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With about 30 seconds remaining in Saturday's regular-season finale at Comcast Center, students serenaded six individuals with a "Thank you seniors" chant.

At the time, it would've been impossible for even the "Hey, You Suck!" sign-toting fellas to coordinate subsequent chants articulating exactly why the seniors should be thanked. So without getting too sappy, I'm going to take a stab at it now.

Thank you for giving us a meaningful Senior Day.

For a variety of reasons, the university hasn't seen this significant of a Senior Day since 2003, when Steve Blake, Drew Nicholas, Tahj Holden, Ryan Randle and Calvin McCall were honored.

"In the past few years, we've had a couple of senior days," guard D.J. Strawberry joked, referring to the anti-climatic home NIT games.

Saturday was in fact the final collegiate game at Comcast for Strawberry, Mike Jones, Ekene Ibekwe, Will Bowers, Parrish Brown and Gini Chukura. And the entire day went wonderfully according to plan - from the pregame festivities featuring family and friends to the "We want Gini!" chants, which leads me to…

Thank you for routing the Wolfpack, ensuring that Chukura would play.

While the Silver Spring native hardly ever gets minutes, coach Gary Williams said after the game that Chukura is possibly the Terrapins' most popular player. If only his putback attempt with less than one minute remaining would've dropped.

Thank you for staying out of trouble during the past four years.

Last year's senior class endured scattered non-basketball related issues, and while this is not the forum to revisit them, it's fair to say the distractions took a toll. Although this year's seniors struggled at times, they weren't in police blotter, either.

"Honestly, there's always going to be little stuff going on," Jones said. "But at the same time, it's how you handle it and what type of stuff is going on. This year, I think we did a great job staying out of major stuff and focusing on what's most important."

Thank you for providing solid leadership to the rest of team, especially to the program's next featured players, freshmen Greivis Vasquez and Eric Hayes.

Strawberry and Co. didn't have hugely influential older teammates during their careers, but you get the feeling a guy like Vasquez will be crediting at least some of these seniors in the years to come.

"We've learned a lot of things to do and a lot of things not to do," Strawberry said.

For good measure, it looks like the players have as much fun with each other as the youngsters did in The Sandlot.

"Last year, we didn't have this [togetherness]," Brown said.

Thank you for steering this team - and program - in the right direction.

While presumably none of these seniors will ever be honored up in Comcast's rafters (though Strawberry's recent surge somewhat gives him a case), during the past three-and-a-half weeks they took ownership of a seemingly stagnant program by playing team-oriented basketball. Now the Terps are armed with a seven-game winning streak heading into the postseason, which will include a trip to the NCAA tournament.

"The things that we've been through, and the things we're doing now, it's a great class," Strawberry said.

Contact columnist Daniel Chiat at chiatdbk@gmail.com.

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