Record: 24-5, 10-2 (1st place)
ACC Tournament: Lost in semifinal
NCAA Tournament: Lost in regional final
Final AP Ranking: 5
All-ACC Players: John Lucas (1st), Mo Howard (2nd), Owen Brown (2nd), Brad Davis (2nd)
All-Americans: John Lucas (1st)
The ACC of the mid- to late 1970s. Talk about a meat grinder. From 1974 through 1979, I defy you to find a bad team. There were teams that lost games, mind you; that’s going to happen, because even if everybody is good, somebody has to lose. But there is not a truly bad basketball team anywhere in that six-year span.
Nobody got caught in the gears of the meat grinder more than Lefty Driesell and Maryland. It was a unique confluence of circumstances that conspired to keep them always near the top of the mountain but just below the summit. Their very best years – 1973-1975 – happened to coincide with the years that the greatest player in ACC history was king of the court over in Raleigh. But I’ll save a more complete account of that for later. Let’s look at Maryland’s 1975 team.
Maryland was coming off a year in 1974 where their excellence was exceeded only by their frustration. Try as the might, they could not get over the hump with the Wolfpack, despite being obviously one of the five best teams in the country. To add insult to injury, the ACC received only one bid to the NCAA tournament. So when Thompson, Burleson and Co. once again dashed the Terrapins’ dreams in the ACC Tournament final – the “greatest game ever played” – their season was over. Just like that.
Coming into 1975, it may have seemed that Lefty’s Terps had shot their bolt. Their dynamic frontcourt duo of Len Elmore and Tom McMillen had moved on to the NBA. But they still had John Lucas, and they still had Lefty. It may have been one of his best coaching jobs. Lucas was an All-American. All the returning players – Owen Brown, Mo Howard, Brad Davis, Steve Sheppard, and Tom Roy – got better. And Brad Davis was one of the nation’s best freshmen. I am not certain of this, but I believe that 1975 Maryland and 1989 UNC are the only teams in ACC history for which six players averaged double figures. For the season, they converted on 54.7% of their field goal attempts, behind only 1986 North Carolina (55.9%) and 1980 Maryland (55.1%) in ACC history. It was a beautiful team to watch.
The only blemishes were an early loss to UCLA and consecutive January losses at Clemson and at North Carolina. Both of those losses were avenged in the rematches at Cole Field House. And, most importantly, Maryland finally vanquished DT and the Wolfpack, winning easily at home and surviving a one-point 98-97 game on the road. The Terps finished the season 10-2 in the league and with a two-game lead over North Carolina, Clemson, and NC State, who all finished 8-4.
With only seven teams in the league at the time, the Terps as the top seed got a bye to the semifinals of the ACC Tournament – where NC State was waiting. This time, the Wolfpack jumped out to the early lead. They pushed the lead to 17 in the second half before Thompson had to leave the game with severe cramping. With Superman out, the Terps launched a furious comeback. They used a 16-0 run to take the lead on two Howard free throws with nine seconds left. But Mo Rivers found freshman Kenny Carr for the game-winning bucket with just one second left.
The disappointment must have been unbearable. But Maryland, in a sense, got the last laugh. In part as a result of the injustice of Maryland’s 1974 team being left out, the NCAA had finally relaxed the rules to allow at-large teams into the Tournament. North Carolina received the ACC’s automatic bid after beating NC State in the ACC Tournament final. Maryland was selected as an at-large team. They survived tight games against Creighton and Notre Dame to reach the regional final where they faced #3 Louisville.
It would have been an amazing redemption story for Maryland to reach the Final Four, but Louisville did not cooperate. The Cardinals ran away with a 96-82 victory.
It wasn’t the last good team Lefty had at Maryland, but it was probably the last great one. He never got another chance to play for a Final Four berth. But despite the sense of missed opportunity, there’s nothing to criticize here. They were a great team and deserve to be recognized as such.