SEATTLE — Kevin Willard wasn’t sure who to go to with Maryland’s hopes of advancing to the Sweet 16 on the line. So when the Terrapins coach called a timeout with 3.7 seconds left after Colorado State had taken a one-point lead, he asked his players in the huddle which one of them wanted the final shot.
That’s when Derik Queen made the decision for him.
“Sometimes you can draw something up for a guy that maybe doesn’t want the basketball, and his exact words were, ‘I want the MF ball,'” Willard said. “So once he said that, it was a pretty simple decision.”
Queen paid it off.
The 6-10 freshman center banked in a running, fadeaway jump shot at the buzzer to lift 4-seed Maryland to a 72-71 win in a back-and-forth thriller Sunday night at Climate Pledge Arena. Queen’s final basket in a 17-point effort sends the Terrapins to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2016. They’ll face 1-seed Florida on Thursday.
Queen became only the fourth freshman to hit a buzzer-beating game-winner in the NCAA Tournament since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985, according to ESPN Research.
“That was my first game-winner,” said Queen, a potential lottery pick in June’s NBA Draft. “When Coach drew up the play, my teammates trusted me and he trusted me. I was a little bit nervous, but I knew we was due for one and I had to — had to — make this.”
Queen’s winning shot was the game’s 15th lead change. According to ESPN Research, that’s tied for the second-most in any game in the last two NCAA Tournaments, behind only the 16 lead changes between Auburn and Creighton on Saturday.
Maryland senior forward Julian Reese, the brother of WNBA star Angel Reese, put Maryland ahead 70-68 with a pair of free throws after drawing a foul while grabbing one of his game-high 11 rebounds.
“I haven’t looked at my messages yet, but I know she’s probably going crazy,” Reese said of his sister. “But as far as the rebounding running in the family, I think it’s just a heart thing. We just play the game with so much intensity and just wear our feelings on our sleeve and just try to play our hardest. I just really didn’t want that to be our last game so I just really wanted to play real hard.”
Colorado State took a 71-70 lead when Jalen Lake nailed a 3-pointer, leaving the 12-seed Rams one stop away from only their only trip to the Sweet 16 since the field expanded to 64 teams.
That’s when Willard called timeout, still not knowing who was going to get the ball with the game on the line.
Queen, seated on stage next to a pair of teammates and his head coach in their postgame media sessions, confirmed to reporters that he had never made a game-winner at any level before this one, leading Willard to interject with a comment that made the room light up in laughter.
“I wouldn’t have given it to him if I had known that,” he said.
But Willard was convinced in the moment that the 20-year-old Queen would deliver.
“I could see everyone’s body language kind of perk up a little bit because he was so confident in the fact that he wanted the basketball,” Willard said. “So it was just a simple zipper. Give him the basketball and let him go to work.”
Queen took the inbounds pass and drove to his left against 6-foot-7 guard Ethan Morton before jumping off his right foot and banking in the game-winner.
“There’s no opportunity to double him there,” Colorado State coach Niko Medved said. ” … He just caught it and put his head down on an iso. I thought we extended the catch outside the 3. He caught it and drove it. He was driving left. I thought we angled him off, forced him going left off the wrong foot, step-back from whatever it was. He made it. It’s a heck of a shot. I really don’t know what else you do to defend that.”
Medved was asked whether he felt Queen traveled.
“I haven’t seen the video yet,” said Medved, who’s been linked to the opening at Minnesota. “It’s going to be hard for me to watch. I’m sure I will at some point. I don’t know … Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. But it doesn’t matter. They didn’t call one. So whether it was or it wasn’t, they didn’t call one and they never go back and change the call.
“But again, he made a really difficult shot. He made a really, really difficult shot and they just made one more play than we did.”
Maryland bounced back from a poor first half offensively, erasing a 37-30 deficit with a balanced attack. All five starters finished in double digits, with Rodney Rice scoring 16 and Reese adding 15 to go along with his 11 rebounds.
Willard felt they were due to come out on top of a close game for a change. Each of their last four losses had come on a game-winning shot by their opponent in the final 10 seconds, including three buzzer-beaters.
“These guys have shown such character in how they’ve bounced back,” Willard said. “That’s all I told them in the huddle, I said, ‘Guys, for the first time, we have time left. It’s our time to kind of make our moment happen.’ We hadn’t had that chance. So they just bounced back
“… I’m just happy for them. This is a moment they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. I’m still going to be coaching for hopefully 10 or 12 more years. But for these guys, Ju’s a senior, DQ’s going to the pros, Rod’s going to be around with me for a while, but it’s a great experience for them.”
Queen finished with six rebounds and two blocks in 33 minutes.
“He just has such a great energy about him that when you’re around him, you’re going to smile and you’re going to laugh and you’re going to hug him,” Willard said. “His teammates are the same way. Not too many people in this world have positive energy anymore. He’s so fun to be around because he’s always positive.
“So when he said he wanted the ball, and the way he said it, I knew something good was going to happen because good things happen to great people, and he is a great, great person.”
