It’s a tradition for the Terrapin men’s basketball team to close the regular season against ACC rival Virginia. The teams have met in their ACC finales in 36 of the past 41 years.
That leads us to today’s contest at John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville, Va.
The Terps are trying to ensure themselves a share of the ACC regular season for the first time since 2002. Then, they’ll sit back and wait to see how No. 4 Duke fares tonight against North Carolina to find out if they can grab the top seed in the ACC Tournament.
To do that, they will have to win in this four year old arena for the first time. They are 0-3 here, including a 68-63 loss to close the regular season last year.
Virginia is scuffling, losers of eight games in a row. The Cavaliers, who lost by 19 points in College Park on Feb. 15, have lost six straight by double-digits. The big news on their side is they will be without leading scorer Sylven Landesberg, who has been suspended for “failure to live up to his academic obligations.” The sophomore leads the team in points, assists and minutes played this season.
Those factors bode well for the Terps, who are the conference’s hottest team with six straight wins, including Wednesday’s emotional upset win against the Blue Devils. Yesterday, coach Gary Williams would not address the Cavaliers’ struggles, saying he wanted to focus on getting his team ready to close out its regular season.
In the earlier meeting, the Cavaliers could not stop guard Greivis Vasquez, who poured in 25 first half points to key the rout. The Terps also dominated on the boards, finishing with a 42-28 rebounding edge. That plus-14 advantage is the Terps’ largest rebounding margin in conference this season.
The Cavaliers are going through Senior Day festivities right now. The 15,000+-seat arena is slowly filling up, but it doesn’t appear that it will be at capacity. Continue to follow the game here, via Twitter at www.twitter.com/DBKSports and at www.diamondbackonline.com.
Eric Detweiler is The Diamondback’s Terrapin Men’s Basketball Team beat writer. He can be reached at edetweilerdbk@gmail.com. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/edetweiler.