NCAA Basketball: 10 best players from state of Maryland of last decade

One of the reasons that the national pandemic was so devastating for sports fans is that it ramped up just days before the start of March Madness. The NCAA Basketball Tournament is one of the finest exhibitions of collegiate athletics and postseason sporting in the entire country, and its absence in 2020 leaves a bizarre hole in history and lore. Legends are made each and every postseason and the Big Dance always delivers.

But it’s the players who truly make those moments happen, and it’s not always the players we expect that stand out. Today, we’ll be continuing our long-running series that focuses on the best college basketball players from each individual state over the last ten years. We’ve been through a decent chunk of these states already and seen some outstanding figures from the college game in recent years. Today’s look at Maryland will provide us with a few more of those moments.

The state of Maryland is something of a basketball hotbed, with a considerable amount of basketball talent outside Washington DC and the rest of the state. While this state may not stand out in size or population against a handful of others, the basketball talent really does stand out. Narrowing this down to ten was a task just as difficult as it was for bigger more prestigious states like New York or Florida.

This is a reminder that we are not looking solely at Terrapins today, though the University of Maryland will feature more than once in the slides that follow. The focus is on players whose hometowns are listed as being from Maryland. These are not the best high school players from Maryland, nor does it matter if a different city or state is listed as their place of birth. We’ve got the considerable talent to look at, so let’s get right into our deep dive, ironically starting with one of those Terrapins.