Excitement is building for the Maryland men’s basketball team, a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Maryland has one of the best starting units in college basketball, and the players — Derik Queen, Julian Reese, Ja’Kobi Gillespie, Rodney Rice and Selton Miguel — have picked up a nickname, “The Crab Five,” which is a play on Michigan’s “Fab Five.”
With the team’s success and the nickname’s popularity, there is now a demand for Crab Five merchandise.
Milan Chaudhary, 20, is CEO of apparel company Brown Boy Nation and said Maryland fans online asked him to create a Crab Five graphic, which then went viral.
“I actually sent that graphic to Ricky Harris, who is a part of the coaching staff. He tweeted out that graphic … and gathered 500,000 views on X,” Chaudhary said. “My graphic was helping platform this movement of Maryland basketball and revolutionizing what the Crab Five were, which was super dope.”
The Montgomery County native started Brown Boy Nation as a sophomore at Damascus High School when he designed shirts for the school’s basketball team. Chaudhary has had a passion for both sports and fashion since he was young and is now majoring in marketing at the University of Maryland while also in the sports management program.
Partnering with Maryland, Chaudhary launched the Crab Five Collection. The T-shirts feature photos of the players, who make most of the profits through NIL, or the money received from their name, image or likeness used in content, deals. Chaudhary said it’s important for him to make sure athletes are paid fairly to help with recruiting and incentivize players to stay at Maryland.
“It wasn’t really about the money for me, it was more about impacting my community and the fans,” Chaudhary said. “The money is going back to the boys because the Crab Five is them. They’re the ones putting in the effort and the work for this.”
“Being in the position to even support our athletes, as a student, I think that’s a very blessed position that I’m in,” Chaudhary said. “It’s all a love for the students, a love for Maryland basketball, love for our community.”
Fans have been scrambling to get the Crab Five shirts as Chaudhary holds fun giveaways on campus. For one challenge, they had to take photos with four different Testudo statues to win a limited-edition shirt signed by Testudo, the university’s mascot.
“We had students all over campus getting on cars and bikes to drive to go take pictures,” he said. “I would say that collection sold out in 30 minutes.”
Other times, Chaudhary will post about dropping a shirt at a random spot on campus, and said the shirt could be gone within 30 seconds.
“I think the coolest part about seeing people wearing my tees is I can make friends so easily by just walking up to them, saying, ‘nice shirt,’” Chaudhary said. “Through this endeavor, I’ve created so many friends.”
He plans to continue growing his company, which has signed about 100 clients across the country. Chaudhary even collaborated with the Washington Commanders on a shirt spotlighting HBCUs. His ultimate goal is to showcase athletes and sports that don’t usually get much attention.
And when the Crab Five’s season eventually ends, Chaudhary said, “I’ll start to frame all my images from the collection and put them on my wall. It was still a great opportunity. I’m just glad that Maryland basketball is back.”
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