Maryland does grow tobacco, but this is not Tobacco Road. Yet the smell of championship men's college basketball is in the wind this winter in College Park.
The University of Maryland Terrapins came from behind Tuesday night to topple the top team in the country, the University of North Carolina. More than 2,000 students camped overnight at the school's athletic hall to secure tickets for the contest, and many invested another 12 hours in the line prior to the game to ensure they'd get a good seat. Cole Field House has, in fact, become Camden Yards South since all non-student tickets for the season have been sold out.
It's gratifying to many Marylanders, College Park alumni or not, to see the strides made by the school's basketball program since the trauma of the 1980s -- the cocaine-induced death of star forward Len Bias and the NCAA ban of the team from television and tournaments.
At a time when many fans are fed up with pro sports and the antics of college athletics, Coach Gary Williams' program has been a breath of fresh air. The coach recently signed a contract that linked about half his bonus pay to his players' grades. The team's star this season is a 6-foot-10-inch sophomore named Joe Smith, the self-effacing antithesis of the players you see on TV mugging for the cameras. The squad's emotional spark comes from Keith Booth, another in a line of great players from East Baltimore's Dunbar High School, whose success is helping bridge a rift that had festered between Dunbar's program and the state's largest university.
In fact, the school's new athletic director, Debbie Yow, has an opportunity to build a relationship with the Baltimore area. She seems sincere in her pledge to schedule more games here. Indeed, Baltimoreans already enjoy many college sports closer to home. But when the coat of arms of the Calvert and Crossland families -- otherwise known as the Maryland flag -- are waved at a courtside celebration on national television, all Marylanders deserve to share in the pride.