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Traditional powers Georgetown and Maryland—separated by 12 miles, two leagues, and a tangled history—have one of the greatest rivalries that isn’t in college basketball. Now the relationship renews in Orlando.
By John Roach
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In 2006 Gary Williams (left) received a commemorative ball from longtime Terps coach Lefty Driesell, after Williams passed Driesell on Maryland's all-time wins list.
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It may be the greatest truth Maryland fans will ever tell: Were you hoping Maryland would win or lose in Friday night’s game against No. 10-ranked Gonzaga?
A win over the Zags would be a second straight upset of a ranked nonconference opponent—and the Terps hadn’t even beaten one such team since 2003, prior to Thursday’s 80-62 victory over No. 6 Michigan State.
But a loss, well, that’d be a whole new ballgame.
Since No. 16 Georgetown lost earlier in the day to No. 12-ranked Tennessee, that meant the Maryland-Gonzaga loser would play the Hoyas in the Old Spice Classic tournament for third place.
Georgetown and Maryland are separated by 12 miles, two leagues, and a tangled history that has resulted in the greatest rivalry that isn’t in college basketball. They share a recruiting base and the hoop hearts of the nation’s capital, but they don’t share the court too often.
Since 1981, the two teams have met in the 2001 NCAA Tournament and only once in the regular season. Some say Maryland’s 1993 regular-season 84-83 overtime upset at Georgetown laid the faulty foundation for a relationship that has since crumbled. Do the Hoyas owe Maryland a return game? Or does Georgetown’s ’93 partial sharing of seats and receipts even things?
One thing’s clear: call it Hoya Paranoia or Terrapin Terror, the two teams have no desire to meet, and little wish to talk about a rivalry that goes back 100 years and was vibrant and active as recently as 1980.
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Georgetown, led by Patrick Ewing and John Thompson, was on top of the world after the 1984 season.
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How can two schools agree to a game when they can’t agree on the ones they’ve already played? Georgetown’s records indicate the teams’ first game was a 55-3 Hoya rout in the 1907-’08 season. Maryland’s media guide reports there were no Terp teams from 1905-10 and that the first Georgetown game was in the 1910-11 season, a 31-25 loss—a game not noted in the Hoya media guide. Maryland reports a 36-25 series lead; Georgetown has it 36-26.
It’s unquestioned, however, that the schools shared a rich rivalry from 1934 to 1948, then again from 1961 to 1980, when the teams often played twice a season. They split 12 games from 1961 until 1971. But the arrival of two coaches, Lefty Driesell and John Thompson, changed everything. The rise of the programs—and the reasons for the rivalry’s demise—rests with the success of those two men as well.
Driesell started at Maryland in 1969, won seven of eight games in the series and took the Terrapins to five straight 20-win seasons and Elite Eight appearances in 1973 and 1975. Thompson took Georgetown even farther. He arrived in 1972, led the Hoyas to 13 straight 20-win seasons from 1977 to 1990, three Final Fours (1982, ’84, ’85) and the national title in 1984.
More important to the rivalry, Thompson and Georgetown won three straight before the yearly meetings ended with the Hoyas’ 74-68 win in the 1980 Sweet Sixteen. “There wasn’t a problem playing Georgetown—we were so far ahead of the program at that time,” recalls Len Elmore, a Maryland All-American in 1974, a 1st-round NBA pick, and now an ESPN analyst. “Lefty saw it as an opportunity to help John. We were a pretty dominant team then and Coach wasn’t afraid to play anybody.”
Then a funny thing happened; Georgetown started getting better. “Yes,” says Elmore with a laugh. “Georgetown started getting on the same level and then started to pull away a little with Patrick Ewing and those guys.”
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After Maryland, Len Elmore (44) took his game to the NBA.
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Who says Maryland coach Gary Williams won’t play Maryland? He has twice—as coach at American and Boston College, going 0-2. Hey, the two coaches to follow John Thompson—Craig Esherick and John Thompson III—haven’t exactly been playing phone tag with the Terps, either. The reasons the two teams circle each other without fighting are as simple as basic math. One (loss) plus one (bad season) equals too many possible recruits lost.
“Recruiting is really what it comes down to—particularly for the team that’s on top as far as popularity,” says Elmore. “When you’re battling for recruiting in that local area, which is a hotbed, there’s really nothing to gain by playing. The loser has to explain what happened and why they lost.
“Although I could see some benefits,” he says. “You could say to a recruit, ‘Well, with you, we could have won that game.’ ”
Close but so far away—it’s not just a Beltway phenomenon. Louisville and Kentucky avoided each other like snakes in the bluegrass. They played just one regular-season game from 1948 until 1984. But since then, they’ve met 24 times, with Kentucky holding a 15-9 series advantage in that span—but both teams have capitalized on the renewed rivalry.
For Maryland and Georgetown, their last meeting—Maryland’s 76-66 2001 Sweet Sixteen tourney win en route to the NCAA title—offered an ironic twist. Lefty Driesell’s 11th-seeded Georgia State team upset Wisconsin to set up a second-round meeting with his old school. Maryland won easily, 79-60, and went on to face Georgetown.
And now, here they are again, at the 2008 Old Spice Classic, a meeting the two schools have tried to hold off like laughter in church. Just don't ask Maryland fans if they were in on the joke ahead of time.
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John Roach is a former college basketball writer and editor at ESPN The Magazine.
Photos Courtesy AP
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