College basketball polls mean very little. I don’t pay especially close attention to them, chiefly because — unlike football — basketball championships have no relationship to polls. Teams ranked No. 25 in the polls right before Selection Sunday have sometimes missed the NCAA Tournament. A relatively recent example: SMU in 2014.
If polls do have value, it is that they show when teams are overrated or undervalued at the start of a season. One of the foremost examples of a team which was overrated at the start of the 2019-2020 season is Maryland. The Terrapins were No. 7 in the preseason poll and rose to No. 3. Can someone please explain why? Maryland opened its season with five games which were either cupcakes or moderately challenging games against non-cupcake teams. The Terrapins beat a decent Temple team on Nov. 28, then handled Marquette by 21 on Dec. 1, their most complete performance of the season. They were taking care of business, but they had no high-end wins. Was it their fault that they moved up to No. 3? Of course not. Nevertheless, it was striking that Maryland was given elite status before it earned it.
Since Maryland moved to No. 3, two basic things have happened to the Terrapins:
- They have finally had to play true road games, as opposed to neutral-site games.
- They lost all three of those true road games: Seton Hall, Penn State, and most recently, at Iowa.
Wins over Illinois and Ohio State have Maryland on course to make the NCAA Tournament, but as far as 13-3 records go, this one is relatively thin. Bryant, Holy Cross, Fairfield, and George Mason are part of a lot of modest victories on the ledger sheet. Nothing has happened this season to suggest that the Terrapins are a top-tier team, and their latest game might be the most searing indictment of all.
Iowa did not have C.J. Fredrick in the lineup for this past Friday’s game against the Terps. Fredrick was out with a foot injury, which seemed to be a huge loss for the Hawkeyes, who greatly benefited from his 3-point shooting. Without perimeter help, Iowa star center Luka Garza was all alone in Iowa’s previous game, a bad loss to lowly Nebraska. Iowa hit just 4 of 33 threes with Fredrick out. Garza couldn’t carry the team himself. This was the vulnerable squad Maryland played on Friday. If Maryland was anything close to a top-10 team, it would have marched into Carver-Hawkeye Arena and thumped the Hawkeyes.
Final score: Iowa 67, Maryland 49. The Terps were AWOL on offense, hoisting bad shots and being outworked for position at every spot on the floor. The Hawkeyes got more 50-50 balls. They worked the ball to the basket. They ran Maryland ragged. The Terrapins are an NCAA Tournament team in a season when North Carolina will very likely miss the Big Dance and Purdue is in big trouble. That’s the good news for the Terps. However, they appear to be little more than an underwhelming No. 7-9 seed despite its lofty early-season rankings.
Maryland is just another Big Ten team. The good news is that Wisconsin can very easily outhustle and grind down the Terps. The bad news is that if Wisconsin becomes the first home team to lose to Maryland this season, the Badgers will have to wonder why they have suddenly lost their home-court edge. They will also lament their inability to pounce on vulnerable opponents.
Wisconsin should win this game. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. A certain degree of confidence should flow from that realization. However, the inability to seize this opportunity will reaffirm the uncomfortable themes of a noticeably unsteady season in Madison.