ACC star Morris leads Terps

Tomorrow, the still-winless Penn men's basketball team will face the toughest test of its young season. The Quakers play host to the Maryland Terrapins, a team led by star forward Terence Morris. Morris, a pre-season All-America candidate, is the biggest name in college basketball the Quakers will have faced all year. Bigger, certainly, than NC State's Kenny Inge, Penn State's Joe Crispin or La Salle's dynamic duo of Victor Thomas and Rasual Butler -- the marquee players the Quakers have seen thus far. "Every once in a while, you have a player where you don't see any ceiling to his game," Maryland coach Gary Williams told Maryland Sports Information. "Terence has a chance to be great, and I don't say that about a lot of players." Morris is a three-time honorable mention All American and was named to Playboy's preseason All-America team. But most importantly for Terps fans, Morris decided to pass up the NBA draft last year in the hopes of leading his team to new heights in his senior campaign. "His decision to come back this year was just a very mature decision on his behalf," Williams said. "He could have gone out and made a lot of money this year, but he will be here as a better player at the end of [this] season than he was at the end of [last] season." Last year, Morris averaged 15.8 points and 8.6 rebounds a game. In his sophomore season, Morris averaged 15.3 points and 7.1 boards per game. These may not be the gaudiest numbers around, but Morris is a player that does the little things well. One ACC coach last season compared Morris to NBA star Scottie Pippen, while Williams calls him "completely unselfish." "He passed up shots for the other guys' benefit last year and did a lot of things team-wise," Williams said. "I think Terence is one of those people who is genuinely happy when the team wins... He's very happy regardless of what his stats reveal." Morris' unselfishness -- and his knack for finding the open man (Williams calls Morris "one of the best passers for his size I've ever coached") -- has helped two of the Terps juniors, Lonny Baxter and Juan Dixon, to flourish. "[Morris' presence] allowed Baxter and Dixon to develop their games kind of off to the side where people weren't really focused on them," Williams said.

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