COLLEGE PARK — I never felt older than I did a few weeks ago, when a handful of University of Maryland students asked me what Terps men’s basketball used to be like.

It took me back more than 20 years, shooting hoops in my driveway while pretending I was Juan Dixon or Chris Wilcox. Took me back to excitable conversations on the school bus about Steve Francis and Steve Blake.

At the time, I was dimly aware that there was an NBA team called the Washington Wizards and that Michael Jordan played for them, but I couldn’t have cared less. Maryland was my team.

This question took me back to what was then the Comcast Center in 2007, when I stormed the court with hundreds of other students after the Terps upset Duke. A photo of me, with one finger pointed in the air and the other arm wrapped around Ekene Ibekwe, was printed in the student-run newspaper, The Diamondback, where I worked. After learning I wasn’t fired, I cut out the picture and kept it folded in my wallet for years until the ink rubbed away from the newsprint.

Maryland basketball felt so huge to me — a way it hasn’t felt in the 15 years or so since. But watching the shellacking the Terps put on Ohio State on Wednesday night, a game they led 50-17 at halftime, I wished to have those students back in front of me to give them an answer.

This is not what Maryland basketball used to be, I would tell them. But it felt a little bit like this.

I don’t want to overstate the meaning of an 83-59 Terps home win over a 5-3 Ohio State team in December, but the blowout victory caught me by surprise. I drove to College Park mostly to see Derik Queen, the five-star freshman and Baltimore native who has been living up to his hype.

What I expected to see was an individual exhibition from Queen. What I saw was a feisty squad that could bust this program’s long slump, bringing the Terps back to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2016.

That’s as far as I dare dream for now. But I’m definitely dreaming.

Queen was fantastic, with 17 points and 11 rebounds that might understate his impact. But his teammates were also stellar — no one more than starting guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie, a transfer from Belmont who excelled on both ends. He scored a game-high 23 points while helping limit leading Buckeyes scorer Bruce Thornton to just nine. Gillespie had no better moment than in the first half, when he tripped up his defender, stepped back and squared up a 3-pointer to put the Terps up by 25.

On defense, coach Kevin Willard said, the Terps tried to keep Ohio State’s numerous sharpshooters from getting any good 3-point looks. Indeed, in the first half, the Buckeyes were 0-for-7. For a stretch of more than seven minutes, Maryland did not allow them to score a field goal. Before the Terps even knew it, they were up by 20 points.

“I think I just kind of looked up and seen [the score],” Gillespie said. “Because we were playing hard and we didn’t really notice.”

Aside from a hard-fought loss to Marquette, the Terps have largely played a soft schedule. It’s been hard to know exactly how good they could be. But the Buckeyes are no pushovers, having beaten ranked Texas and coming into the night with a No. 19 KenPom ranking.

Dating back 10 years to their move to the Big Ten, the Terps had never scored 50 points in a regular-season conference game at halftime before, nor had they ever led an opponent by 33 points at halftime.

It would be impossible to have this much confidence in Maryland without Queen, who looks like the best freshman this program has had since Melo Trimble. He might be better.

Willard said the 19-year-old “plays like a 50-year-old man,” and aside from how agile Queen is, you can see exactly what he means. The 6-foot-10 big man has a veritable library of pivot moves, including fakes, hook shots and a left-legged fadeaway jumper — a la Dirk Nowitzki — that he showcased in the win, all while chewing his mouthguard like a giant wad of Bazooka gum.

But he also has patience and awareness. The Terps used him to break down Ohio State’s zone with his scoring, but on one possession he dribbled to draw a defender away from the rim until teammate Tafara Gapare swooped in from the baseline. Queen threw him the easy alley-oop for a hellacious dunk.

Queen is skilled and impossible to defend with just one man, but he has an older player’s eye for the game. Watching him should make Baltimore-area hoop heads frustrated that Montverde Academy in Orlando, Florida, took him from the state for three years.

Queen made the most of that time. There were fewer than 14,000 in the crowd Wednesday, but people who want to watch Queen play should make the most of his time at College Park. He’s quietly climbing NBA draft boards, and Willard suspects he’ll be a one-and-done guy.

“Put him in an NBA situation with a big lane and a bigger arc?” Willard said. “I mean, that kid’s gonna be special. He really is. You’re watching a pro.”

Maryland’s problem has not been lacking great recruits but failing to make great teams out of them. Since the last time they were in the Sweet 16, they’ve brought in future NBAers such as Kevin Huerter, Bruno Fernando, Aaron Wiggins and Jalen Smith (admittedly, they were poised to be great in 2020 before the pandemic). For two decades, Maryland has floated largely outside the country’s top 25 programs, a long way from where it used to be.

The difference this season could be in players such as Julian Reese, who at the end of a sometimes frustrating career has become a great dirty work player. He and Queen played together, briefly, at St. Frances but don’t share the floor often now. When they do, they’re both mobile and they play well off of each other.

Both bigs can dribble in pick-and-rolls. Both can block and rebound. It’s a formidable frontcourt, the foundation of a defense KenPom ranks as the ninth best in the country (93.2 defensive rating).

Add that to players such as Rodney Rice, who was elevated to the starting lineup after four games and has generally shot better than his 0-for-6 3-point performance Wednesday. Selton Miguel was a help to the defensive effort. Gapare was a stunning jolt off the bench, taking the Buckeyes by surprise more than once with his rangy athleticism and powerful dunks.

It might not be the most raw talent on a Maryland roster in the last decade, but it’s the most the Terps have looked like a cohesive team in a while.

It’s hard to say if this represents a turning point for the program, especially given the topsy-turvy nature of college sports. With every win, it gets more likely that Willard will need to recruit another Queen next season — though you wonder if Maryland’s seemingly strengthening name, image and likeness collective will help with that.

A number of four-star football recruits who committed to the Terps earlier in the day were in the house. They shook hands with Under Armour CEO and super booster Kevin Plank, who looked as pleased as anyone on one of the most hopeful days in Maryland sports in some time (all before mentioning the women’s basketball team is back in the top 10 rankings this week).

I’m skeptical that I’ll see the title-contending Terps men’s basketball squads again that I loved as a kid. College sports have changed too much, cost too much and have shuffled Maryland off that stage.

But it’s nice to be inspired for once. It’s encouraging to think the Terps could be more than just a Big Ten afterthought, that they could contend in the conference they moved to a decade ago only to hover in the unmemorable middle.

For the uninitiated, for those too young to remember, Wednesday moved Maryland a little closer to where this program used to be — and where it hopes to be again.