Acc Tournament

Maryland had one more opportunity Friday night to get it right, one precious chance -- in a meaningful game in March -- to finally claim a memorable win against a ranked team while retaining a shred of hope of securing an NCAA tournament berth. After having gone 0-6 against Top 25 teams, the Terps fell, 87-71, to No. 5 Duke in perhaps the costliest loss of all because it ended their ambitious goal of winning the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament as a seventh seed and claiming the conference's automatic NCAA bid. It was a rough, contentious, quarterfinal played in front of a heavily pro-Duke crowd.

The Cliff Tucker Maryland needs in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament is the one who scored 22 points in a win over No. 5 North Carolina in 2009, or who rained down a buzzer-beater to defeat Georgia Tech last season. The Terrapins need the Tucker who doesn't brood. The interesting part about Tucker's final-second shot — it was the most memorable of his career — is there was no time to think. That's key for the senior, who conceded Wednesday that he tends to ponder and pout when not getting the playing time he believes he deserves.

The Maryland men's basketball team has drawn the seventh seed in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament and will face North Carolina State at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, N.C. The game will be televised by ESPN2. The Terps, who have lost three straight games entering the tournament, likely would need to win out to earn a spot in the NCAA tournament. The winner of the ACC tournament receives an automatic berth in the NCAAs. Should Maryland defeat N.C. State, its next opponent would be second seed Duke, a team that beat the Terps twice in the regular season, including by 18 points in College Park on Feb. 2. The Blue Devils -- along with top seed North Carolina, third seed Florida State and No. 4 seed Clemson -- earned a first-round bye in the ACC tournament.

Nineteen games had passed since Maryland seniors Cliff Tucker, Adrian Bowie and Dino Gregory were all in the starting lineup. But there they all were Saturday afternoon, getting the start together and eagerly hoping to make their final home game memorable — even if much of the season that preceded it was not. What the seniors got instead was more disappointment in the form of a 74-60 loss to Virginia — Maryland's third straight and...

Even with all the indignities it endured this season -- the eight single-digit losses, the seven starting-lineup changes -- it seemed improbable that Maryland would drop its final regular-season home game to a Virginia team it led in the Atlantic Coast Conference standings. Not on Maryland's Senior Day. Not when the Terps urgently needed a lift after two straight ACC defeats. Not under a coach who habitually gets his players to finish with flourishes and whose team went undefeated here last season in conference play.

This is the time of year when college basketball fans attempt to forecast the teams in the NCAA tournament brackets as if filling in words in a crossword puzzle. Predicting and seeding the 68-team field may be an entertaining pastime for fans — and a lucrative one for pundits — but it's not a practice Maryland coach Gary Williams says he's engaging in with his Terps team. What would be the point? Williams and his players know as well as anybody that Maryland — which plays its final regular-season road game against Miami on Wednesday night — is a long shot to advance to the NCAA tournament for the third straight season.

The Maryland women's soccer team entered this season knowing things would be different. A Sweet 16 finish in last year's NCAA tournament made the Terps a target in the Atlantic Coast Conference. It was, perhaps, the first time in the program's history that the Maryland women started the season as legitimate title contenders just a few steps away from escaping the shadow of the Terps' vaunted men's program. The Terps quietly and confidently stormed through their schedule with a 15-2-1 overall record, and when they begin the ACC tournament today with an opening-round contest against Duke, they will do so as a No. 2 seed prepared to reach the zenith of college soccer.

— The Virginia men's lacrosse team got off to a cold start but found a remedy in a hot goalie. Junior Adam Ghitelman made eight of his game-high 16 saves in the first half, and the No. 2 Cavaliers rallied from a 3-0 deficit in the first quarter to defeat No. 5 Maryland, 10-6, before an announced 2,626 in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament final Sunday at Byrd Stadium. Virginia improved to 13-1 and captured its sixth ACC tournament championship thanks to the play of Ghitelman, who was named the tournament's Most Valuable Player on his 21st birthday.

Maryland may look back one day and find that its 69-64 loss to Georgia Tech in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament didn't mean much in terms of the Terrapins' ultimate goal of making a deep run in the NCAA tournament. But the loss sure stung the Terps on Friday night. It was a trying defeat because of the success that No. 19 Maryland (23-8) had during the regular season, winning its last seven games and raising fans' expectations. It was made all the more dispiriting because the Terps -- using frenetic, full-court defense -- erased all but one basket of a 19-point deficit.