College basketball is filled with great regional rivalries ranging from the nationally known ones like Duke-North Carolina to the lesser known, but still hotly contested ones like Belmont-Lipscomb. While many are based on conference affiliations, which had until recently been based on geography, some extended beyond conference boundaries such as Louisville-Kentucky and the aforementioned Belmont-Lipscomb rivalry known as “The Battle of the Boulevard”, which will continue even when Belmont leaves for a new conference at the end of this season.
Gary Williams Would Have Loved More Shots At Georgetown
Of course, there are some other rivalries where politics get in the way. It appears that Maryland–Georgetown is one of those rivalries. After being rejected in an attempt to restart the rivalry between the two schools, Maryland Athletic Director Kevin Anderson has announced that Maryland will not participate in any sport against Georgetown until an agreement for men’s basketball is reached. Neither Anderson nor the school has officially told Georgetown about this, but Anderson did speak to The Washington Post and cited Georgetown’s unwillingness to participate in a home-and-home series with Maryland as the driving force and that Georgetown’s current stance hurts both schools financially. For the Terrapins this is a major issue as they are projecting a $2.8 million deficit this year that will grow to $14.6 million by 2016 leading the school to cut eight of its 27 varsity sports.
Anderson has approached his peers at Georgetown about restarting the rivalry, which Maryland leads 36-26, including last spring, but when the public became aware of the talks Georgetown appeared to back away quickly. While the schools have not played a regular season game since 1993 they did play in the 2001 NCAA Tournament (a Sweet 16 game the Terrapins won 76-66 on their way to a Final Four appearance) and in the 2008 Old Spice classic (a 75-48 Georgetown victory). The last time they played each other regularly was from 1947 to 1980, but since that time there has only been one regular season matchup, which occurred in 1993. We are not sure how far Anderson plans to take this boycott as it would seem unreasonable to not have the two meet in local regular season events for sports such as track or swimming (assuming the schools can still keep these sports), but for the sake of the players and fans we hope they can resolve this in the near-future.