Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day and game day for Shyanne Sellers and Maryland women’s basketball.

The No. 8 Terps (15-1) will meet No. 7 Texas (16-2) in the second game of a doubleheader of the Coretta Scott King Classic. The matchup, which is scheduled to tip off at 5:30 p.m., will follow the opening game between No. 1 UCLA (16-0) and Baylor (14-3) at 3 p.m. at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, and both games will air on FOX.

The significance of playing on a day designed to celebrate the birthday of the man who spearheaded the civil rights movement during the 1960s is not lost on Sellers, who first learned of him and his wife in elementary school in Ohio.

“They just put it into perspective for a lot of things,” the senior point guard said of the couple. “Obviously, you can only understand so much at a young age, but as we kept talking about them and as I grew older, I began to see how they made a significant impact on other people’s lives. … I just learned about what they said and how much they went through and how much our nation was divided at the time. But they had a dream, and that was the biggest thing, and I feel like we’ve come a long way.”

The Coretta Scott King Classic is the first sporting event associated with the King family name. Dr. Bernice A. King, the youngest daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, said she hopes fans and viewers will become interested in learning more about her mother’s impact.

“We focus a lot on my father and rightfully so, but my mother was the architect,” she said. “So to me, it was important to begin the process of exposing more audiences to her work because she championed so many different causes, and this is the early stage of doing that because we’re in the process of bringing her work to life so that people will discover the many things that she did.”

Maryland’s participation in the doubleheader will mark its first game on Martin Luther King Jr. Day since Jan. 20, 2020, when it walloped Big Ten rival Indiana, 76-62. Before that, the school had not played on the national holiday since Jan. 16, 2012, when it defeated Virginia, 68-61.

Terps coach Brenda Frese said she did not take lightly scheduling a game on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

“If anything, it’s kind of a pretty special moment that you’re continuing to recognize the past and the history and what Dr. Martin Luther King and his family did,” she said. “It was a really important piece in our history. And now for us to put it in a national lens — both games are on national television — and to really value the importance of what the history means, for our kids to be representative of that, I think our sport as a whole represents the diversity and inclusiveness. For us to be able to kind of on a national scale be able to share that is pretty exciting.”

Similarly, Texas coach Vic Schaefer said agreeing to play in the Coretta Scott King Classic was “a no-brainer.” A self-described history buff, Schaefer said he has been reading “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by King Jr.

“I think it’s an honor to be associated with such an incredible family, to be associated with someone like Dr. Martin Luther King and to know his impact on our world,” he said. “We all feel that every day. … Just knowing the impact he made on our country and continues to make, it’s really an honor for us to be affiliated and associated with such a prestigious event and an incredible family.”

Bernice King said the Coretta Scott King Classic is scheduled to continue in 2026 and 2027 — the last of which will mark what would have been her mother’s 100th birthday.

While her mother was more of an artist, King said she played small forward and point guard in high school. “I had a mean left hook,” she quipped. “I was actually very good. Had I put more energy and effort into that, maybe I could’ve ended up on a college basketball team. But that was not my focus at the time.”

King said one of her hopes is that the basketball doubleheader under her mother’s name will showcase women’s capabilities. She repeated a line from one of her mother’s speeches after her father’s death during which Coretta Scott King said, “Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe that you must become its soul.”

“She really believed in the leadership of women and the role of women in really moving society,” her daughter said. “We know that most major movements, most major things anywhere that want to move forward depend on the skills and input of women and the strategies of women. So it’s very important, and especially in today’s society because there is still a dearth of women in critical places of leadership.

“If you think about corporate America, we have only a handful of women CEOs in a nation that is slightly majority women. So we still have a lot of work to do to ensure that women in terms of their leadership and ability to strategize and get things done is recognized.”

Women’s empowerment is especially prevalent in basketball where the WNBA — after welcoming a rookie class that included Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, of Randallstown, Cameron Brink and Kamilla Cardoso — enjoyed its highest attendance in 22 years, an increase of 48% from 2023, and saw merchandise sales grow by 601%.

Sellers said the objective is to continue that growth at both the college and professional levels.

“I think you see how fast women’s basketball is growing and how fast sports are growing in general,” she said. “So it’s awesome to have the spotlight on us, and we’re going to take full advantage of it, but also it’s something bigger than basketball. So we want to be good role models on the court and off the court.”

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