MIKE BURKE

Allegany Communications Sports

The bright lights were on Wednesday night and Maryland squinted like a frightened bat in front of a home sellout crowd and a national television audience. Then on Saturday afternoon, the Terps called gutcheck and averted catastrophe with an ugly win in a half-empty gym they hadn’t won in in 10 years.

The No. 16 Terps lost in kick-in-the-stomach fashion Wednesday at Xfinity Center, 58-55, to No. 8 Michigan State as the Crab Five was reduced to Rodney Rice and the Shrinking Four with the Spartans’ Tre Holloman applying the dagger on a 60-foot game-winning shot at the buzzer.

Then on Saturday, at the lonely Bryce Jordan Center, the Terps battled as though a double-bye in the Big Ten Tournament were at stake (which, it is) and held off next-to-last-place Penn State, 68-64, for their first win there since 2015.

Maryland’s struggles at Bryce Jordan have become legendary and eerily similar through the years normally against overmatched Penn State teams; and they apparently hold water on the outside world, as Las Vegas had Maryland going in as a 4.5-point favorite. So to say the manner in which Maryland won was disappointing would be inaccurate, because any Maryland win in State College is nothing short of a Festivus miracle, not to mention greatly valued given the circumstances of the Big Ten standings entering the final week of the regular season.

Meanwhile, the West Virginia Mountaineers continue to hold on to what is seemingly their NCAA Tournament at-large bid, barring a Big 12 Tournament championship, also splitting their week with a 73-55 home win over TCU and then having the dam break in the second half on Saturday night in a 77-56 loss at No. 25 Brigham Young.

While the Mountaineers did a nice job defending the BYU 3-point game, they had no answer for Cougars center Fousseyni Traore in the post, who backed down Eduardo Andre repeatedly for 20 points, and also put Andre and Amani Hansberry into foul trouble.

Though the loss feels discouraging, the unstated goal for the two-game road trip to Utah was to split and that can happen on Tuesday with a win at Utah, who the Mountaineers beat last month at home, 72-61.

The Utes are now coached by interim coach Josh Eilert, who was the interim coach last season for West Virginia, and since the firing of head coach Craig Smith last week, they’ve been making a little noise heading to Tuesday’s matchup, having beaten Arizona State Saturday night, 99-73.

Eilert and his team are clearly in the spoiler role and can make WVU’s road to the NCAA Tournament more difficult with a win on Tuesday. Should that occur, the Mountaineers will have to win their regular season finale against UCF and win at least two games in the Big 12 tournament, possibly three, to feel really good heading into Selection Sunday.

A loss to UCF, just one game over .500, would be unacceptable with the only way for WVU to recover would be to at least gain the final of the Big 12 tournament in Kansas City.

As for Maryland, the win at State College, coupled with Michigan State’s Sunday win over Wisconsin keeps the Terps in fourth place in the Big Ten with two games remaining for everyone.

Julian Reese might have had one of his worst games offensively on Saturday, but likely had the best defensive game of his life with 15 rebounds, six steals and three blocks. As head coach Kevin Willard said, “Julian Reese won this game. I mean, it’s not even close.”

Freshman Derik Queen appeared to be asleep at the wheel through the first 14 minutes, but after taking a chippy foul, seemed to wake up and went to the hoop to finish with a game-high 23 points, six rebounds, four steals and two blocks.

Guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie started the game hot, sat for a while, but came back and continued to penetrate. His maturity and bounce-back were enormous in this game. Meanwhile, guard Rodney Rice, having been 1-for-11 into the final minute of the game with the Terps leading by two, took a pass from Gillespie on the deep wing, avoided a flyby defender, then dribbled into mid-range and delivered a picture-perfect baseline jumper to ice it.

Entering the final week of the regular season, the Terps sit in Big Ten double-bye territory, but they’re not sitting easy. For the second straight game, the bench did not score a point, which is a problem, and as they did last week, the Terps enter a demanding and tricky two-game stretch to close the regular season – Wednesday at No. 15 MIchigan, and Saturday at home against a Northwestern team that handed them the first of three straight at-the-buzzer losses.

Maryland is a lock to make the NCAA Tournament and is projected to be anything from a No. 5 to No. 7 seed, while West Virginia seems to be on fairly sound footing as a No. 9 to No. 11, depending on the bracketology.

Should they both take care of business this week, it’s smooth sailing, with their respective conference tournaments ahead to only enhance their seeding.

And here’s a prediction: If West Virginia does make the tournament, which they will, watch the selection committee do anything it possibly can do, even at the risk of one team’s higher seed, to set up another West Virginia-Maryland first-round match-up on the eastern side of the country, as we saw them do two years ago.

It’s just something they seem to like to do.

If it’s possible, it’ll happen.

Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT