By Mike Wise
Sunday, February 22, 2009

Greivis Vasquez kept popping his jersey, lifting the Maryland insignia up off his chest amid the pandemonium yesterday. Using his thumbs and index fingers as deftly as he did for 44 minutes of the most scintillating basketball of his Maryland career, the junior guard let out a visceral roar at game's end.

"AAAAHHHHH!"

Gary Williams, a few feet away, kept looking around for a bottle of water, something to clear his throat, anything to keep the emotions roiling inside him from coming out over a live microphone in his postgame radio show. "That was a Cole Field House crowd," he said, swallowing hard.

Behind the Terrapins coach, students stormed the floor, chanted and mugged for the cameras. They behaved the way kids do this time of year when their college basketball team pulls off the implausible, the way kids do when their cornered coach and his best player start swinging, back-to-back, hoping one haymaker will land and drop a giant.

Madness U. 88, No. 3 North Carolina 85.

Surreal. Maybe the best game in three years in this building.

Don't look now, but College Park's drama kings have done it again. That's right, Gary and Greivis and those maddening Terrapins, down nine points with less than two minutes left against a Tar Heels team everyone and their mom picked to win the national championship at the start of the season, incredibly found an opening and knocked out North Carolina in a February Frenzy.

How appropriate, no? Williams, the heart-on-his-sleeve battler, sweating through his fine Italian wool, and Vasquez, the combustible extension of his coach on the floor, turned a once-disenchanted Terp Nation into a tizzy.

"I will never give up," an almost defiant Vasquez said afterward. The hot-and-cold Venezuelan kid who, like his team and his coach, knows no gray area.

He became the first player in 22 years to register a triple-double in points (35), rebounds (11) and assists (10) in College Park, somehow outdueling his counterpart at point guard, North Carolina's Ty Lawson, in a veritable hoop heirloom.

There were so many knifing, unbelievable layups in heavy traffic, so many pressurized, three-point bombs that fell through the net and such a tremendous comeback.

Vasquez scored Maryland's first 16 points in the first 6 1/2 minutes, lost his rhythm as the Tar Heels built a 16-point lead with less than 15 minutes left, and saved his very best for last.

The Terrapins don't win this game if he doesn't hit that running one-hander off the glass with eight seconds left in regulation to tie the score, or two free throws with five seconds left in overtime. They also don't win if his passion and purpose don't instill the belief in his teammates that, 13-point underdogs or no, they could do this, they could take out the Tar Heels on their home floor.

"He's right there," Williams said when asked where he would place Vasquez among his favorite heart-and-soul competitors. "He's got that Juan Dixon and Steve Blake toughness about him, where he believes he can do anything, where he's not backing down no matter whom he's playing or what the situation is. Greivis has got that."

Vasquez, of course, has Williams's back, through inexplicable losses to Morgan State and impossible victories over North Carolina. It's part of why Williams had to contain his emotions.

"They've helped me, you know, and we just stayed tight," Williams said, descending into bunker-down tone. "It's the team and the coaches, you know? That's how we go about our business here, and you know, I'm proud of what they've been through this year. We've got a pretty good record now, you know? We've got a pretty good record. We've beaten some pretty good teams, so we're looking forward to the future here."

The future is Wednesday night here against Duke, which dropped a 41-point drubbing on the Terrapins at Cameron Indoor Stadium last month.

Who knows if they get 22 points again from Cliff Tucker, who had scored in double figures exactly one time since late November? Or whether Dino Gregory flies downcourt and pins the ball against the glass, the way he did to Lawson's layup attempt. The thought of Dave Neal out-muscling Tyler Hansbrough, last season's college player of the year, and a monstrous front line, for a rebound was just a ludicrous thought before yesterday.

But there are four games left in the ACC for these maddening Maryland Terrapins, who proved again that the combination of Gary and Greivis, and all the histrionics and hysteria they bring, makes anything possible -- even a once-unfathomable berth in the NCAA tournament.