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Maryland Terrapins (2001: 25-11)

The following team preview is provided by Blue Ribbon. For the nation's most comprehensive look at this and all Division I teams, be sure to order the 2001-02 Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook, on sale now at 1-800-775-2518.

They said it would never happen. They said Gary Williams would never take Maryland to its ever-elusive first trip the Final Four, because the intense coach was too busy yelling at his players to advance beyond the tournament's early rounds.

Last year, the Terps finally proved everybody wrong, as Williams mellowed out and his team advanced to the national semifinals for the first time in school history before stepping in a big pile of Duke.

But that's OK. For a program that had been hounded by the constant parenthetical -- "Maryland, which has never been to a Final Four'' -- getting to Minneapolis was a great accomplishment.

Williams found out just how great over the summer, as he made the alumni tour and recruiting rounds. He found even more support for a program that sees only limitless possibilities on the horizon, as it begins its final season in the historic hangar known as Cole Field House. Next season, the Terps move into the high-tech Comcast Center.

Williams has built a national championship-caliber program. He has taken the Terps to a school-record eight consecutive NCAA Tournaments. His team has won 25 games in each of the last three seasons. Last year's team matched the school's highest final ranking ever, finishing No. 4 in the nation.

But there is still an obstacle standing in the way: Duke.

"Our problem is that everybody says, 'You are not as good as Duke,' '' Williams said. "Well, nobody else in the country is either. But because we are in the same league, we have to overcome that."

Williams has enough talent and experience possibly to overtake the Blue Devils this year. With four starters returning -- including All-ACC candidates Lonny Baxter, Juan Dixon and Steve Blake -- and a solid trio of freshmen to fill in some holes, the Terps have Top 5 possibilities heading into the season.

They have to find a way to replace Terence Morris, the power forward who never quite lived up to the promise he showed as a sophomore, when he could have left school early and been a lottery pick in the NBA draft. Instead, he stayed in school two more years and was eventually a second-round pick of the Houston Rockets.

Either junior Tahj Holden or sophomore Chris Wilcox will take over Morris' place in the frontcourt. Everything else should be in place to get back to the Final Four.

Projected Starters

PG - Steve Blake (6-3, 160, JR, #25, 6.9 ppg, 3.0 rpg, 6.9 apg, 3.0 tpg, 1.6 spg, 28.8 minutes, .399 FG, .394 3PT, .714 FT, Oak Hill Academy/Miami Lakes, Fla.)

Blake is the perfect example of how numbers mean virtually nothing in college basketball.

How can someone 6-3 and 160 pounds be physically imposing? How can someone who averages less than seven points a game and shoots less than 40 percent from the field be so dangerous to opponents?

Blake, one of the most dangerous point guards in the game, has answers for those questions. He's a playmaker who gets every one of his teammates involved in the action, as his school-record 248 assists would suggest.

He became the first Maryland player since John Lucas in 1974 to lead the league in assists, averaging 6.9 per game and maintaining an assist-to-turnover ratio of 2.23-to-1.

Blake is a great defender, as he showed in the Duke game against Blue Devil All-American Jason Williams, who had only 13 points and committed 10 turnovers against Blake's defense. The Terps' collapse, in fact, came just after Blake fouled out.

Now, Blake enters his third year as the Terps' starting point guard and Williams has high expectations for him.

Williams likes Blake to run the Terps' fast-paced offense and to lead the pressing defense. With Dixon and Mouton still on the team, Blake doesn't have to be a scoring machine, as long as he can get them the ball or get it inside.

If Blake has proved anything over the last two years, it's that college basketball is not always about the scoring numbers.

SG - Juan Dixon (6-3, 164 lbs., SR, #3, 18.2 ppg, 4.3 rpg, 2.6 apg, 2.4 tpg, 2.6 spg, 30.5 minutes, .483 FG, .411 3PT, .865 FT, Calvert Hall HS/Baltimore, Md.)

We've spent three years waiting for Dixon, a human swizzle stick, to snap in two. It hasn't happened yet and it doesn't look like it is ever going to. Heading into his senior year, the spindly shooting guard, who arrived with such indifferent expectations, is one of the most dynamic players in the country.

Few people, however, knew about Dixon's desire to separate himself from his difficult upbringing. Both his parents died of AIDS while he was in high school. He had trouble making a qualifying score on the SAT coming out of high school and had to sit out a semester while awaiting the results of two tests he had to retake. He ended up sitting out the 1997-98 season as a red-shirt.

The next year, Dixon was a reserve playing behind the dynamic Steve Francis. All of his experiences made him tougher, and by the time he was a sophomore he was ready to demonstrate his toughness and his talent. He more than doubled his scoring average from 7.4 points a game to 18. He increased that last year by averaging 18.2 points and earning a spot on the first-team All-ACC squad for the second year in a row.

SF - Byron Mouton (6-6, 215 lbs., SR, #1, 9.6 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 1.2 apg, 0.8 spg, 22.7 minutes, .508 FG, .405 3PT, .779 FT, Rayne HS/Rayne, La.)

One of the biggest question marks going into last season, when the Terps returned all five starters, was how the team's chemistry would be affected by Mouton's presence.

He sat out the 1999-2000 after transferring from Tulane, where he led the Green Wave in scoring for two consecutive years. But he also played the same position as Miller, who had started all 35 games of Mouton's red-shirt year, and there were questions about how Mouton would fit in.

Williams solved that problem fairly quickly, though painfully. Miller didn't play well early in the season and the Terps lost three of their first four games. Williams decided he needed to shake things up, and Mouton, as the most energetic player on the team, was able to provide a spark the Terps had been missing.

Mouton went on to start 30 games, providing explosive scoring capabilities from the wing and inside.

Miller, by all accounts, handled the transition well, but apparently didn't want to go through it a second time. In the off-season, he transferred to Notre Dame.

PF - Tahj Holden (6-10, 247 lbs., JR, #45, 4.5 ppg, 2.3 rpg, 0.5 bpg, 12.1 minutes, .494 FG, .480 3PT, .608 FT, Red Bank Regional HS/Red Bank, N.J.)

The one spot that Williams isn't sure about heading into the season is where Morris used to play, power forward. He has two good options in Holden, a junior, and Wilcox, a sophomore.

Neither player burned up the baskets last year, but both have lots of ability. Holden actually played better in the NCAA Tournament than Morris did, averaging 6.4 points, 2.8 rebounds and shooting 52.9 percent from the field in the five NCAA Tournament games.

"We have to get them both on the floor this season,'' Williams said. "It's a nice problem to have to deal with. We have to be creative about it.''

Holden missed nine games during the early part of the season because of a broken foot, which he suffered in practice in early December. He returned to play in each of the Terrapins' final 20 games, showing a nice outside shooting touch and a strong physical presence inside.

C - Lonny Baxter (6-8, 260 lbs., SR, #35, 15.6 ppg, 7.9 rpg, 1.5 bpg, 0.9 spg, 26.0 minutes, .566 FG, .500 3PT, .592 FT, Hargrave Military Academy/Chatham, Va. and Anacostia HS/Silver Spring, Md.)

Of the many obstacles Baxter has overcome to turn himself into an All-ACC basketball player, this had to be one of the most satisfying: the school finally got the nameplate on his locker spelled correctly. He was listed as "Lonnie'' his first two years. Now, you can just call him a superstar.

Voted the Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA West Region last year and co-winner of team MVP honors with Juan Dixon, Baxter was one of the most important ingredients in the Terps' run at the Final Four. He averaged a double-double in the NCAA Tournament: 16.2 points and 10.0 rebounds.

Mostly what Baxter offered was brute strength inside. He's not tall enough, by most standards, to play center in college basketball. But he is certainly wide enough and strong enough. Few people want to get in his way.

Williams smiles when he thinks about Baxter's success, which began early in his freshman season when starting senior center Obinna Ekezie was lost to an injury. Baxter was forced into the starting lineup and he's been an inside monster ever since.

Bottom line

Unfortunately for Williams, the Terps are getting ready to experience the hard part of success: sustaining it.

The hard-luck Terps had every right to celebrate last year's Final Four appearance after finally breaking through that self-installed ceiling. It was amazingly uncharted territory for a program that has had some great teams in the past.

"We are fortunate, the way college basketball is these days, to have an experienced nucleus coming back,'' Williams said. "But our most important recruiting class in a while is going to be the one that arrives in September, 2002."

Williams isn't about to let his team rest on its laurels, and as a recruiter, he doesn't want to either. But he hopes everyone's job will be a little less difficult now that his program has finally hit college basketball's big time.