COLLEGE PARK, Md.— Former Naismith National Player of the Year Joe Smith was back on campus for the Maryland basketball game versus Georgetown Tuesday.

Smith spoke to the media before the game about how excited he was to be back at the University.

“It's a great feeling to be back on campus,” said the former All-American. “It's great to see the campus growing and to see the University growing the way that it is. I'm sure it's going to continue to blossom to bigger and better things.”

Smith was recognized as an honorary captain during the game and was able to participate in the Victors Recognition at halftime, which honored the last four Maryland men's basketball teams to defeat Georgetown- including the 1973-74, 1974-75, 1993-94 and 2000-01 squads. Former Maryland stars joined Smith at halftime to represent those four teams.

Smith – who also joined Johnny Holiday, Williams and Dixon for a panel conversation with select Terrapin Club Scholarship Fund donors prior to tipoff - could not help but reminisce about his first game against Georgetown as a freshman in 1993.

“My first memory is obviously the Georgetown game because it was my very first game,” Smith said. “It kind of got my feet wet a little bit. From then on I just tried to get better and prove that we were a better team than people made us out to be. That was our goal coming into the first game and it progressed throughout the season as we got more and more confident as a group and it showed out there on the floor.”

The former No. 1 NBA overall pick in also expressed admiration for the job Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon has done building the program, and he expects that this year's team will do some of big things.

“He's done a great job. I think that the sky's the limit for this team,” Smith said. “They're good at every position. In college basketball, it's tough to find a time that strong at every position like that. They've got as good of a shot as anybody else in the country.”