SEATTLE — Before Derik Queen made David Cox one of the happiest coaches in the country, he very nearly broke his heart.

After a long summer of showing up to every one of Queen’s AAU games, Maryland’s associate head coach thought he would be free to celebrate on the fall signing day when the five-star recruit would pick his college. That November day in 2023 was so anticipated, Queen’s mother flew to Florida for the big announcement.

The only thing missing was the announcement itself. Maryland soon learned Queen needed more time.

“Boom,” said Cox, pounding his chest for emphasis as he recalled the heartbreaking moment. “Hard blow to us at the beginning of the season. Then we go through a pretty rough year, and the kid can go anywhere he wants.”

Struggling through a 16-17 campaign, the Terps were stuck in purgatory, wondering if Queen would choose them.

“But,” Cox said, “we just stayed the course.”

It’s hard to imagine now what might have happened if Maryland didn’t land Queen, who has been just as transformational as the program hoped.

Before the 6-foot-10, light-handed forward was the Big Ten Freshman of the Year, he was a dream the Terps were chasing — a recruit who not only represented top-tier talent but a test of how the staff could fence off a Maryland-born star. He finally committed in February of last year.

“It was really important because he was from Baltimore, and he was the next big thing from Baltimore,” head coach Kevin Willard said. “We really wanted to keep him in state and not make a recruiting splash but just make a statement about keeping kids home.”

Keeping Queen home helped send Maryland to another competitive level. Although the never-ending grind of college recruiting leaves fans to wonder if the Terps can replicate the process, the recruiting victory is important for the coaches who are now watching Queen outrun even their own expectations.

“Sometimes these are pipe dreams and we have to make sure we’re not chasing the wind,” Cox said. “But we talked the whole time. Coach [Willard] felt good about it, so it gave us all of the energy to go all in.”

An early priority

It’s the nature of high-level recruits these days that their recruiting process will be a lot longer than their tenure at the school. Maryland’s recruiting of Queen predates Willard — Mark Turgeon offered him a scholarship in the fall of 2020 when he was a freshman at St. Frances Academy.

When Willard was hired in 2022, Queen was one of his first calls. Assistant Tony Skinn, a Hyattsville native, was the team’s lead recruiter on Queen for the first year of Willard’s tenure before taking the head coaching job at George Mason. Then it fell to Cox.

Cox has been a coach for two decades, including at the DC Assault AAU program, when he coached Michael Beasley and Nolan Smith — two of the best players to come out of the area in a generation. He also was an assistant principal for 10 years. Among all the players he’s worked with, what stands out about Queen is his blunt honesty. Maryland always felt like it knew where it stood.

“One of the best kids I’ve ever been around,” Cox said. “He’s gonna tell you exactly what it is. And he told us from the beginning that, ‘I’ve got real interest in possibly being home.’”

The staff considered Queen a generational player. But Indiana, Kansas and Houston were among the schools who also coveted the Baltimore native, who transferred from St. Frances Academy to Montverde Academy in Florida in 2021. Because those colleges had more name, image and likeness money to spend, the Terps had to make up the gap with effort.

Maryland visited Montverde Academy five times (the NCAA allows up to seven visits), and Cox and Willard attended every AAU game he played with Team Thrill, maybe 30 games, Cox estimates. As Queen got more comfortable with Willard’s once- or twice-a-week FaceTimes, the two texted more between calls. Cox got close to Queen’s mom, Lisa Anderson, and his club coach Donnell Dobbins, influential figures in his life and his decision.

Maryland’s message was simple and consistent: Stay home, play with fellow Baltimore native Julian Reese, transform the Terps into a powerhouse. But the Terps knew blue blood programs were lurking.

“The schools that we were dealing with were all monsters,” Cox said. “I’ve done [recruiting a blue-chip prospect] a couple of times in this business, and they haven’t worked out necessarily great, but that’s what the recruits expect.”

Maryland was not the highest bidder, Cox said, but it tailored its pitch to Queen’s loyalty to his hometown.

On one of his two official visits, the staff arranged a meeting with Mayor Brandon Scott, who presented him a key to the city (Gov. Wes Moore also called Queen on the trip, Cox said). Queen grew up in Baltimore and had his choice of city dining — to the staff’s surprise, he picked Ruth’s Chris Steak House, which the coaches learned is his favorite restaurant.

“He loves the sweet potato casserole,” said Ricky Harris, the team’s director of player personnel. “All the glitz and glamour is not the top of his priority list, but it’s also good to show it to him.”

Queen acknowledged that his recruiting trips were thoughtful, down to the sweet potato casserole (the Terps also went to Ruth’s Chris in Seattle after their Round 1 win over Grand Canyon). But the relationships he built with Willard’s staff were ultimately the deciding factor.

“They did take me out, got some good grub and stuff,” he said. “It didn’t really persuade me. I just liked the coaches.”

Reestablishing regional power

Willard is from New York, but his staff is stocked with coaches with local roots. Cox has worked in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area for years and coached at Georgetown. Harris is a Calvert Hall graduate. Kevin Norris was born in Baltimore. Greg Manning Jr.’s father played for Lefty Driesell, and he worked for former Terps assistant Jimmy Patsos at Loyola and Siena.

All of them hold a collective appreciation for Maryland’s golden era under Gary Williams — and how essential local recruits were to the formula. It’s what the program strives to get back to.

“I think that was Willard’s main goal when he took the job — he wanted to bring that swagger back,” Harris said. “Being from Baltimore, that aura is on us, that confidence is in us. And Derik has that.”

Reese has represented Baltimore at Maryland throughout his career, but Willard didn’t recruit him. Queen stood out as the big fish who would communicate to local pipelines that Maryland could keep a blue-chipper at home — and develop him.

As much as the memory of Queen’s non-commitment in the fall of 2023 sticks in Cox’s mind, it’s nothing compared to the day when the staff found out it did, in fact, get him. Queen called just before the Terps took on nationally ranked Illinois at home in February.

“He called and said, ‘Hey, you know, keep it under wraps, but I’m coming in and I’m gonna announce soon,” Cox said. “Huge, man. Huge. I don’t even remember the Illinois game after that.”

As tense as it felt to Maryland waiting for Queen to decide, the freshman phenom’s retelling paints it less dramatically. Playing alongside Reese and staying close to home were huge draws for him.

“I always knew that this was the right place since Dec. 28, [2023],” Queen said. “I was messing with [Willard]. But I always knew I was coming here. … We need to keep all the local kids at home — make Maryland great again.”

It’s difficult to fully quantify the impact Queen picking the Terps will have long term, given that it looks like he’ll be at Maryland for just one season. But the coaching staff noticed his campaign sparked local interest.

“If you look at our games, man, everyone was driving up from the city to support Derik,” Harris said. “You got [Prince George’s] County and other surrounding areas where the excitement was there. People see the success Derik is having as a freshman and how Coach Willard is trusting him on the court. It’s definitely an easier recruiting pitch.”

But is it a blueprint?

As much as Queen is a success story, it begs a question: Can Maryland do it again?

The outlook is clouded by a number of factors, including the athletic department drama of the last week that has led to speculation about whether Willard will remain in College Park. Even if he does, as he’s indicated is his preference, replicating this kind of team around a star freshman seems unlikely for next season — perhaps because of how rare a player Queen is.

The Terps have just four-star combo guard Chris Jeffrey from Mt. Zion Prep in the incoming class. Although he’s a top-100 recruit, he is not on Queen’s level — very few players are. Willard said this weekend that the uncertainty around bringing in star freshmen, and the money programs have to pay them, has made him more inclined to pull talent from the transfer portal.

“The freshman model is difficult because if you’re going to bring a freshman in and pay a freshman, because you have to pay them,” he said, “you’d better make sure what you’re paying them is going to equal what they’re giving you.”

That’s easier to do with transfers. While Reese is a four-year player and Queen is a superstar rookie, the other three members of Maryland’s “Crab Five” are transfers. In part because he was recruiting Queen, Willard shifted team-building philosophies in the middle of last season to draw upon the portal more deeply, an approach he’s more likely to stick to in forthcoming seasons.

After a game-planning meeting for Colorado State on Saturday, Willard said his staff met for two hours about transfer portal candidates. Willard said he expects Jeffrey to play minutes as a freshman, but it seems possible the bulk of newcomers will be transfers.

“It’s no longer bringing in four freshmen, developing those four freshmen, letting them become sophomores, bringing in four more freshmen, letting them develop,” Willard said. “I had to adapt so quickly, and then I think we did a good job. My staff and I did a great job of just saying, ‘OK, how do we want to play? Who’s out there? What type of attitude do we want?’”

In the last week, Willard has also been frank discussing his desire for Maryland’s budget to grow, saying he wants guarantees about NIL and revenue sharing to be included in his next contract. On Saturday, he managed to needle rumors that he is a candidate for Villanova’s opening by mentioning how he lost Hakim Hart to the Wildcats: “When I found out what he was making [from Villanova], I was like, ‘That’s our total payroll. We have to get with it.’”

The dream, of course, is that Queen’s success story with the Terps ends with a long run into March but also has a tail beyond his short Maryland tenure. As ballyhooed as Queen was as a prospect, few evaluators graded him as a first-round NBA draft pick prior to the season. An improved shooting motion, a dramatic weight loss and one of the most productive seasons for a college freshman greatly improved his stock — as much as Queen helped Maryland, Maryland helped him, too.

There may not be another local recruit like him coming next year, but there could be another on the horizon. Even amid Willard’s critiques of the NCAA model that puts ever-increasing strain on coaches to build teams, coaching players like Queen keeps the appeal in the college game.

“I got to impact Derik Queen this year,” Willard said. “I got to impact all these kids’ lives, whether they like it or not. Through our discipline, through our work ethic, through everything we try to do as a program, we still impact young men’s lives. So, for me, that’s still a huge part of what we do in college basketball.”