Maryland men’s basketball has one more chance at a resume boosting win when they travel to 17th-ranked Michigan on Wednesday night in a top-20 matchup, but with the 2024-25 regular season winding down and conference tournaments now around the corner, we take a look at the latest bracketology projections following Tuesday morning’s updates:
ESPN: five-seed vs. Drake (Denver)
FOX Sports: five-seed (no matchup)
The Athletic: five-seed vs. Yale
USA Today: five-seed vs. Drake (Seattle)
CBS Sports: seven-seed vs. Georgia (Raleigh)
A consensus seed-line has become clear for Maryland men’s basketball with Jerry Palm increasingly outing himself as the lone outlier in NCAA Tournament projections. Maryland is also on the cusp of a five-seed in JBR Bracketology’s latest update with Marquette, who was one of two teams to beat the Terps at Xfinity this season, the closest to moving to a five-seed.
Maryland will look to move to .500 in true road games and 7-6 in Quad One games when they face the Wolverines before hosting Northwestern on Saturday in a Quad Two game, where Maryland is 5-1 this season. A win on Wednesday night will also preserve Maryland’s chances of securing a double bye in the Big Ten Tournament.
Whether the 361st-ranked non-conference strength of schedule proves to be a blemish on Maryland’s resume remains to be seen, but Jerry Palm explained why he’s not as high on the Terps’ postseason outlooks as the rest of the outlets.
“I do think they need higher quality wins,” Palm said on Vinny & Haynie. “I mean, they beat Wisconsin and they won at Illinois, but you know, they've got six Quad One wins. Two of those teams are not in the bracket. One of them barely is – Indiana. Of their losses, Ohio State, Northwestern Washington, not in the bracket. So I think their resume isn't quite as good as it looks,” Palm said on Vinny & Haynie on Monday. “The predictive metrics like them because they win by – they're driven by average scoring margin, primarily, which is a category in which Maryland does well. But the metrics that evaluate resumes have them in the six, seven range. When I'm looking at their resume and comparing them to others, their strength of schedule, especially their non-conference schedule, has dragged them down a bit too because they don't have, not only as many higher quality ways of some of the teams that they're competing with, they have played as many of those games.”
Tipoff is set for 6:30 PM on Wednesday night.
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