Maryland will face West Virginia on March 16 to begin its NCAA Tournament run after bowing out in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten tournament. The game will tip off at 12:15 EST on CBS.
Maryland is 14-24 against West Virginia all time and 1-1 in the NCAA Tournament. The two teams have not matched up since March 22, 2015, when the Mountaineers defeated the Terps, 69-59, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Maryland is the No. 8 seed in the South region. If the Terps manage to beat the Mountaineers, they will then face either No. 1 overall seed Alabama or the winner of the Texas A&M Corpus Christi-Southeast Missouri play-in matchup.
Maryland (21-12 overall) will look to bounce back after losing to Indiana, 70-60, in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten tournament on March 10.
“We’re going into the national tournament with the same mindset,” senior Donta Scott said after the Indiana loss. “Play hard, stay aggressive, and we just want to get back into our practices and really try to get after it going to this tournament.”
Maryland’s road struggles have been discussed all season — the Terps are 2-9 in true road games — but head coach Kevin Willard believes his team played “darn good” and “responded great” to the atmosphere in Chicago during the Big Ten tournament.
Willard added that he’s proud of his team’s recent performances against teams that have been hot lately in Ohio State and Penn State. The Nittany Lions made it to the Big Ten tournament finals and narrowly lost to Purdue, 67-65.
“[Ohio State] has won eight out of nine. [Penn State] has won six out of seven,” Willard said. “And we just played Indiana on the road after playing last night.”
Scott added that the team is familiar with the environments it faces away from home and has been trying to overcome it. Should Maryland and Alabama both advance, the Terps would play the Crimson Tide in Birmingham on March 18.
“I guess you could say that it felt like a true road game because they kind of got the home-court advantage with all their fans being here and us not having as many fans but we’ve always been able to try to just fight against it,” Scott said after the Indiana loss.
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