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Alexander Memorial Coliseum

          Atlanta, GA

Georgia Tech Recap

By Bob W.

“I’m From Maryland, you can’t beat me”

                        -Nik Caner-Medley

Tonight Nik, you can say whatever you want.  In a game that the basketball team, the University and the State needed, the Maryland Terrapins turned in one of their finest performances to date.  With all the black clouds surrounding this team after the McCray debacle this was just what the Terps needed to show us… hell to show themselves even, that this season is far from over.  No one knew what to expect coming into this one and ACC road games are always a challenge, but Maryland dug deep and gutted out a great all around team effort.

This was a big win for so many reasons.  The obvious reason being it was our first win without McCray.  But the other reason this victory has me so stoked is that it moves us to 4-2 in the Conference (3 ACC wins in a row I might add).  Now we could actually play 4-6 over our last 10 ACC games and still have a strong case for the NCAA’s.  I certainly hope that isn’t the case in fact I hope we can skip the first day of the Conference Tournament and finish up as a top 20 team, but it is nice to know that we won’t finish up the year with 5 must win games on the schedule ala 2005.    The win moves the Terps to 14-4 overall and if we can beat the Owl we could look to improve on our #19 ranking. 

D-7 MVP-  Let’s see if my keyboard can actually type this, the D-7 MVP goes to Nik Caner Medley (grammar check just came up and said you should not have NCM and MVP in the same sentence, I had to manually over ride it).  As much as I love to rip Nik, he played one hell of a game (8-12 FG, 2-2 from behind the arc, 15-16 FT’s, 9 boards and 2 fouls and 33 total points!).  It was almost as if he felt the pressure of the entire class of 2006 on his shoulders.  Whatever it was, he played as good a game as we could have ever asked from him.  If he can keep this up he will not only lead us into a decent seed in the tourney, but he could win the D-7 2005-06 MVP Award.

Honorable Mention:  I’m going Mike Jones on this one.  He had the pressure of starting for McCray and he played great.  2-3 from three, and 6-6 from the line.  Totaled 12 points and 5 boards (though he did have 4 fouls and 3 T/O’s).  Great start to the Mike Jones Era.

Random Thought of the Day:  Is it me or is Mike Jones like Dr. Hibbard on the Simpsons?  Every time there is a Simpson’s flashback Dr. Hibbard has his hair a different style, not unlike every time Mike Jones is on TV, his hair is a different style?  Or maybe I’m just watching too many Simpson’s re-runs. 

The “It Could be Worse” Section:  Unranked Seton Hall 83, NC State 65 IN the RBC (and yes that is a bolded, capitalized, underlined,  and italicized “in”).

Enemy of the State:    Though we won the game, the biggest Georgia Tech P.I.T.A. of the night was Ra’ Sean Dickey (18 pts, 11 boards and 4 steals) and if you thought I could do a whole GT recap without saying his name, well then I guess you just don’t know me very well.

Factoid Alert:  Gary Williams is now tied with Lefty Drissell in all time wins at Maryland.  Gary will play Temple this Saturday for the all time lead.  Gary Williams is from Southern NJ, so this is as close to a hometown game as he will ever have…Coincidence or are the God’s of Basketball to thank?

ACC Standings:

            Team                Conf Red         Overall

            Duke                5-0                   17-0

            NC State          4-2                   15-4

            Maryland          4-2                   14-4

            UVA                4-2                   10-6

            BC                   3-3                   15-4

            FSU                 3-3                   12-4

            Clemson           3-3                   14-5

            UNC                3-3                   11-5

            Miami               3-3                   11-8

            GT                   2-4                   9-8

            Wake               1-5                   12-7

            Va Tech           0-5                   10-8

Bubble Watch:

Record:  14-4

Rank:  19

Quality Wins:  #6 Boston College, Arkansas, and I can’t really justify having Minnesota up here anymore.

Bad Losses:  None

Outlook:  5 seed (the most dreaded seed of all).