Their night, their game

The Terrapin men's basketball team was not going to lose this game.

Sorry. No way. Not happening.

Not after guards Greivis Vasquez and Eric Hayes and forward Landon Milbourne held their framed jerseys over their heads in a goosebump-inducing Senior Night ceremony before the game.

Not in front of the best crowd Comcast Center has ever seen, with thousands of gold-clad students creating a home-court advantage to rival any in the country.

Not with Vasquez leading the way, not with forward Jordan Williams becoming a primetime player before our eyes and not with guard Adrian Bowie playing his best game of the year off the bench.

Duke might have made them work for it — and watching a 14-point lead disappear couldn't have been fun — but the Terps simply were not going to let their biggest rival come in here last night and ruin the festivities.

This was their night, and they were going to find a way to get it done.
The Terps' 79-72 win was virtually inevitable.

"Unbelievable. Unbelievable," Vasquez said. "Duke is a great team, great coach, great players. Just to win like that means the whole world for us."

The crowds at Comcast Center have been tremendous all season, but the atmosphere in the building last night was truly something special.

The way the place was literally shaking as the opening tip approached, you could sense the Terps' fast start coming.

It didn't matter which team had the better record. It didn't matter which team had been receiving more national respect. It didn't even matter which team had won the last six games of the head-to-head series.

Last night belonged to the Terps.

They opened the game on a 10-2 run, and the usually unflappable Blue Devils looked rattled in missing seven of their first eight shots.

As players and fans alike started to sense what was happening, the Terps kept piling it on.
After Williams stuck his knee into Duke guard Jon Scheyer's chest to draw a foul on a vicious fast-break dunk, the lead stayed in the double digits for most of the first half.

"You'd like to think you're going to do that for 40 minutes," coach Gary Williams said, "but you're not."

The Blue Devils switched to a zone defense that curbed the Terps' momentum, and they slowly made their run.

They took their first lead of the game on Scheyer's 3-pointer on the first shot of the second half, and under normal circumstances it might have seemed as if Duke was going to be too much to handle.

But last night was different, and through it all, you had the feeling whatever Duke did ultimately wasn't going to matter.

As long as the Terps gave themselves a chance, they were going to pull this one out.

"Everybody just stayed tough," Gary Williams said. "We wouldn't let them get away from us."

It might have been their destiny, but the Terps still had to earn it.

When things started to turn on them, just about every player in the Terps' rotation stepped up and made a play.

Bowie was tremendous on both ends of the court, playing with energy on defense and running the break efficiently the other way.

Jordan Williams was simply a beast inside, not only limiting the Blue Devils' frontline that he struggled to contain in the teams' first meeting but continually going strong to the hoop and getting himself to the free throw line.

And when it came down to the end, there was Vasquez, demanding the ball with the game on the line.

His off-balance runner that sealed the win in the final minute was the exact type of moment that inspires these feelings of invincibility.

The Terps are not always the most talented team on the court, but they are playing with a confidence and a drive that make these wins inevitable.

Last night, nothing was going to stop them.

schimmel@umdbk.com