After a second sub-.500 season in three years, Maryland men’s basketball entered the offseason with mixed reviews about their postseason status with ESPN Joe Lunardi projecting Kevin Willard’s team as one of the last teams in his initial field.
Fast-forward to the new year and Maryland finds themselves comfortably on the right side of the bubble heading into conference play.
FOX: 4-seed vs. Liberty
Bleacher Report: 6-seed vs. SMU
ESPN: 7-seed vs. WVU
CBS Sports: 8-seed vs. Arkansas
Maryland also enters the rest of conference play with a 92.3% chance to return to its second NCAA Tournament appearance under Willard with a four-seed the slightly early favorite as most likely finish, per TeamRankings.com. Also projected to finish 23-8 (13-7), Maryland enters the rest of Big Ten play with the fifth-highest odds to win the conference at +850 behind UCLA (+400), Michigan (+425), Michigan State (+500) and Purdue (+550).
Maryland enters Thursday one of five Big Ten teams ranked inside the top-20 in the updated NET (12), KenPom (17) and Torvik (18) rankings but narrowly missed the AP top 25 for the second straight week, now just six points shy of 25th-ranked Baylor.
“10-1 in non-conference, you know. Obviously, I feel good about where we are. Obviously, we have a really tough road schedule ahead of us and I think this team is looking forward to getting back to practicing a little bit,” head coach Kevin Willard said after last week’s win.
Maryland will look to extends its win streak to five games when they face Washington on Thursday night for a 9:30 PM tip.
“I think rebounding for us. Rebounding, getting to the free throw line,” Willard said about the focus for his team heading into the new year. “It's something that – we’ve struggled to get to the free throw line a little bit this year. I think just work on – again our guards have to rebound the basketball a little bit better and we have to get to the free throw line a little bit more.”
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