Queen Rules: Star frosh Derik Queen’s game-winner sends Maryland over CSU to Sweet 16
Coach Kevin Willard had his Maryland Terrapins around him during the last timeout of this thrilling second-round NCAA tournament game.
March Madness was in full effect.
Almost all the 17,106 fans packed inside Climate Pledge Arena were standing and roaring Sunday evening. Colorado State, a 12 seed, had just made what the Rams thought was the game-winning 3-point shot to send them to the West regional semifinals.
But 3.7 seconds remained.
With his team down 71-70, above the bands playing and the crowd screaming, Willard asked his Terps: “Who wants the ball?”
Derik Queen answered almost before his coach had finished the question.
“I want the (bleeping) ball!” the star freshman barked.
“When he said he wanted the ball — and the way he said it — I knew something good was going to happen.
“Because good things happen to great people. And he is a great, great person.”
Willard called the play for Queen to run from down low to the top of the key, past two down screens from teammates. Ja’Kobi Gillespie’s inbounds pass got Queen the ball 19 feet from the basket, in the center of the court.
Queen took two dribbles with his left hand (he may have needed three to technically not commit a traveling violation, but why quibble with this moment?) He leapt from the left edge of the lane. He learned away from the basket over a Rams defender, toward the baseline. In one motion Queen flicked a right-handed, fall-away shot.
It was the fluid, athletic, outside shot of a 6-foot guard, not the 6-10 center he is.
The ball banked high above the square of the glass backboard above the orange rim. And it ricocheted through the net as the red lights lit around the backboard’s perimeter to signal game time had expired.
After multiple losses at the end of games this season, most excruciatingly to Big Ten regular-season champion Michigan State, a national-title favorite, the Terps finally won one at the horn.
Because the Queen rules.
His Terps teammates ran at him from the court and the bench, like turtles never run. Amid the mobbing frenzy around him celebrating fourth-seeded Maryland’s thrilling, 72-71 victory to advance to the Sweet 16, Queen stood tallest.
He grinned. He nodded his head up and down.
As if he knew it all the way.
“It was my first game-winner,” said the 20-year-old native of Baltimore, one of the top recruits in the nation last winter who stayed home.
That was news to his coach.
“I wouldn’t have given it to him if I’d known that,” Willard said later.
“I had to make it,” Queen said.
“And we’re going to the Sweet 16.”
Queen finished with 17 points for Maryland (27-8). The Terrapins, second this regular season in the Big Ten, got the 15th double-double of the season and key plays late from senior Julian Reese in this taut second-round game.
They rallied from nine points down in the second half to advance to the West Region semifinal Thursday in San Francisco against top-seeded Florida. The Gators eliminated two-time defending champion Connecticut earlier Sunday.
Colorado State (25-10) thought they’d won it seconds earlier.
Down 70-68 with 11 seconds to go, star Nique Clifford, who had 21 points but shot just 2 for 8 in the second half, got the Rams’ inbounds pass near the left baseline. His switched the ball to the right wing with a skip pass over the lane to wide-open Jalen Lake. Lake drained a 3-point shot from the right wing with Queen jumping out at him. The Rams led 71-70 with 6 seconds left.
Willard called the final time out for Maryland with 3.7 seconds remaining. And then he called for the expected first-round pick in this summer’s NBA draft to get his Terps to Sweetness.
Reese said he had to get the freshman the ball.
“It was a mismatch,” Reese said.
“And y’all saw what happened.”
Lake scored 13 points and Bowen Born scored 10 points off the bench with daring drives at the rim at 5 feet 11 for Colorado State, the Mountain West Conference champion.
Maryland erased a nine-point deficit from early in the second half and re-took the lead, 66-64 with 3:04 remaining on two free throws by Reese (15 points, 11 rebounds).
After Clifford missed and Queen rebounded, Maryland’s Selton Miguel blocked Clifford’s shot underneath. Reese turned that into a 12-foot jumper in the lane and the Terrapins led 68-64 with 2:30 left.
Clifford made two free throws to get Colorado State to within 68-66 with 1:36 to go.
After a Maryland miss, Colorado State tied it at 68 with 54 seconds remaining on an uncontested floater from left of the lane by Lake.
Maryland called timeout. With just about all in the crowd of 18,000 standing and roaring, Miguel missed a long 3 with the shot clock ending. Reese got a huge offensive rebound and got fouled in the lane by Colorado State’s Rashaan Mbemba with 22.4 seconds left.
“It’s a heart thing,” Reese, the brother of LSU national women’s champion and Chicago Sky star Angel Reese, said of rebounding.
Julian Reese hit the two free throws to put Maryland back up 70-68.
As the game got tight into the final 10 minutes, Maryland continuously put up 3-point shots from outside instead of getting the ball inside to the 6-foot-10 Queen, projected to be as high as a top-five pick in the NBA draft this summer.
After his 5-for-7 first half with 12 points, Queen took only four shots in the first 14 minutes of the second half. Meanwhile the Terrapins took 10 3-point shots in that span.
Colorado State led by nine early in the second half, off Clifford’s sixth make in 10 shots. It was the likely first-round NBA draft choice’s first basket outside the line.
Queen got Maryland right back. After a 3 by Ja’kobi Gillespie off a pump-fake from beyond the top of the key, Queen drove from the left side across the baseline to the other side of the basket. That’s where he shoveled a left-handed pass to Julian Reese cutting to the basket for a basket plus a foul for a 3-point play. That closed the Terrapins to within 46-44 with 15:23 remaining.
Then Rodney Rice used Reese’s screen on the deep left baseline to get free for a jumper he hit while Colorado State’s Born fouled him. Rice’s 3-point play gave Maryland the lead at 49-47 with 13:30 to go. It was the Terps’ first lead since 8-6.
That set up the tense finish.
Rams start quick
Colorado State led for all but one of the game’s first 25 minutes, and by as many as 12 points in the streaky first half. The Rams shot 50% to take a 37-30 into halftime.
Maryland fell behind while missing 11 of its first 15 shots, mostly jumpers outside.
The Rams’ Clifford was 3 for 13 including 0 for 6 from 3-point range Friday in CSU’s 78-70 win over five seed Memphis. Sunday, he was back in his usual slashing, scoring form. Instead of settling for jump shots as he most often did in the first round, Clifford attacked the middle of Maryland’s defense inside.
He made five of his first nine shots. All five of those baskets were in the lane. Four of them driving layups. The last of those was down the left side of the lane and as he got banged to the floor by a defender just before time expired in the first half. The Rams led by seven.
Colorado State’s interior defense had problems stopping Memphis big man Dain Dainja Friday. It appeared Maryland’s huge advantage Sunday would be featuring the bullish, 245-pound Queen down low.
Instead, Queen often got the ball at the top of the key. He chose to play outside, then drive or shoot jumpers. The center’s first three shots were 3-pointers. He made two of them. He’d made just 28 3-pointers in 34 games all season before that.
When Queen set up inside, Clifford, forward Jaylen Crocker-Johnson and fellow Rams raced over to double-team Queen.
But the Rams didn’t, couldn’t, on the game-winning play.
“He was the first one (to speak up in the timeout huddle). And he was very, um...enthusiastic about wanting the basketball,” Willard said.
“I know he’s only a freshman and I know it’s a big stage...
“(But) when he said he wanted the basketball, it made it pretty simple.”
This story was originally published March 23, 2025 at 6:28 PM.
