Show Me My Opponent, 2022-23: Maryland

would you rather be Turtle or Johnny Drama in this scenario

The fun thing about writing the schedule analysis part of the preview every season is the changes that happen by the time the team plays someone. Sometimes you have a projected Quadrant 1 opponent that misses the NCAA Tournament by a mile; sometimes, like last year, projected Quadrant 2 opponent Arizona ended up a 1 seed.

This year’s Quadrant 2 Riser is Maryland, a Big Ten foe with first-year head coach Kevin Willard (via Seton Hall) who has rapidly turned around Maryland’s frontcourt and patched together a decent backcourt. The only Big Ten team who’s risen higher from preseason KenPom rankings is Purdue, and they have a 7’4” Create-A-Player on their roster. Maryland is just “we traded Mark Turgeon for Kevin Willard and got way better,” which I guess should be less surprising than it sounds.

Meanwhile, Tennessee returns to New York, a place that was so horrible last time that it caused the writer of this newsletter to lose his mind. Considering what both teams have been great at (Maryland’s paint points + offensive rebounding, Tennessee’s defensive dominance), this has pretty high Killdozer material where both teams just beat the brains out of each other for 40 minutes and whoever has fewer broken bones is allowed to escape alive. As GloRilla says, let’s go.

BELOW THE LINE ($): they hit you with the rolled up magazine