{"id":123492,"date":"2025-08-06T11:45:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T11:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/123492\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T11:45:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T11:45:10","slug":"good-morning-illini-nation-courtside-countdown-maryland-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/123492\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Morning, Illini Nation: Courtside Countdown &#8211; Maryland | Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/secure.tecnavia.com\/cp2_payments\/champaignnewsgazette\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">To subscribe, click here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.news-gazette.com\/newsletters\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sign up for our daily basketball newsletter here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Welcome to \u201cGood Morning, Illini Nation,\u201d your daily dose of college basketball news from Illini beat writer and AP Top 25 voter Scott Richey. He\u2019ll offer up insights every morning on Brad Underwood\u2019s team and college basketball at large:<\/p>\n<p>Maryland<\/p>\n<p><strong>Last year\u2019s finish:<\/strong> 27-9, 14-6 Big Ten (Second)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Notable losses:<\/strong> Derik Queen; Ja\u2019Kobi Gillespie; Rodney Rice; Julian Reese; Selton Miguel; Tafara Gapare; DeShawn Harris-Smith; Jayhlon Young; Jordan Geronimo<\/p>\n<p><strong>Returning players:<\/strong> Literally no one<\/p>\n<p><strong>Key additions:<\/strong> Darius Adams, Fr., G; Guillermo Del Pino, Fr., G; Pharrel Payne, Sr., F; Myles Rice, R-Jr., G; Solomon Washington, Sr., F; Rakease Passmore, So., G; David Coit, Gr., G<\/p>\n<p><strong>One extended thought:<\/strong> The ever wandering Buzz Williams gets his first crack at the Big Ten this season after stops as a head coach hat New Orleans, Marquette, Virginia Tech nd Texas A&amp;M. That he brought a handful of players with him from College Station, Texas \u2014 namely Payne \u2014 should help the transition for an entirely brand new roster. Because that\u2019s what Williams has in College Park, Md., given there are zero returning players from the Kevin Willard era.<\/p>\n<p>That Payne and former Rice have Big Ten experience is a plus, too. Payne started his career at Minnesota, while Rice had a one-year stop at Indiana in 2024-25 after starting his career at Washington State. Williams has to hope he can fix what Mike Woodson broke last year in Bloomington, Ind. Rice was a slightly better three-point shooter (on lower volume) but got worse in every other way as a less efficient, less productive scorer (and facilitator and rebounder). Adams is intriguing as a five-star freshman, and so is Passmore, who was a top 40 recruit but barely played last season at Kansas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To subscribe, click here Sign up for our daily basketball newsletter here Welcome to \u201cGood Morning, Illini Nation,\u201d&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":123493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,15347,1317,1337,1338,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-123492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-illini-sports","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-basketball","12":"tag-ncaabasketball","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114981655756707461","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}