The University of Maryland Baltimore County men’s basketball team will cap a whirlwind four-day stretch when it tips off the NCAA Tournament opening game Tuesday night.
On Saturday, the Retrievers won the America East conference championship before a boisterous, sold-out crowd at their home arena in Catonsville.
The following evening, the selection committee announced that UMBC would face Howard in the tournament’s play-in round. With just 48 hours to prepare, the coaching staff spent much of the night watching film and putting together a scouting report.
Then on Monday, the Retrievers were scheduled to fly at noon to Dayton, Ohio, which is hosting the First Four games. But windy and stormy weather left them stranded on the tarmac at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport for four hours.
UMBC finally arrived in Dayton around 5:30 p.m. Monday, just over 24 hours before Tuesday’s 6:40 p.m. tipoff. The team hopes this sprint is only just beginning.
“When I was the head coach at Duquesne, we got stuck on a bus for 32 hours one time,” fifth-year head coach Jim Ferry said. “So for me, this is old hat, man. This is nothing. We’re fine.”
The winner of the UMBC-Howard matchup will become the No. 16 seed in the Midwest region of the bracket and face No. 1 Michigan Thursday evening in Buffalo, New York.
The Retrievers are back in March Madness for the first time since their 2018 victory as a No. 16 seed over No. 1 Virginia — an upset unlike any that came before it.
Prior to that night, No. 16 seeds in the men’s tournament were 0-135 against No. 1 seeds. The final score,74-54, was as stunning as the victory itself.
Players on UMBC’s current roster were in elementary or middle school when that watershed moment occurred, and many said they had no memory of watching it. Some only learned of UMBC’s place in college basketball history when coaches brought it up in recruiting.
“I’m just a kid from Florida, so I really didn’t know what UMBC was at the time,” guard/forward DJ Armstrong Jr. said Monday. “But when I got recruited, of course it got pushed.”
Once players arrive on campus, though, that history is hard to avoid. An enlarged Sports Illustrated cover commemorating the upset hangs on a wall at the team’s practice facility. Jairus Lyles, who scored a game-high 28 points on 9-of-11 shooting against Virginia, has stopped by to visit.
“It’s always going to be a part of us, right?” said Ferry, who was an assistant at Penn State in 2018. “Every year, this time of year, it always comes up because of the special run. So it’s stuff that we talk about having pride in.”
Players said the program’s last NCAA run set a bar they’re now trying to eclipse.
“It was always a goal to get to the tournament, and this year, we finally accomplished it in my third year,” said junior guard Ace Valentine, a Columbia native who attended Mount St. Joseph High School in Baltimore. “I want to be able to make a name for ourselves as well.”
Few thought UMBC was a tournament team at the start of the season. A preseason coaches poll picked the Retrievers to finish seventh out of nine teams in the America East conference after they overhauled their roster in the offseason. Among nine newcomers were five Division II transfers.
But UMBC defied expectations, finishing the regular season 21–8, including a 14–2 mark in conference play, as several new players stepped into leading roles. Junior guard Jah’Likai King, a transfer from the University of New Haven, leads the team with 13.9 points per game.
Armstrong, who played last year at the University of Texas Permian Basin, averages 13.2 points and shoots 42% from three-point range. He scored a season-high 33 points in Saturday’s conference championship game.
UMBC has faced a number of constraints when competing for players in the transfer portal. The university lacks robust resources to give players name, image and likeness opportunities, and opted out of the NCAA’s revenue-sharing model, which allows schools to pay athletes directly.
So Ferry, who has played and coached at the Division II level, tries to find players where others aren’t looking.
“A lot of these Division II kids aren’t asking for money,” he said. “DJ was just looking for an opportunity to play Division I basketball, like the other Division II guys.”
Valentine, who averages 12 points, 4.1 rebounds and 4 assists, joined King and Armstrong as all-conference selections. Graduate student forward Josh Odunowo was named to the all-defensive team.
Howard won the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference championship Saturday for the third time in four years, defeating No. 3 North Carolina Central, 70-63. The school is making its fifth NCAA Tournament appearance.
The Bison are led by MEAC Player of the Year Bryce Harris and Defensive Player of the Year Cedric Taylor III, two guards who each average more than 17 points and 6 rebounds per game.
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