A one-possession NCAA tournament game with seconds on the clock can induce as much dread as anticipation. For as often as situations like these produce iconic buzzer-beaters, they just as often fall victim to college basketball's inherent jankiness—subpar coaches drawing up doomed sets and skittish players momentarily forgetting which direction their basket is. It's a blessing to get one great shot out of a scenario like this; on Sunday night, Colorado State and Maryland gave us two.
The teams that successfully navigate these moments tend to be the ones that have a good idea of who they are and what they want to do. After Maryland's Julian Reese hit two free throws to give his team a 70-68 lead with 22 seconds left, CSU head coach Niko Medved didn't like what he saw as his team raced up the floor and struggled to get into an offensive set. He called a timeout with 12 seconds left, and while the Rams huddled up, there was no doubt who would be getting the ball on the next possession.
The Rams go as Nique Clifford goes. The 6-foot-6 playmaker, who started his college career at the University of Colorado before transferring to CSU, waited for his fifth season to become one of the best all-around players in the country. This transformation began in earnest after the new year, which was right around the time that CSU just stopped losing. The Rams came into Sunday's game on an 11-game winning streak, with Clifford averaging 19 points, 10 rebounds, and four assists per game.
Clifford, who scored 21 points in the game, beat his defender to the spot on the left wing and received the inbound pass. One jab step and two strong dribbles later, he found himself on the block with a clear view of the floor and Maryland's defense flowing toward him. A one-handed skip pass to the opposite wing found senior guard Jalen Lake wide open, who splashed one of the prettiest jumpers you'll see to give CSU a 71-70 lead with 6.1 seconds left. After getting the ball over half court and calling a timeout, it was Maryland's turn to figure out what the hell to do with 3.7 seconds remaining.
"Give me the motherfucking ball." That's the message Maryland head coach Kevin Willard says he received from Derik Queen in the huddle. That's a bold demand for a freshman to make, but one that was suitable to the moment. Queen, a Baltimore native, was one of the most sought-after high school recruits in the country, and Maryland spent years convincing him to stick close to home and play for the state university. The Terps' program-building philosophy wasn't much more complicated than Get Derik Queen and the rest will take care of itself, and they were largely proven correct. Queen arrived on campus and transformed a team that went 16-17 last season into a 27-8 monster that was good enough to earn a four seed in the tournament.
So Queen ran out from the baseline and received the inbound pass just beyond the three-point line. This is normally not the place you want your 6-foot-10 center to be receiving the ball on the final possession of the game, but Queen didn't end up there out of desperation. His greatest gift is his coordination and body control, which is something to which any Big Ten defender who had to deal with Queen facing him up at the free-throw line can attest. Queen turned the corner and took a hard dribble to his left, then another, then a step, and a step, and a step—shut up about traveling!—and suddenly he was hanging in the air, all 245 pounds of him perfectly aligned in time and space, and he kissed a one-legged jumper off the glass and in from an improbably acute angle.
"Well, I mean, so I think I'm from Baltimore, that's why." That's what Queen had to say to Andy Katz on the postgame court when he was asked where he found the confidence to demand the ball in that situation. Later, on the dais in the pressroom, he would tell everyone that this was the first game-winner he had ever hit. ("I wouldn't have given it to him if I had known that," Willard chimed in from two seats over.)
There's another thing that can add a pall of dread to these tournament- and program-defining moments, which is that no matter which way they break, they bring on the future. Maryland survived and advanced, but soon there will be no more games to play and Queen, with braces still in his mouth and only one game-winner under his belt, will be headed for the NBA. Maryland will have ultimately spent more time recruiting Queen than counting him as a member of the team, and their ability to remain a force in the Big Ten will come down to how quickly the can find the next Derik Queen.
Clifford's leaving, too, which puts CSU back in the same spot it always finds itself in: as a plucky mid-major scouring the transfer portal for overlooked players that can be poached from bigger conferences and developed into Mountain West stars. There's more than one way to build a successful program, and to engineer a legendary shot. You hold onto those moments as long as you can, and then you start over.
