Look at this Xfinity Center word art for Maryland basketball’s 100th season

It’s the 100th season of Maryland basketball, and now there’s a commemorative picture of Xfinity Center that features the name of every Terps player, coach and home arena ever.

Printouts of the commemorative piece, which includes a total of 863 names, will be handed out for free to the first 10,000 fans in attendance at Maryland’s Nov. 28 home game against Virginia (tickets are still available). The original artwork will be available for auction, and an enlarged version will be permanently installed in the Xfinity Center concourse this season. You can view and shop for this piece or any of his artwork at ArtOfWords.com.

Daniel Duffy, the artist behind the picture, told Testudo Times that Maryland reached out to him with the idea months ago, and he took on the project because he had gotten a positive response from the Maryland/D.C. area on previous artwork and because of the program’s rich history. This piece took Duffy over 100 hours to complete, even with a lot of the tedious research taken care of.

“Typically there is a ton of research on the picture and the words—luckily for us, Maryland had provided them,” Duffy said. “From there, we still need to get all of the words in a proper format to read off of, and then create a loose sketch from the image. Once the sketch is done, I just go line-by-line with the names to create a base image. It still doesn’t look like much until I start the shading and coloring—that’s what really brings the piece to life. Finally, I finish with the details ... adding color to everyone in the crowd to make it come to life.”

Duffy started making word art in 2008 as a way to impress his girlfriend (who’s now his wife, so it clearly worked). He now does this full-time, and while it’s certainly an unconventional and sometimes tedious job, he says the feedback he receives from those who relate to his work makes it more than worth it.

“People are always telling us how much they enjoy finding their favorite players or games as a family—these pieces seem to bring different generations together,” Duffy said. “For example, parents and kids are searching for each other’s favorite players and exchanging the history about them. Plus, there’s always the emotional attachment: ‘That was the first game I ever went to’ or ‘that was my favorite player growing up.’”

Here’s a time-lapse video of Duffy putting the artwork together:

In other news

Matt Canada addressed the media for the last time this regular season (and, most likely, for the last time as Maryland’s interim head coach).

During his press conference, Canada pointed out that the decisive two-point conversion wasn’t the only key missed opportunity for the Terps against Ohio State. The Baltimore Sun’s Don Markus has five more.

Maryland women’s basketball is the NCAA’s Team of the Week.

Women’s soccer head coach Ray Leone shared his thoughts on the Terps’ season.

If you’re attending Maryland’s football game at Penn State this weekend, take note that all grass parking lots are closed due to high precipitation in the forecast.