Vasquez

COLLEGE PARK -With their most indispensable player suddenly dispensed to a spectator role, the Terps were a team with no options. Fouls handcuffed Greivis Vasquez to the bench, and the Terps' hopes were suddenly shackled to an unfortunate, inescapable reality. Despite the best efforts of players like Adrian Bowie, Eric Hayes and Landon Milbourne, in the waning moments of last night's 78-67 loss to Duke, Maryland needed a leader, not a cheerleader. The Terps flirted with the possibility of winning without their star player; they winked an eye and played footsie with a chance at upsetting the No. 7 Blue Devils.

NEW YORK -- The conversation took place during his freshman year at Maryland. Greivis Vasquez, still learning a new language and getting adjusted to playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference, sat down in his coach's office one day to talk about his dreams. "He told me that he wanted to play in the NBA," Gary Williams recalled recently. "I told him, 'You've got the size, you see the court really well, you can shoot fairly well. It's just a matter of getting better every year.' He just took that to heart and went with it. Greivis got better every year.

You can call Greivis Vasquez a lot of things - and for two-plus years, he has been called a lot of things. But you definitely call him self-aware. After another of his patented "No-no-no-yes!" shots to send Maryland's game against Vermont last week into overtime and toward an eventual victory, he was asked what he was thinking as he launched it. "I said, 'They are either going to love me or they are going to hate me. I don't really care,' " he replied. That's Vasquez, take him or leave him, and Gary Williams will take him for exactly that reason.

Big-game settings are nothing new to former Maryland star Greivis Vasquez. The intensity of the matchups with Duke and North Carolina during his years in College Park, as well as what he experienced as an NBA rookie last season with the Memphis Grizzlies, certainly prepared Vasquez well for what he encountered in New York on Friday night. Now with the New Orleans Hornets, Vasquez met Linsanity -- and Knicks phenomenon Jeremy Lin -- head on. Nobody is saying Vasquez was the reason the heretofore woeful but suddenly hot Hornets beat a Knicks team that had won seven straight games with Lin as its newfound star, but Vasquez certainly played his part.

COLLEGE PARK -- About a month ago, after Maryland had lost its conference opener to Boston College, freshman Eric Hayes was left wondering "for what reasons" he lost his job as the Terps' starting point guard. When it came to deciphering that slight edge one talented freshman had over the other - the nuance that was important enough to boost Greivis Vasquez ahead of Hayes in the starting lineup - coach Gary Williams chose the emotion that parallels his own. Miami @Maryland Tonight, 9, Ch. 54, 1300 AM, 105.7 FM Line: Maryland by 14

He's the most unpredictable player on the Maryland men's basketball team, maybe one of the most unpredictable ever to wear the uniform. Thus, the reactions to the loss to Clemson at Comcast Center a week ago were wholly predictable. The message boards and comment sections catering to Terps fans began filling within seconds of the conclusion of the come-from-ahead 73-70 defeat, and the talk show callers sprang to life not long after that. The consensus: It was all Greivis Vasquez's fault.

COLLEGE PARK -- Maryland guard Greivis Vasquez, who led the team in scoring, rebounding and assists last season, said Monday that he has opted to return for his senior season. The decision means Vasquez, who spent the past month performing workouts and drills for NBA teams, has withdrawn his name from the June 25 NBA draft. Coach Gary Williams met with Vasquez on Monday afternoon in the coach's Comcast Center office. Vasquez left after the meeting was over, then returned a short while later and enthusiastically shook hands with the coach he has often defended.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -Maryland's NCAA tournament run became the Greivis Vasquez reality show yesterday. The excitable junior guard is expected to be the focus of the Memphis defense today when the Tigers (32-3), who have won 26 games in a row, play the Terrapins (21-13) in a second-round game. Memphis coach John Calipari yesterday called the 6-foot-6 Vasquez "crafty" and "multidimensional" and named four Tigers - including 6-9 forward Robert Dozier - who might guard him. But the attention the Tigers devote to Vasquez will pale in comparison to the interest he drew from the media after Maryland's closed practice at Sprint Center.

COLLEGE PARK -Gary Williams didn't need long to respond. Has there been another Terrapin, the Maryland coach was asked yesterday, who can match Greivis Vasquez's versatility? "Walt Williams," the coach quickly replied, referring to the man who holds the school record for points in a season (776). As Maryland (18-11, 7-8 Atlantic Coast Conference) tries to strengthen its case for an NCAA tournament bid today against Virginia (9-17, 3-12), Vasquez is nearing a milestone. The junior guard can become the sixth player in ACC history to lead his team in scoring, rebounding and assists.

COLLEGE PARK - This could have been a game that chipped away at Maryland's collective confidence and fractured its fragile psyche. Instead, Maryland turned a potentially deflating loss into a demonstrative, 89-74 overtime victory over Vermont last night at Comcast Center. After junior guard Greivis Vasquez sent the game into overtime with a three-point shot with less than seven seconds to go, the Terps scored the first 17 points in overtime as the Catamounts, so deadly with their shooting during regulation, went into a catatonic state.

NBA Pollin's widow wouldn't mind return to Bullets name Wizards: Abe Pollin 's widow and former team co-owner said recently that she wouldn't object if the new owner Ted Leonsis decided to return the team name to the Bullets. "I respect my husband's wishes. I love him very much. I miss him terribly. If the fans want to change it back — hey, why not?" Irene Pollin said. "To me, it's what do the fans want? What's going to please them? To me, they're the ones who support, care.

Listening to Mark Turgeon and Terrell Stoglin talk when the season began, you didn't know which would happen first -- the new coach sending the sophomore point guard packing or the sophomore point guard doing his best imitation of a Maryland football player by getting out of College Park as soon as the season was over. There are still several months left for Turgeon and Stoglin to either co-exist or kill each other, at least figuratively speaking. But what we have witnessed the past few weeks could have a rather significant impact on what kind of season the Terps have, and whether or not Stoglin follows the path of John Gilchrist or Greivis Vasquez.

Just before his Under Armour team was about to tip off against St. Frances in an exhibition Monday afternoon, Greivis Vasquez went over to two of the game officials to voice a complaint. "Hey, these guys are wearing Nikes," the former Maryland basketball star teased, pointing to the referees' footwear. "What the [heck]?" With the NBA in its fifth month of a lockout, Vasquez has become something of a shoe salesman. In fact, promoting Under Armour's basketball apparel line was the main reason the second-year member of the Memphis Grizzlies was at St. Frances on Monday, along with Charlotte Bobcats rookie Kemba Walker and third-year Milwaukee Bucks point guard Brandon Jennings.

Former Maryland Terrapin guard Greivis Vasquez, who is now a member of the Memphis Grizzlies, is in his native Venezuela this week as part of a U.S. State Department "sports diplomacy" program that hopes to use athletes to improve international relations, especially between countries with strained relationships. Vasquez, a Venezuelan citizen, is teaming with former NBA player Darvin Ham and former WNBA Player Kayte Christensen to hold a series of basketball clinics for kids, as well as meet with local sports officials.

Former Maryland star Greivis Vasquez has never been afraid to gush about now-retired basketball coach Gary Williams and the impact he has had on his life and his career. The shimmying sharpshooter often expressed his love and adoration for Williams during their four years together in College Park. The gushing continued Thursday night when Comcast SportsNet tracked down Vasquez, whose Memphis Grizzlies are in the second round of the NBA playoffs, for his thoughts on his former college coach's stunning retirement.

If you wanted to see genuine emotion, not the phony stuff that so often comes from sports these days, you needed to see Greivis Vasquez's face light up when they honored him here Sunday. The Maryland Terrapins did this one up right, folks. Right before their sloppy 87-80 win over North Carolina State, they hung a banner with his No. 21 from the rafters at Comcast Center, making him only the 16th player in Maryland history accorded that tribute. They put together a wonderful highlight reel of the former Terps great's career that played on the scoreboard, narrated in the stentorian voice of veteran announcer Johnny Holliday.

COLLEGE PARK - There was Maryland junior guard Greivis Vasquez, who heard boos earlier in the game from a smattering of fans on his team's home court, putting a finger to his lips and shouting at the student section to be quiet. There was Maryland, which had made one of 14 three-point shots in its stunning loss Wednesday to Morgan State, missing its first 13 yesterday against Georgia Tech at Comcast Center. There were the Terps, trailing by 10 with 9 1/2 minutes left in their Atlantic Coast Conference opener.

RICHMOND, Va. -- Former junior middleweight champion Carl Daniels, who lost his World Boxing Association title to Julio Vasquez last December, had little difficulty in stopping journeyman Tim Dendy on a sixth-round technical knockout on the undercard of the Terry Norris-Vincent Pettway championship card at the Richmond Coliseum last night.Actually, Dendy's corner tossed in the towel after the fifth round when a left hook by Daniels (36-2, 23 KOs) floored Dendy and took the fight out of Tennessean.

There is a revealing statistic about last season's Maryland team, which tied eventual national champion Duke atop the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season standings. Like this year's team, the 2009-10 Terps played in plenty of close conference games. The difference is, they usually won them. From Feb. 4, 2010, until the end of the regular-season schedule, Maryland played seven games decided by single digits. The Terps — led by the animated, ultra-competitive Greivis Vasquez, who returns to Comcast Center to be honored at Sunday's N.C. State game — won all seven.

Thirty-two years after setting Maryland's record for points in a men's basketball game, Ernest Graham has a wish. "I would love to live long enough to see them retire my jersey," said Graham, a Dunbar graduate who played for the Terps from 1978-81 and whose single-game mark of 44 points, set against North Carolina State in 1978, still stands. But Graham's number — nor that of any other Terp — isn't likely to be retired anytime soon. That's because Maryland has a policy of not retiring basketball numbers.