The billboard along Interstate 95 in Baltimore is hard to miss. Two giants — one smiling, one serious — flank the words “Charm City to College Park.”

On the right stands Julian “Juju” Reese, smiling broadly. Reese, originally from Randallstown, announced in March he was returning for his senior season with Maryland men’s basketball, making him the rare college player to complete a four-year career with one program.

On the left, Derik Queen is tight-lipped and solemn. In late February, Queen, who grew up near Clifton Park and became a consensus five-star recruit out of Montverde Academy in Florida, posted on social media that he had committed to the Terps.

Maryland using the two big men in the advertisement of course acknowledges their ties to home, but it also underlines third-year head coach Kevin Willard’s efforts in recruiting the basketball-rich city that has a history of developing Division I talent. It also highlights the pair’s friendship that began while playing AAU basketball on Team Thrill and continued at Saint Frances Academy.

The ad, too, could be viewed as a sign of things to come. That with their combined talents, Reese and Queen can improve a Maryland team that finished near the bottom of the Big Ten in 2023-24 (16-17, 7-13) and help the Terps reach the NCAA Tournament’s second weekend for the first time since 2016.

“I’m just trying to do whatever for my team to win,” Reese said. “I know it’s a lot of guys, a lot of shots going around. I’m not really focusing on that, just focusing on my team winning and putting guys in the right places and leading us to [wherever] we can succeed.”

A few days before practice officially began in College Park, Reese, Queen and the rest of the Terps squad bounced around their home arena for a series of photoshoots, video spots and other media hits ahead of the new season. The two big men already had great chemistry, cracking jokes as their photos were being taken and between questions about their goals for the new season.

“I want to win Freshman of the Year, get a Big Ten title and make it far in the tournament,” said Queen, jovial and babyfaced, smiling wide through braces over gapped teeth as he discussed his love for his home state and excitement of playing with Reese again.

Don’t let the youthful demeanor fool you. Queen is a polished scorer with a killer mentality on the court. His skills were on display in March when he dominated the McDonald’s All-American Game, scoring 23 points while adding eight rebounds, five assists, three steals and two blocks on his way to winning co-MVP honors. He is the first Terp to win the award since Adrian Branch in 1981.

Reese, meanwhile, has cut his trademark braids and appears to have added muscle in the offseason. The 6-foot-9, 252-pound forward is quiet and reserved but lights up when he talks about Queen, whom he calls his “little brother,” a nickname certainly ascribed to Queen’s relative youth and not his 6-foot-10, 246-pound frame. (Reese is 21 years old, while Queen is 19.)

Reese is all business when asked what he wants to accomplish (leading the Big Ten in double-doubles) and sees Queen as a key piece to the Terps’ success.

“I saw him grow as a player [as a freshman at Saint Frances]. Now just seeing him from then till now, how much game he’s got, how much confidence he plays with now, it’s amazing,” Reese said. “I’m just excited to see how good of a player he can be.”

The Defender And Scorer

At the start of the 2019-20 hoops season, Saint Frances Academy head coach Nick Myles was gearing up for what he hoped would be a big year.

The season prior, Reese, the Panthers’ star big man, had won Baltimore Catholic League Defensive Player of the Year as a junior. And the team was adding Queen, a freshman with the offensive game of a player many years older.

Queen was already the recipient of a scholarship offer from former Terps head coach Mark Turgeon that summer. He quickly earned a starting spot under Myles, who has coached the Panthers since 2011.

“He was the first freshman to start from Day 1 during my tenure. His offense is generational,” Myles said, high praise from a coach who has shepherded many future Division I players and won a combined 10 BCL regular-season and tournament titles in 13 years.

Queen’s offensive prowess was never more on display that season than on March 12, 2021, when he scored a career-high 56 points in a win against Annapolis Area Christian School.

Some observers have compared Queen’s passing and scoring abilities to three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić of the Denver Nuggets. Queen, however, doesn’t quite agree with the comparison.

“At first I did,” Queen said. “But I think I try to score more than pass.”

Together, Reese and Queen led Saint Frances to a 15-1 record in a COVID-shortened season and a spot in the BCL championship game. Queen was named MaxPreps National Freshman of the Year.

Though they only logged 16 games together, they showed a glimpse of what could be in store for the Terps this season.

“Their games mirror each other,” Myles said. “They work well in space together, share the ball well with each other. With good teams, the kids have got to like each other so they really, really get along.”

Some highly-touted college players might have an ego, but not Queen, Reese said.

Willard sees in Queen a carefree player whose love of the game prevents the stress of high-stakes college basketball from affecting his demeanor.

“Derik has a real passion, a real enthusiasm to play the game of basketball,” the coach said. “He comes in the gym every day, he’s smiling, he’s interacting with his teammates. He’s busting balls. It’s not a job.”

“The Bigger Picture”

When Reese committed to Maryland, he made sure his mom was included in the announcement.

Reese comes from a basketball family. Angel Webb Reese was a hoops star at UMBC, where she is now in the Athletics Hall of Fame. His sister, also named Angel, played for Maryland women’s basketball for two years before transferring to LSU, where she helped lead the Tigers to a national title. She now plays in the WNBA.

On Mother’s Day, May 10, 2020, Reese gave his mom a black sweatshirt with a photo of Julian and his sister on the front and the word “Committed” on the back. That sentiment remained true when he chose to stay at Maryland for a final year instead of transferring.

“I feel like I started something here at Maryland that I should finish,” Reese said. “I set the groundwork.”

During his first three years, Reese has steadily improved his game despite three different head coaches and an ever-changing roster of teammates.

He posted scoring averages of 5.7, 11.4 and finally 13.7 last season. His rebounding has improved as well, increasing from 4.4 a game as a freshman to 9.5 last year, which ranked third in the Big Ten. In a game against Rutgers in March, he scored his 1,000th career point, becoming the 61st Terp to surpass the mark.

Still in need of improvement are Reese’s free-throw shooting (58.9 percent last year) and fouls committed per game (2.9). But by simply staying for his senior season, Willard believes Reese will cement his Maryland legacy.

“It shows the level of commitment that a guy like Julian has. It shows his character, the type of kid he is,” Willard said. “It shows the type of environment that we’ve created around here that kids want to stay and want to grow.

“I think more than anything, Juju really wants to be remembered as one of the best that ever played at Maryland. He loves the school. He loves the state. He loves being from Baltimore. For him, it was the bigger picture.”

It helped that Queen had signed on to Willard’s vision.

“I really put my trust in Coach Willard and the staff we have and I see the weapons we have coming in and it was just really intriguing,” Reese said. “My little brother coming in, that’s just icing on the cake.”

“A Long Laid-Out Game Plan”

After his standout freshman year at Saint Frances, Queen moved on to Montverde Academy.

For two years, Queen played a limited role on deep teams that featured NBA-level talent like Los Angeles Lakers first-rounder Jalen Hood-Schifino and Duke freshman standout Cooper Flagg.

“Ninth grade I was still young and then 10th grade I had to do a little growing up, like paying attention to details and understanding things,” Queen said. “It’s really a business. Everybody critiquing you, dissecting you.”

In his senior year, Queen became a focal point for an Eagles team that went 33-0, averaging 16.4 points and 7.5 rebounds. He led Montverde to the Chipotle High School Nationals championship.

Pursuing Queen, the highest-rated Maryland recruit since Jalen “Stix” Smith (2018), was a project that began in 2022 when the big man was a sophomore.

“It didn’t start last year. It didn’t start the year before. I think it was my third day on the job, we flew down and saw Derik because we knew how important he was,” Willard said. “We knew he was a hometown kid. It was a long laid-out game plan.”

Some speculated that Queen was drawn to College Park because former head coach Mark Turgeon had offered him a scholarship the summer before his freshman year at Saint Frances. Or that he might want to reunite with Reese.

Instead, Queen said he simply missed home.

“I do love it there,” Queen said of Baltimore. “I want to move away eventually, but I always want to keep a house there to visit a lot.”

After three years of living in Florida, he wanted to be closer to his family.

“Coming home and playing in front of your friends, your family, in front of your mom, having a support system to help you achieve your goals,” Willard said. “Being away in high school for three years was really hard. It wasn’t easy for him right off the bat, and he worked hard, and he did a great job.”

For Maryland, landing a top recruit like Queen speaks volumes of Willard’s recruiting abilities in the era of NIL (name, image and likeness) deals that have allowed richer programs to land big-time players, according to Tom Strickler, a high school basketball scouting expert with Steve Keller’s National Recruiting Report.

“It says that they are able to get a top-line player that they weren’t able to get before,” Strickler said. “And evidently the NIL money is available and it seems they were able to corner some funds to make it happen. And what you’re hoping is that can continue.”

Bouncing Back From 2023-24

Maryland greatly underperformed expectations in 2023-24, finishing second to last in the Big Ten. The team often found itself unable to score for long stretches, even against inferior opponents.

The Terps were at the bottom of Division I in field goal percentage (41.3), effective field goal percentage (46.7) and 3-point shooting (28.9). Their assists per game (10.9) and pace also ranked in the bottom quarter of teams.

This offseason, five players hit the transfer portal and Willard sought to remake his roster around Reese. In addition to landing Queen, who was courted by Houston, Indiana and Kansas, he signed Malachi Palmer, a 6-foot-5 shooting guard from Harrisburg, Pa., to round out the 2024 class.

Willard also added a trio of guards and a forward in the transfer portal. The idea: add a bevy of shooters around Queen and Reese.

“We were an elite defensive team last year, but we were obviously horrendous at shooting,” Willard said. “So the big thing for the portal was, I still wanted guys that were defensive-minded, but everyone was going to have to shoot the basketball at least a 35 percent clip [from three].”

Selton Miguel, a 6-foot-4 shooter from the University of South Florida, was the third guard the Terps picked up from the portal, joining Ja’Kobi Gillespie (Belmont) and Rodney Rice (Virginia Tech).

Miguel, who averaged 14.7 points per game while hitting 39 percent of his threes a year ago, said his eyes light up at the possibility of playing with Queen and Reese.

“Those two big men, they open up the floor. They know how to play the game,” said Miguel, a native of Angola whose cousin Bruno Fernando starred for Maryland from 2017-2019.

“Derik has a skill-set I have never seen in any other big,” he said. “And being that young, a freshman having that skill is really impressive.”

While Queen’s scoring may be crucial this season, Willard hopes to avoid putting too much pressure on the freshman too quickly. Reese can help carry the load, especially on defense. Last season, he was one of the best interior defenders in the country.

With Reese in the game, the Terps allowed 97.3 points per 100 possessions. That mark ballooned to 110.8 points when Reese was on the bench, according to CBB Analytics.

Willard sees the two playing together for 12 to 15 minutes a game while also seeing action when the other is on the bench.

“They are definitely going to play together, that’s for sure, we’re practicing it,” Willard said. “But at the same time it does give us different opportunities for them to be out there [alone] and at all times have a big guy out there that can score in the post, pass out of the post, play through the high post, and not lose the physicality that we did when Juju came out of the game last year.”

What could hold the Terps back are consistent, reliable scorers like they once had in Donta Scott and Jahmir Young, Strickler said. It depends on how the new additions integrate into Willard’s offense and how much leash Queen is given to play through mistakes.

Those questions will have to wait to be answered until the Terps embark on their season Nov. 4 against Marshall.

The Big Ten announced the conference schedule for this season in late September. After two December matchups against familiar Big Ten foes in Ohio State (Dec. 4) and Purdue (Dec. 8), the Terps will make a West Coast swing through Washington (Jan. 2) and Oregon (Jan. 5) before welcoming UCLA (Jan. 10).

The latter three games are against three of the four newest members of the Big Ten. It’s a sign of the constant upheaval in college basketball. The Terps will look to Reese and Queen to keep things steady. One smiling, one serious. Both ready to play together once again.