SEATTLE — You could say the Terps are tempting fate with their choice of March Madness mantra, printed in white capital letters on their long-sleeve warmup shirts.

“DOUBT US.”

It takes confidence to wear a shirt whose message could make your team into an instant meme in the event of an upset. But on Friday afternoon — after a chaotic 24 hours that saw athletic director Damon Evans depart and coach Kevin Willard kvetch about the school’s lack of resources — the team reminded the March field why it is tipping over with confidence.

The Terps are just that good.

Maryland’s 81-49 victory over Grand Canyon wasn’t just an impressive win for the fourth-seeded Terps. It was the largest margin of victory in the program’s NCAA tournament history.

The upstart Western Athletic Conference champions were helpless against Julian Reese and Derik Queen, who piled up a combined 30 points, 24 rebounds and four blocks. GCU’s shots seemed to careen everywhere but the basket, and the Lopes wound up under 29% from the floor.

The athletic department drama and the uncertainty around the future of the program temporarily prevented folks from seeing that the Terps are one of the best teams in the tournament field — and apparently they’re ready to play like it.

Reese, who has been through as much turmoil as any Terp in this locker room, said he’s gotten used to shutting out the noise. When the team heard grousing this season after it started 0-4 in conference road games, its response was to dig deeper — and winning followed.

“Anything we can’t control as a team, we tend to not focus on,” Reese said. “We just put our heads down and got to work.”

Reese was the first of the Terps to get to work on Friday, settling down a jittery group. Maryland coughed up three turnovers before it scored its first points, but back-to-back buckets by the cool-headed senior seemed to get the rest of the team on track.

Soon enough, Ja’Kobi Gillespie and Rodney Rice were nailing shots themselves, and Queen was inhaling every rebound in sight. But, to the rest of the Terps, Reese set the tone.

“I know the big fella’s going to show up, and he showed up for four years,” Willard said of Reese. “Early on there was definitely some nerves, but I knew getting the ball inside to him would [be] their safety blanket, too.”

The Terps walloped GCU in the paint (44 points to 16), off turnovers (22 points to three), off second-chance points (16 to eight). It wasn’t just a starter party, either — even reserve DeShawn Harris-Smith was 5-for-5 for 11 points, a season high. As he scored the last of these points, the entire bench was jumping up in celebration — especially Queen, his roommate.

“This could have been the last game of the season,” Harris-Smith said, “so I might as well go out there swinging.”

The Terps could have reacted in many ways to the specter of their AD hightailing out of College Park and their coach using this moment to leverage for better funding and resources for the program. Willard sure isn’t done with this fight, emphasizing again Friday that he would like to see changes codified into his next contract with Maryland.

“Really the only way to [make changes] in college athletics is to put it into your contract,” Willard said. “Because, if not, they’re going to lie to you. They’re going to sit there and say, ‘Oh, we’re going to do this. We’re going to do that.’ Next thing you know, they don’t. Unless it’s in your contract, they don’t do it.”

Willard has been open enough with his players that they know what’s going on in the larger scheme of Maryland’s athletic department — or at least Willard’s side of the battle. But they’ll tell you to a man that Willard’s contract is his own business.

Their business is on the court.

Their next opponent is 12 seed Colorado State, the Mountain West champ that has won 11 straight. The last time the Rams won an NCAA tournament game was 2013, and after knocking off 5 seed Memphis, they celebrated with a raucous energy that whipped up their sizable traveling crowd.

By contrast, the Terps were cool customers after their victory. Though they celebrated their teammates from the bench, at the buzzer, it was calm handshakes and muted emotion.

Maryland is one of the best teams in the country. It was supposed to win this game. The Terps know it. Not even background drama in the athletic department can knock them off their game.

Feel free to doubt them. But do it at your own risk.