There are plenty of storylines about the upcoming Maryland basketball season. Will Kevin Willard’s results look more like his encouraging first year in College Park than his poor second one? How will the Terps replace star guard Jahmir Young? How ready are their five incoming transfers to step up to Big Ten competition?
But one conversation about the Terps is loudest: how often will we see a twin towers approach pairing big men Julian Reese and Derik Queen, and how well will it work? Willard said during the summer he might not play them together for more than a dozen minutes a game, but that number will increase if the experiment goes well. He talked more about the tandem on Thursday.
“We’re going to play big. We’re obviously going to play big with Derik and Ju at the same time. So I like the ability and the flexibility of being able to play different styles, and I would imagine they’ve embraced that, because it would play to the skill levels that each player has, what they bring to the game,” he said.
Queen, the five-star center from Baltimore, is the more perimeter-oriented of the two. The McDonald’s All-American game co-MVP is a gifted passer friends call ‘Black Baby Jokic” because he’s a cerebral passer, like three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokic.
“They’ve really worked well together and they’ve passed well, really well, so far in the early season,” Willard said.
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Queen also has a soft shooting stroke from three-point range for a 6-10 player. Reese, meanwhile, hasn’t attempted a three in either of the past two seasons after shooting 7 for 23 from deep as a freshman.
But that doesn’t mean he’ll always be on the perimeter when the two former high school teammates are on the court together.
“I think the good thing about Derik and Ju is that I think they’ve really learned how to play with each other. I think they complement each other. I think they understand they’re both very smart basketball players. So they understand the fact that there’s times when Ju has a mismatch inside, so Derik will be outside,” Willard said. “And there’s times when Derik has a mismatch inside, so we’ll put Ju outside. Doing a lot of different kinds of dribble-handoffs when those guys are on the perimeter.”
“These guys take pride in representing this state and this University. They take pride in wearing this jersey and are competing to win every day.”
The preseason work is done. It all starts Monday night.
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“I mean, I think the fun thing so far has been able to see, again, putting different combinations on the floor. Whether it’s Rodney Rice with Ja’Kobi Gillespie and Selton Miguel with two bigs, or putting those guys out there with two other guards. I just think it’s it’s been fun for the players because they’ve been able, we’ve been able to throw it inside and pound it inside, but at the same time, we’re able to spread the court out, kind of be a little bit more of a dribble-drive, kick-and-shoot team.”
Hall of Fame former Terps coach Gary Williams said this week on IMS Radio that the biggest key to playing them in unison might be the guards’ ability to switch quickly on defense, keeping the bigs out of defensive mismatches against quicker players and avoid giving up open threes.
“In terms of the three-point line, guards have to be able to really do a good job [on defense]. If you’re playing the ball, you’re going to get screened from the top usually, so that’s one thing. But the other thing is, you have to recover high. We used to work really hard, and that’s back when the three-point line wasn’t as big as it is now, but we worked really hard at helping off of our man if he was on the three-point line,” Williams said.
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“But then when you go back, you go out high right away. You don’t wait ’til he looks like he’s going to get into shooting position. You go out high right away so that the one thing he can do probably is put it on the floor. But that’s what you’re trying to do nowadays, is run people off the three-point line. And a lot of guys can really shoot the three, but if you make them put the ball on the floor, they’re not really good at passing to the open man. So you accomplish a lot by running guys off the three-point line.”
Another related question: with two centers on the floor, will Willard be able to run the pressing defense that’s been effective at times for him the past two years?
“I’m hoping to press more. That means if we’re pressing more, that means we’re shooting better than we did last year. It was hard to press last year because we just didn’t [shoot well]. We were so bad offensively that we could never really get in a good rhythm. And the games that we did score well, we did press pretty well. Derik’s learned the backside of the press really well. That was the only kind of concern I had,” Willard said.
“We weren’t going to move Ju out of the center spot just because he’s been doing it for three years and he just has it down. He knows it. But Derik’s worked really hard at understanding the second line of the press. He’s long back there. He’s got a good feel for where to go. So that hasn’t been as much of an issue as I thought it was going to be. So we’ll get back to it as long as we can score the basketball like we did the first year.
Williams attended practice a couple of weeks aho and got a look at Queen, who Willard recently called a “once in a lifetime, generational talent.” His scouting report? He’s the real deal.
“He can pass the basketball for a guy his size. He’s got great timing offensively,” he said. “In other words, he knows when the ball should get kicked, he knows when he should try to score. He does all the things. He is very mature for a freshman.”
