ORCESTER -- Edgar Padilla squatted in the center circle and slapped two determined hands against the UMass basketball logo. He then shot up and thrust an open hand into the air, meeting Carmelo Travieso's hand in an explosive high-five.

The gesture, coming moments after Padilla had fed Travieso for a layup and a 64-43 lead over Maryland, seemed to scream out one emphatic message: ``We're back!''

The UMass Minutemen returned to the national stage on Saturday afternoon with a convincing 78-61 rout over the 10th-ranked Terrapins. It was a high-powered performance in a high-profile game, played before 11,210 raucous fans at the Worcester Centrum and many more sitting before their televisions as Dick Vitale and Brent Musburger made the call on ABC. UMass, once dead in the water at 6-9, is now surging at 16-10.

"We're still the UMass of old," said Charlton Clarke, who led all scorers with 22 points. "We just had a slow start. Now we're coming on strong."

Maryland coach Gary Williams could only heap praise on the Minutemen. "There's no excuses," Williams said. "They just played better than we did, and they deserved to win the game."

The 19-6 Terps aroused UMass' anger in the early going. On a 3-on-0 break, point guard Terrell Stokes underhanded an alley-oop to Laron Profit, who tomahawked it home for a 6-2 lead. As far as the Minutemen were concerned, this was no time for Showtime.

"Edgar (Padilla) said, 'They came out and acted like they were playing against a high school team,'" said Clarke. "It's time to turn it on."

The Minutemen did just that, dominating the game the rest of the way. With Clarke and Carmelo Travieso stroking jumpers like it was practice, and with the defense frustrating the Terps at every turn (particularly the superb work by Tyrone Weeks in shutting down Maryland's star Keith Booth), UMass built the lead to double-digits for good by the 7:25 mark of the first half. At the break the Minutemen led, 41-28.

In the second half Lari Ketner put on a show with a dazzling series of moves and blocks. He finished with a career-high 19 points, 12 rebounds, four blocks and four assists.

"We couldn't stop Ketner," said Williams. "We've played against some good guys (read: Tim Duncan), and that hasn't happened. If he's that good, then he's a great player."

Travieso added 16 points for the Minutemen.

UMass held the Terps to 39 percent shooting and their lowest point total of the season. Maryland was unable to generate much off its transition game as the Minutemen handled the Terrapin pressure effectively most of the game.

Profit led the Terps with 21 points. Booth managed 16, but was flustered into 4-11 shooting and five turnovers. Obinna Ekezie had 11 points and 10 rebounds.

The win was the seventh in as many games for UMass over the years in the Worcester Centrum. The shaky play at the Mullins Center did not carry over to this home away from home.

"Are we switching all our games here?" asked coach Bruiser Flint with a mischievous smile.

The Minutemen instead will return to the Mullins Center at 7 p.m. Thursday to host Fordham, the first of four Atlantic 10 games to close out the regular season.

"If we don't close out the league, then this win doesn't matter," said Flint. "The key thing is the next four games."

This one, though, was pretty special.

ORCESTER - Forget North Carolina. Forget California, Fresno State, Wake Forest and Virginia Tech. Moreover, as improbable as it may seem, forget Marcus Camby.

Lari Ketner scored 19, winning the battle of the centers versus Obinna Ekezie (11 points).

Forget about the 6-9 start, the fall from college basketball's top level, the contests they entered with ``no chance'' of winning, the naysayers who wrote them off like an itemized deduction. That's all behind the University of Massachusetts now. It took half the season for the Minutemen to return to the form that made them one of the game's best teams, but they're back. Just ask 10th-ranked Maryland.

UMass shocked the Terrapins, 78-61, at the Centrum yesterday, outplaying the Atlantic Coast Conference team at both ends of the floor, holding Maryland to its second-lowest point total of the season. The Minutemen (16-10) shot 50 percent from the floor in the first half for a 41-28 halftime advantage, then overcame a scoring drought over the first 10 minutes of the second half to blow the game open.

Sophomore guard Charlton Clarke led a balanced scoring attack with 22 points. Sophomore center Lari Ketner had one of his best all-around games: 19 points, 12 rebounds, 4 blocks and 4 assists, prompting the partisan UMass crowd to chant his name during the second half. Senior guard Carmelo Travieso added 16 points for UMass, which has won 10 of its last 11 games and has made its dismal start seem as distant as the Ice Age.

``It felt like once we started winning, that's when our season started, because we're so used to winning,'' said Clarke, who made Maryland defenders pay for backing off him to double down on UMass' big men. He hit consecutive treys to put the Minutemen up, 18-11, with 13:28 left in the first half. The Minutemen stretched the lead to 10 two minutes later.

``Our team was so great last year,'' added Clarke, ``and when we started winning, it was, like, we're back to reality now. We feel like the team of last year and we're playing with a great deal of confidence and going out and producing.''

Earlier in the season, the 1996-97 squad became UMass' first this decade to drop more than two games below .500. Riddled with injuries and chemistry problems, UMass was embarrassed by ranked teams such as North Carolina, Fresno State and Wake Forest and became the first team in school history to lose more than two games in a season at the Mullins Center.

Yesterday, the team showed it could suffer breakdowns in its offense and still produce a convincing win. Leading, 41-28, at halftime, UMass scored just 7 points over the first 10 minutes of the second half, yet its defense stymied Maryland enough to keep it at bay.

UMass regrouped behind Ketner, who scored 8 of the Minutemen's 10 points in a 3:32 stretch that put UMass up, 58-43, with 6:59 to go. A layup by Travieso with 5:07 left gave the Minutemen their biggest lead of the game, 64-43.

``We couldn't stop Ketner,'' said Maryland coach Gary Williams. ``We've played against some really good people inside who haven't done that. He did a great job on us, and if he's that good, he's a great player from what he showed today.''

Having sat out last season after failing to meet eligibility requirements, Ketner entered the season slated to fill the void vacated by Camby, last season's national player of the year. He steadily has carved his own niche as a natural low post player (unlike the fluid, lanky Camby) with a reliable short hook.

``I had two strong games against Duquesne and St. Bonaventure, then last Tuesday I came into St. Bonaventure and had a rough game,'' said Ketner. ``I definitely didn't want to have a rough game today. But I never come out thinking I want to dominate. I just want to play hard.''

UMass suffered another lull over the last six minutes, when Maryland staged a 12-2 run to cut the lead to 11. But again UMass regrouped, added a few insurance baskets, and enabled coach Bruiser Flint to clear his bench with a minute to go.

``They're the 10th-ranked team in the nation, so we knew they were going to make a run,'' said Flint, who became the first coach in UMass history to notch 16 wins in his first season. Yesterday's was clearly the biggest in his career.

``We've proven when we come out and play we can play against anybody,'' he said.

ORCESTER - OK all you University of Massachusetts fans out there. You can relax. Pencil your team into next month's NCAA Tournament.

Oh, coach Bruiser Flint's team still has to take care of some Atlantic 10 business, such as not going into a total collapse the next two weeks against teams like Fordham and Dayton. And they'll have to put their game faces on against St. Joseph's and Temple.

But yesterday's 78-61 win over Maryland should have convinced any doubters on the tournament selection committee who happened to watch the ABC telecast.

That was No. 10-ranked Maryland. That was a Maryland team with victories over North Carolina, Duke and Wake Forest, all Top 25 teams.

Talk about quality wins. It doesn't get much better than yesterday's unless you do it on the road, which the Centrum definitely was not for the Minutemen, with all the whooping and hollering going on.

``We still have to close out the league,'' said Flint with a smile that suggested he believes his team could do that if it played the way it did for the first 35 minutes yesterday. ``But this was a big win for us. We're starting to play the way I hoped we would.''

Even more importantly, the Minutemen are starting to play like Bruiser Flint's team. Not John Calipari's team. Not Marcus Camby's team. They have an identity and have Flint's imprint all over them.

``I never thought it wasn't my team,'' said Flint. ``But I think it took a while for some other people to think so.''

The team that Flint inherited from Calipari did not have Camby, it did not have Dana Dingle, it did not have Donta Bright. What it did have was a schedule that those caliber players could play, and could handle from the start.

Virginia, California, Georgetown, Wake Forest, North Carolina, UConn. That was a schedule that a veteran Final Four team could look at and not feel sick to its stomach.

Small wonder the Minutemen were 4-6 in the first 10 games. Contrast that with some of the early opponents of Maryland, which went 10-0. Howard. Towson State. Chicago State. California. George Washington, Georgia Tech, American, Lafayette, Hawaii.

Given that schedule, the Minutemen might have been 20-5 entering yesterday's game, instead of 15-10.

But that's all history now. The Minutemen have walked through fire and are still smiling. They had meeting after meeting trying to figure out what was wrong, why things weren't working.

The last one came after a narrow road win over St. Bonaventure. ``We said that was it,'' said guard Edgar Padilla, who is showing the same intensity he displayed all of last season and did not display the first part of this season. ``If we had lost that one, we weren't sure what was going to happen.''

What has happened is simple. The Minutemen have matured. They are confident, if not cocky. They have won nine of their last 10, losing only to Xavier. ``The guys have the confidence now they can go out and play with anybody,'' said Flint.

They proved that yesterday, although it should be pointed out the Terps might have come down with a minor case of the dreaded Louisville disease - not giving a hoot about a non-conference road game - although Maryland coach Gary Williams said that should not have been a factor.

The bottom line is that UMass, which was once 10-9, is now 16-10. The magic number by the end of the Atlantic 10 tournament should be 19 and the Minutemen should get that without breaking much of a sweat.

``This should put them in,'' said Atlantic 10 commissioner Linda Bruno.

In, and then some. Each subsequent UMass win should move the Minutemen to a higher seed. If they run the table, they might even climb as high as a No. 4 seed, which even the most ardent UMass backer would have considered impossible a few months ago.

With a brusing front line, a bruiser of a coach and a pair of veteran guards, no one is going to want to see the Minutemen in their bracket in the next several weeks.

And there will be no guarantees or great expectations once March arrives.

But when you have been where UMass has been the past four months, you'll accept whatever the rest of this season gives you.

ORCESTER, Mass. - Charlton Clarke scored 15 of his 22 points in the first half when Massachusetts built a 13-point lead en route to a 78-61 victory over 10th-ranked Maryland in a non-conference game.

The win was the fifth in a row and 11th in 14 games for Massachusetts (16-10), which continues its strong push for an NCAA Tournament bid.

Sophomore center Lari Ketner had a career-high 19 points and 11 rebounds and Carmelo Travieso added 16 points for the Minutemen.

Maryland (19-6) has lost four of its last six games. Laron Profit led the Terrapins with 21 points.

Massachusetts is 7-0 all-time in games at The Centrum, including two wins in the 1992 NCAA Tournament. Massachusetts earned its first win in four games against ACC opponents, losing its first three games against Virginia, Wake Forest and North Carolina.

The Terps are 1-1 against the Atlantic 10 this season, knocking off George Washington, 74-68, on December 9th. The Minutemen lead the all-time series, 4-2, and posted a 50-47 victory over Maryland in the First Bank Classic last year.

MARYLAND 
                      fg    ft    rb
               min   m-a   m-a   o-t  a pf   tp
Profit          37  8-12   4-6   1-5  1  3   21
Booth           38  4-11  8-13   0-4  1  4   16
Ekezie          33  4-10   3-5  3-10  1  4   11
Stokes          35   1-8   0-0   0-2  5  4    2
Jasikevicius    26   2-8   2-2   1-2  1  0    6
Kovarik         11   0-0   0-0   1-1  1  2    0
Elliott         19   2-5   1-2   1-3  0  2    5
Watkins          1   0-0   0-0   0-0  0  0    0
_______________________________________________
TOTALS         200 21-54 18-28  7-27 10 19   61
_______________________________________________

Percentages: FG-.389, FT-.643. 3-Point Goals:
1-11, .091 (Profit 1-4, Stokes 0-4, Jasikevicius
0-2, Elliott 0-1). Team rebounds: 8. Blocked
shots: 2 (Ekezie, Elliott). Turnovers: 17 (Booth
5, Ekezie 5, Stokes 3, Profit 2, Elliott,
Jasikevicius). Steals: 8 (Profit 4, Booth 2,
Ekezie, Stokes).


MASSACHUSETTS 
                      fg    ft    rb
               min   m-a   m-a   o-t  a pf   tp
Clarke          37  8-14   3-3   2-3  3  2   22
Weeks           20   3-5   2-2   0-4  1  5    8
Ketner          35  7-12   5-8  4-12  4  3   19
Padilla         39   1-9   2-2   0-5  7  2    4
Travieso        39  5-11   4-4   1-3  3  3   16
Burns            1   0-0   0-0   0-0  1  0    0
MacLay           1   0-0   0-0   0-0  0  0    0
Smith            3   0-0   0-0   0-0  0  0    0
Kirkland         1   1-1   0-0   0-0  0  0    2
Babul            1   0-0   0-0   0-0  0  0    0
Basit           10   0-3   0-0   2-4  0  0    0
Norville        13   3-5   1-3   1-2  0  4    7
_______________________________________________
TOTALS         200 28-60 17-22 10-33 19 19   78
_______________________________________________

Percentages: FG-.467, FT-.773. 3-Point Goals:
5-12, .417 (Clarke 3-3, Padilla 0-4, Travieso
2-5). Team rebounds: 5. Blocked shots: 7 (Ketner
4, Weeks 2, Basit). Turnovers: 13 (Padilla 5,
Clarke 3, Ketner 3, Norville, Travieso). Steals:
8 (Padilla 3, Weeks 3, Travieso 2).

__________________________________
Maryland           28   33  -   61
Massachusetts      41   37  -   78
__________________________________
Technical fouls: None.  A: 11,210. Officials:
Larry Rose, Stanley Rote, Brian Kersey.