COLLEGE PARK — COLLEGE PARK -Maryland's perseverance and an 11th-hour stand in Atlanta were rewarded last night when the Terps earned a trip to Kansas City, Mo., for the NCAA basketball tournament.
Tense moments passed in the Maryland players lounge before CBS announced a Thursday matchup, to start about 2:55 p.m., with the University of California as the 10th seed in the West Region. Then came the eruption.
"The moment coming up to that, when our name was called, was pretty nerve-racking," said Terps junior guard Eric Hayes. "We saw a couple of other bubble teams get called that could have hurt us bad. Once our name was called, all havoc broke loose in the room, and we were just going crazy, hugging each other, throwing stuff. It was pretty fun."
Morgan State had a similar, if more public, display when the newly crowned champions of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference drew their first invitation to the NCAA Division I tournament.
Watching in the theater of the school's new student center, a crowd of more than 200 stood and roared approval when the Bears joined the Terps in Kansas City. Playing as the 15th seed in the South Region, Morgan will face Oklahoma about 9:40 p.m. Thursday, bringing a distinct Maryland flavor to the 18,000-seat Sprint Center.
It was an early January victory over the Terps that helped Morgan escape a No. 16 seed and the dreaded play-in game - between the two lowest-rated teams, staged two days before the tournament begins - to which MEAC teams are usually assigned.
That loss also helped put the Terps on the bubble, a circumstance they finally shrugged off with two victories in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament in Atlanta.
'It's never easy'
Saying it needed two wins to make the NCAA field, Maryland (20-13) beat North Carolina State and upset seventh-ranked Wake Forest before losing by six points to Duke in the ACC semifinals on Saturday.
"It's never easy," Terps coach Gary Williams said. "When you look at those teams that are left out every year, it's incredible how many good teams there are now. ... So, if you're in a situation like ours, where it's not completely smooth during the year, the players are going to feel like they're in and out of the tournament at various times of the year. So you have to maintain that ability to focus on the next game and not listen to everything you hear or read and be able to still have hope that you can make it."
