If anyone is wondering what life is like for the UMBC men’s basketball program—coming up on one year after its star turn as America’s favorite underdog—just know that it’s still pretty great.

Last night, on their suburban Baltimore campus, when the Retrievers faced America East rival Vermont, the UMBC athletic department proclaimed it Fortnite Night. Of course they did. It was an ode to senior forward Nolan Gerrity’s proclamation last year that 16th-ranked UMBC beating No. 1 Virginia in the NCAA tournament was akin to winning in the massively popular, last-person-standing concept video game.

And so the roughly 2,000 people that showed up to the UMBC Event Center on Thursday night received a beautifully detailed themed poster, complete with the university’s mascot, True Grit, hanging from a helicopter. Gerrity said he wanted to go home with 10 of the giveaways, and he wasn’t the only one. “Obviously, we love Fortnite,” junior Arkel Lamar said afterward.

Plus, the players are also talking about March again, as in what they can do for an encore to last spring’s Cinderella story that brought them, and their relatively small and very smart research university in Catonsville, unexpected and exceptional national recognition. Because let it be known: The men’s basketball team from University of Maryland Baltimore County, or U Must Be Cinderella, is still winning.

With an impressive 65-56 victory over visiting and league-leading Vermont on Thursday night, a rematch of the game that sparked 2018’s magical run, the lovable Retrievers have won nine of their last 10 games, a remarkable feat considering they lost starting forward Daniel Akin to a season-ending knee injury just a month ago, and that was after they’d lost five of their previous eight games dating back to mid-December. And, you know, it’s also harder now that everybody knows who they are. The proverbial target is on their backs, along with jersey numbers and last names.

But UMBC hasn’t lost it charm, even in its $85 million athletic facility and led by a coach, Ryan Odom, who doubled his salary after pulling the strings on last March’s madness. After Thursday’s game, each member of the team circled the courtside seats and front rows of the stands, slapping hands and fist bumping supporters with personal thanks. At halftime, Odom’s kids shot baskets on the court, then his youngest son, Owen, joined the boisterous student section behind one of the baskets for the second half while his older brother, Connor, a sophomore basketball player at the renowned Oak Hill Academy in Virginia, sat behind the UMBC bench.

Four rows up at center court, Odom’s dad, the former Wake Forest and South Carolina coach Dave, sat with family members that twisted with the emotions of every play on the court, up to final-minute free-throws. True Grit sprinted around the court in a No. 50 jersey to pump up fans. The women’s lacrosse and swimming and diving teams threw out free T-shirts during television breaks because the game was shown live to a national audience on ESPNU. A white, gold, and black banner—#16 UMBC-74, #1 Virginia 54—hangs from the ceiling of UMBC’s arena.

And post-game, in a media room that contained just six reporters and one university-issue video camera, Odom said proudly, “This team just keeps playing. They’re resilient, and guys continue to make plays. . . . They listen. They’re coachable kids. They’re all great kids.”

While the two primary faces of last year’s history-making team, Jairus Lyles and K.J. Maura, are no longer in uniform, there’s still a few players left over, most notably graduate student (in data science) Joe Sherburne. The forward is this year’s leading scorer and rebounder and just plain looks like a calming agent in what can otherwise be a chaotic chess match on the court. Gerrity, a “management of aging studies” major is back, too, as is Lamar, who had 10 rebounds on the big stage against Virginia a season ago. And there’s new names and faces that, if the Retrievers are able to win the America East tournament once again, might also become popular across CBS broadcasts next month. Like London native R.J. Eytle-Rock, point guard K.J. Jackson, and junior guard Ricky Council II, a transfer from Providence.

The Retrievers have a solid nine-man rotation that gets contributions from each piece in various ways, be it Lamar making a steal and throwing down a thunderous dunk Thursday night that gave UMBC a 42-33 lead with about 13 minutes left, and got the crowd off its feet for the first time. Or, a few minutes later, Lamar hitting a three-pointer that made it 51-41, and slapping an unrestrained high five with Sherburne at mid-court, again getting the crowd going. Or Jackson hitting a three-pointer as the shot clock expired to make it 59-48 with 3:39 left, that essentially sealed the win, or one-shotted it, in Fortnite lingo. Jackson had a game-high 18 points and three assists, Lamar had 15 points, Eytle-Rock had 10, and Sherburne, quietly, led with six rebounds. Council had nine points off the bench.

Overall, the team’s identity centers around defense, a stamp that began to be impressed after back-to-back losses at Hartford and UMass-Lowell the second week of January and helped Thursday when Sherburne and others got in foul trouble early and sat on the bench. That means generally gritty work like rebounds, steals, and blocks turn into points. “The coaches just really didn’t let us make excuses,” said Jackson, a junior from Houston. “We responded to that well, not giving in, not allowing ourselves to be any less than we could be. We have a standard and we’re destined to meet it every single time out.”

Sure, “Neither team could win the championship tonight . . . It comes down to March,” as Odom said Thursday. “We don’t have it figured it out. We’re trying to continue to figure it out, every game and every practice.” But the result was an important, big-picture marker. UMBC, as a program, had lost 23 straight games to mid-major power Vermont before Lyles’ buzzer-beater in the 2018 America East conference title game (the only real way for them to make the big NCAA tournament via a conference champion automatic qualifying bid). Now UMBC has beaten them three times in a row, after also winning on the road a month ago.

With the latest victory, UMBC moved into second place in the America East standings, clinched a conference postseason tournament home game, and improved its overall record to 18-10 with only three games left in the regular season. That’s called heating up in a Fortnite Battle Royale, if you ask them, and at the most wonderful time of the year.

“As it gets closer to March, we’re always excited,” Lamar said, speaking like the veteran he is. “The thought of going dancing is unbelievable.”

I didn’t want to write again about Jordan McNair’s death and the University of Maryland’s responsibility in it, and mishandling of it. We’ve done that twice already (here and here), but acknowledging what happened this week in College Park is sort of unavoidable.

“Losing a child,” my neighbor said, speaking from experience, “it’s a horrible thing, and they’re disgracing him.” We crossed paths as he listened on his phone to heated sports talk radio discussion about the University System of Maryland’s board of Regents decision Tuesday to reinstate then-Maryland head football coach D.J. Durkin.

Meanwhile, university president Wallace Loh said he would “retire” this summer, in an obvious sign of disagreement with the board’s apparently premediated move to keep their $2.5 million per year football coach, in the third year of his five-year contract, even after an internal investigation stated, “the Maryland football team did not have a ‘toxic culture,’ but it did have a culture where problems festered because too many players feared speaking out.”

A day later—only after Martin McNair, Jordan’s father, said “I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach and somebody spit in my face,” only after his mother said, “I miss my son every day, and today, it just didn’t help,” only after some players walked out of a team meeting and boycotted practice, and only after The Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins wrote a scathing column headlined “Don’t let your sons play for DJ Durkin”—did the course change.

After the widespread outrage—which any human with common sense could see coming—Loh announced Wednesday night that Durkin was fired, and yesterday board of regents chair James Brady said that he was resigning, both decisions made, they said, to move the university forward from the furor amid the sorry state of affairs.

The reality of the consequences of a tragic loss of life finally reached the tone-deaf 17-member board, which Brady admitted had dissenting opinions about bringing Durkin back. “I understand that reasonable people could come to other conclusions,” he wrote. “And even among our board, some did.”

Even if Durkin still had support of some players—some have said as much—was he just supposed to return to the sideline on Saturday against Michigan State, the Terps would win and become bowl eligible and everybody would celebrate it afterward? No. That would be uncomfortable at best and incomplete at a minimum.

I searched this morning to see if Durkin made any public comment about McNair’s death immediately after it happened in June, and was reminded that he did as part of a 13-minute press conference, a day after the previously healthy 19-year-old former McDonogh lineman died after a liver transplant failed to save him from the damage that had been done during an organized conditioning workout two weeks earlier on campus.

“My heart is broken,” Durkin said, “for the reason that we’re all even sitting here, having this press conference . . . It’s not reasonable that a 19-year-old should pass away.” Still, he took no responsibility for what happened and, in fact, the tone of practice resumed in August as if nothing had changed, a few players told ESPN in a national news-making report, which started to reveal details of the circumstances of McNair’s death.

It’s hard to imagine the university handling the situation any worse. Even the most ardent alumni have turned sour, and Durkin is still owed $5.1 million, according to the buyout terms of his contract. Here’s a good timeline of the events.

Signs of a “maybe people will forget about this” approach manifested in July, when the school released a brief statement to the media describing the circumstances of McNair’s death at a team workout, but did not disclose the cause of death, citing privacy concerns. Four days later, McNair’s family did it for them, saying their son died of heatstroke.

It took two months for the school to release results of a first external investigation (paid for by them of course) to say that the athletic training staff had failed to properly diagnose McNair’s condition. After details of what happened and the alleged culture of the football program emerged in the media, Loh finally said in August that the school accepted “moral and legal responsibility” for McNair’s death, but everything the administration had done before and after has suggested otherwise.

If McNair’s family didn’t have a powerful law firm working for them that pressured the university at every important stop along the way, it would have been status quo. If players didn’t anonymously talk to the media (the only power they have in the big-money NCAA college football world), strength and conditioning coach Rick Court—Durkin’s right-hand man who reportedly said, “Drag his ass across the field!” the day McNair was ultimately ambulanced to the hospital—wouldn’t have been fired on August 14.

So, only now, 142 days after Jordan McNair died and after a public outcry—students rallied for him on campus as late as Thursday night—can healing now begin. Only now can players walk around campus without wondering if the people in charge when their teammate died will be coming back, though athletic director Damon Evans is still on the payroll.

It will take years for the school to recover, but that’s nothing compared to the lifetime for McNair’s family and friends.

Looking back on it, maybe we should have seen the greatest upset in college basketball history coming. After all, how great is this? As the TNT broadcast crew told a national television audience afterward: “UMBC: U Might Be Cinderella.” 

The 15 members of the men’s basketball team from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County—as we’ve long known the school as—stunned the sports world, busted brackets across America, and sent Twitter into a frenzy.

The relatively tiny public research university in Catonsville of 14,000 students, recognized more for its science, tech, and engineering programs than anything else before Friday, will now be associated with something much different for as long as the memories of the historic night exist.

Like these…

In an unforgettable and surprisingly dominant performance, second-year coach Ryan Odom’s Retrievers, who got into the NCAA tournament on a last-second shot in the America East title game last Saturday, followed that up with an upset of the 68-team national bracket’s No. 1 overall seed Virginia, 74-54, in a first-round game in Charlotte, North Carolina.

UMBC became the first 16-seed to ever beat a No. 1 in a NCAA men’s tournament, in 136 such games played, and will now face Kansas State in the Round of 32 on Sunday. 

“It’s just amazing,” play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz said in the waning moments when it became clear the Retrievers would win, after yet another bucket by star graduate student guard Jairus Lyles, who finished with 28 points, coming in a variety of ways, while fighting through cramps in the second half. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

By that time, UMBC had already broken parts of the internet (including its own), as people from around the country looked for more information on the school with a four-letter acronym that was about to make history…

It’s hard to believe it all just happened. The game was tied at 21 before the Retrievers pulled away in the second half. Lyles scored 23 of his 28 points after halftime, and shot 9-for-11 overall.

Like him, the UMBC Athletics official Twitter account was a star of the evening, going from less than 6,000 followers before the game to more than 30,000 in the 30 minutes after. Whoever thumbed replies throughout the game to curious strangers and sports journalists alike did so with a healthy dose of hardscrabble sass.

As we said with a smidge less snark in a preview of the game on Thursday, when out-of-towners ask about the school, just say it’s University of Maryland-Baltimore County, of course. 

Now there’s another name in play—that Cinderella one. How crazy, how unlikely, how fun. How long will the story continue?

In the last few years, Baltimore has hosted sporting events ranging from Division I U.S. Wheelchair Fencing to the Grand Prix to the always-popular Army-Navy Football game. But, have you ever wondered how we get so lucky?

Turns out, the man we have to thank is Terry Hasseltine, executive director for Maryland Sports, whose team searches for events that will boost the local economy.

“Intercollegiate women’s lacrosse and men’s lacrosse meet here on a regular basis,” he says. “That creates a great profile. Parents come into town spending money in our food and beverage scene and staying in our hotels.”

But as Baltimore’s skyline expands and gets written up in the national media, Hasseltine sees a great opportunity to go after a wider range of sports. When he heard about the tri-country bid with the United States, Canada, and Mexico for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, he knew that Baltimore would be a perfect host.

“We obviously want to make sure that M&T Bank Stadium and the city of Baltimore are considered a part of that portfolio,” he said. “We had such a great response when we put in a bid for 2022 [FIFA World Cup], we did it again.”

In 2016 alone, Maryland hosted more than 300 sporting events—primarily amateur sports, youth soccer, and lacrosse tournaments—generating $176.6 million in direct spending on the state’s economy.  

“There are studies performed that show exactly how these large sporting events affect the projected tax revenue for the greater Baltimore region,” says Zach Jones, director of market research for the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore. “The jobs that are spun from the events are a bonus as well.”

To bring that money into Maryland, Hasseltine says that bidding process can take on many forms: some require a simple question-and-answer session, and others involve a more detailed explanation for a why a city should be chosen.

“I like those,” he says. “You get to tell your own story.”

Usually, Hasseltine describes Baltimore’s story as a “diverse market” that is invested in their sports teams with a buzzing social scene and says he is careful to never directly debase the city’s competitors. “Crafty word-smithing” as Hasseltine puts it, is highlighting all of the city’s amenities that the competitor lacks. “We never say names,” he said. “We finesse it.”

On the flipside, he says that Baltimore’s centrally located geography can sometimes be a hindrance when attracting these big-market events.

“The resources in the companies you can penetrate in your market are not the same scale as some of the other major markets like Philadelphia and Washington D.C.,” he explains. “So now you’re knocking on the same doors for professional, colleges, and secondary sports.”

In an effort to solve this problem, Senate bill 1148 and House bill 1619 were enacted in order to create affiliated partnerships with large companies. When a bid is placed, the city has five to six years between the bid and the actual event. This allows more flexibility to acquire the funds while spreading them over a longer period of time.

After submitting 12 bids to the NCAA, Baltimore were awarded five: Women’s D-I Lacrosse National Championships in 2019, 2020, and 2022 at The Johns Hopkins University and 2021 at Towson University. The city will also host the 2020 NCAA Women’s D-III Lacrosse National Championships at Hopkins, as well.

Currently, Maryland Sports is in the process of bidding for M&T Bank Stadium to host the Army-Navy games for 2018-2022 with a decision announced in the next several months. But they are also setting their sights on one other big-ticket item.

“We are in discussion right now with the NFL, maybe taking the Inner Harbor and transforming it for the purposes of the draft,” he said. “We have our eyes peeled on opportunities that will better the city of Baltimore and state of Maryland as whole.”

What does the Life and Breath Foundation do?
The Life and Breath Foundation has been striving to find a cure for sarcoidosis, which is a disease that causes clusters of abnormal tissue called “granulomas” to form in the body. If many granulomas form in an organ, they can keep the organ from working normally.

How common is it?
Sarcoidosis usually occurs between the ages of 20 and 50. According to the National Institutes of Health, African-Americans and Northern Europeans are more likely to have it. It affects both men and women, but studies show it is more likely to occur in women.

Your connection to sarcoidosis is through your mother, who kept her diagnosis secret for 13 years until her death.
Yes. She was a strong lady who didn’t want anyone to worry. I can only imagine how she managed her own health care. I was grief-stricken by her death. I struggled to understand why she was taken from our family, and why we didn’t know she was suffering. Establishing the foundation in her memory gave me the strength to do something that she could be proud of. I think she would be happy that I have made a commitment in my life to help others who struggle to manage their health care.

The foundation’s big fundraiser, Flip-Flop Festivus, is September 18 at the Four Seasons. Who’s coming this year?
[Former professional basketball player] Gheorghe Muresan and [former Raven] Brad Jackson have confirmed they will be there. Invitations have gone out to Matt Stover, Michael McCrary, Keith Booth, Juan Dixon, Walt Williams, Steve Davis, Ed Norris, and Johnny Holliday, as well.

How much has the foundation raised over the years?
The foundation has raised over $300,000 for sarcoidosis research. I’m very proud of the amount we’ve raised. We still have an enormous opportunity to benefit those who suffer with the disease, and this motivates me each year.

You’re a wealth-management vice president and relationship manager by day, but also have a second career as a college basketball official. How did that happen?
This will be my 24th year as a Division I official. I played sports all my life, including playing soccer and baseball in college. During college, I started officiating basketball in the intramural department and then high school basketball. I continued to pursue it, attending officiating camps. I was selected by the ACC in 1993.

What are some of your most memorable moments?
In 1996, I was selected to do the Division II national championship game on CBS. Later that summer, I received an invite to tryout for the summer league for the NBA as an official. Kobe Bryant was in attendance playing for the L.A. Lakers. My mother was able to see [both] accomplishments [before] she passed away December of 1996. The second memorable moment was this past year when I officiated the storied Duke vs. UNC rivalry game at UNC on March 7, 2015.

What does it take to be a good official?
Integrity, confidence, and composure. The best game involves no one ever knowing who the officials were.