Red Panda will perform a Maryland basketball halftime show with DJ Durkin

While rumors were swirling about the expected hiring of Maryland football’s new offensive coordinator Matt Canada, Maryland students received a very important email. In fact, we received the very best email. Behold:

Ignore that Maryland thought it was a good idea to “red out” a school that wears red as its primary color and skip a little lower to where it says “Famous Red Panda halftime performance featuring Coach DJ Durkin.”

This is going to be incredible.

I’ve seen Red Panda once—while at Northwestern calling the men’s basketball game for the campus radio station. She. Was. Electric. Any of us who’ve been to basketball games at the Xfinity Center this year have been subjected to: a handful of painful-to-watch youth basketball games, which are fun for the 12 9-year-olds, their parents and zero other people; a troupe of future whatever-the-white-version-of-the-Harlem-Globetrotters-is displaying their basketball-spinning gifts; and some rough games of modified-for-basketball musical chairs. This halftime show promises to blow those away.

Side note: Will somebody in the Maryland marketing department PLEASE find somebody who can hit a layup and free throw in quick succession during the Rav-4 and Score promotional event? This is getting ridiculous.

Watch Red Panda:

THIS IS UN-FREAKING-BELIEVABLE. Paint the Maryland flag on the bowls and the Xfinity Center will explode with every flip. Heck, I might go nuts from press row. (I can’t, but I might.)

The only thing that could make this show more entertaining is Coach Durkin. What does “featuring Coach DJ Durkin” mean? How is he going to be involved? Is he going to be on a unicycle? Is Red Panda going to flip Durkin off her leg and onto her head? Or is he merely going to toss her the bowls? Is he going to be “DJ” Durkin and play some fun music and pump up the crowd? Will footballs be involved? I NEED ANSWERS.

What I don’t need answers to is whether or not this is going to be an incredible halftime show. It will. And I plan on enjoying every second of it.

In other news

Former Terp Yannick Ngakoue got some darn respect Monday when he was named to his first Pro Bowl. The second-year pass rusher had 12 regular-season sacks and six forced fumbles as the Jacksonville Jaguars made it all the way to the AFC Championship game.

The women’s basketball team started the night off right with a 30-point blowout of No. 12 Ohio State. The Terps even got a four-star commit during the game. It was a great night in College Park.

It was not a great night for Maryland in Bloomington, Indiana. The men’s team could not follow the women’s lead, dropping another close road contest, this time to Indiana.

Before that, five-star center Moses Brown chose UCLA over Maryland and an ever-changing list of other schools early Monday afternoon. The Terps seemed to be the favorite for months, but with every day there was silence from Brown, it felt more likely he’d end up elsewhere.

Maryland football is expected to hire former LSU offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Matt Canada to fill the same roll at Maryland. I think it’s a home run hire. (More on that soon.)

Maryland men’s soccer hired Jake Pace as an assistant coach. He spent the last four seasons as the team’s director of operations.