more than six years at any one of his coaching stops, yet has always succeeded in leading them to multiple NCAA appearances — 11 across his 18 seasons. Whether that success will continue in the nation’s largest power conference is a question mark, especially with a roster dealing with multiple injuries before the season opener Monday in Baltimore against Coppin State.
“We’ve tried to adjust in regards to our roster as we learn the leagues, each place that we’ve been,” Williams said. “We’re probably behind in understanding the Big Ten … I for sure haven’t done a good job of understanding what’s upcoming, just because I’ve tried to be consumed and model the behavior I want our players to have in regards to being better.”
Something that should look familiar amid the overhaul is a tenacious style reminiscent of old Maryland teams. Williams calls it “excellence in the margins.”
“The margins, typically speaking, are the things that are intangible,” he said. “Were you the first to the floor to a loose ball? Did you block out on a free throw? When it’s your ball out of bounds, were you the first team to huddle? … We try to measure as much as we can on things that are not in the stat sheet. We believe that those things in the margins impact the stat sheet in a positive way.”
Coming from College Station to College Park with Williams are four players, including senior forwards Pharrel Payne and Solomon Washington, who will be expected to channel their experience against one of the most physical leagues in the nation.
“We kind of boost each other and bring each other up,” Payne said. “I know that from just having the practice teams playing against each other, the right guys on the court at the same time, always talking positiveness into each other and talking life into each other.”
The experience-laden roster trickles down to the backcourt, where graduate student David Coit (Kansas) and juniors Isaiah Watts (Washington State) and Myles Rice (Indiana) will be key figures in driving the offense.
“Our identity is Buzz. That’s our identity. Like, however you see Buzz, that’s how you’re gonna see us. That’s our head coach, we’re an extension of him,” Rice said. “I can’t tell you a specific style of play, but we just gonna be an extension of that guy.”
Williams also brings an extremely loyal cadre of assistants and staff, some of whom have been working alongside him for decades — part of a personal and professionalized approach to all aspects of his program that will be novel to Terrapin observers.
“I didn’t want to be the coach that was always talking about the change, and I wanted to be the coach that talked about some things stay the same,” Williams said. “People’s lives still matter. Treating people the right way still matters.”
The Terrapins were picked to finish 13th out of 18 Big Ten teams in the annual preseason media poll, including a No. 9 ranking by The Washington Times. Maryland is one of four league schools — Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota are the others — with new coaches and overhauled rosters this season.
• George Gerbo can be reached at ggerbo@washingtontimes.com.
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