Thirty years later, Simpkins’s game-winning shot still resonates. It marked the turning point for a Maryland program that had been surpassed and then shunned by Georgetown over the previous decade, and it helped tilt the college basketball balance of power in the D.C. area back to College Park.
“That game gave us and our fans the idea that we could be good again,” Hall of Fame Maryland Coach Gary Williams, who was in his fifth season with the Terrapins, said in a recent phone interview. “It certainly has a place among the most significant games in the history of Maryland basketball.”
Local rivalry goes dormant
The first recorded meeting between Georgetown and Maryland took place Feb. 15, 1911, at the Arcade Rink in Columbia Heights. The quality of play left something to be desired.
“Both teams showed a lack of everything that goes to make up the game but aggressiveness, but despite all the faulty playing this feature and the closeness of the score kept the attention of the spectators,” The Washington Post reported after Georgetown’s win.
With the exception of three years during World War II, Georgetown and Maryland met every season from 1934-35 to 1975-76. From 1951 to 1964, the schools played a home-and-home series, with one game in D.C. and one game in College Park, every year. The rivalry intensified when Coach Lefty Driesell arrived at Maryland in 1969 and Georgetown hired John Thompson three years later.
Everything changed Dec. 5, 1979, when Georgetown and Maryland squared off in the second game of a local doubleheader at…
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