The Dean E. Smith Center was a little over a month old when the Maryland basketball team arrived in Chapel Hill, N.C., to play top-ranked North Carolina for the first time in its new building. The Tar Heel décor and the sheer expanse of what was then the largest on-campus facility in the country was a little overwhelming at first glance.
"It was state of the art, massive, everything in that facility was sky blue — the soda machines were sky blue, the towels as well," recalled Jeff Baxter, then a Maryland senior and the team's starting shooting guard.