Early ESPN Bracketology has Maryland as a 3-seed, sets up potential Terps-Duke meeting

ESPN's latest Bracketology projection has Maryland in a matchup that fans of the Terps would salivate over.

Bracket genius Joe Lundardi's latest iteration, released on Monday, has Maryland as a 3-seed, and, if the Terrapins take care of business against Yale, potentially playing Duke in the round of 32.

The teams haven't played since Maryland moved to the Big Ten. With the Terps having their best shot in a long time at making a deep tournament run and transfer Rasheed Sulaimon facing his old team, this would easily be the most hyped Maryland game of the year.

The potential matchup would be a bit of a role-reversal for the two programs, as Maryland almost always comes in as the lower-ranked team with fewer NBA prospects. This season, Maryland has at least three surefire draft picks in Diamond Stone, Melo Trimble and Jake Layman. Duke has Brandon Ingram, projected to go No. 2 overall by DraftExpress, but that's it for the Blue Devils, who just came out of a three-game losing streak.

Obviously, this is still a very early look at the tournament field. As both teams win and lose games throughout the rest of the season, both will move around bit in Lunardi's projections.

Yet the chances that Maryland plays Duke in the NCAA Tournament are definitely nonzero. There are many different scenarios where they could still meet up, but fans shouldn't hold their collective breath for such an early meeting. They should just hope for it, because it would be awesome.

(Hat tip to John Natalie for bringing this to our attention.)