Terps need to prevent another March of being mad
MIKE BURKE
Allegany Radio Corporation Sports
Will there ever be a happy ending in College Park for Mark Turgeon? If so, the vibe for it being this year isn’t too strong right now.
What seemed to be an insurmountable three-game Big Ten lead for Maryland with five games to go has now downward spiraled into being a zero-game lead with one to go, serving as yet another reminder that in the long-running saga of Terps hoops, what seems to be should never be believed until nets are cut down in the end.
As though we needed to be reminded of that.
The ninth-ranked Terps, losers of three out of four, now find themselves tied with Michigan State and Wisconsin for the Big Ten lead headed into Sunday’s regular-season finale at home against No. 25 Michigan. A win over the Wolverines clinches at least a tie for the regular-season title. A loss, however, could mean anything as far as Big Ten Tournament and ensuing NCAA seedings are concerned given the number of teams that are shoehorned into or around the top spot of the conference.
Either a win or a loss will also mean plenty as far as the sagging psyche of the Terps is concerned heading into the most meaningful juncture of the season.
Maryland cannot shoot the basketball; they’ve proven it all year.
“That’s just who we are,” Turgeon says.
Yet the Terps continue to fire away from beyond the 3-point line rather than attack or, at least, influence toward the basket. They don’t seem to know how to attack a zone. They’re tired, as their poor depth seems to have caught up with them. Their body language is awful, particularly after missed shots (of which there are many) and, worse, they have lost their ability to defend, with opponents averaging 77 points in the past four games.
Worse still, Maryland hasn’t seemed prepared. Worst of all, the Terps are feeling the pressure. Absolutely worst of all, their head coach said so — volunteered it — after the Tuesday blowout loss at Rutgers.
“I think it’s just the weight of everything,” he said after the Rutgers game. “There’s been great weight on us all year, being ranked high, playing at a high level.”
Cue the vultures.
“We’ve had some unbelievable wins,” he went on to say. “Thank God, right? Because I think we’re still, I think near the top of our league if not at the top. And we’re highly respected around the country. But we can’t feel sorry for ourselves. We’ve got to go get it and we’ve got to get back to what our identity has been. I love my guys. It just hasn’t been a good 72 hours. We’ve got time to get ourselves right before Sunday and I imagine we will.”
The sarcasm there is understandable, and deserved, because Maryland has had a great season. So far. As for getting themselves right, they had better hope they do, because so many good things from this season are inching closer and closer to becoming insignificant.
Gary Williams has been watching. The Hall of Fame coach, who guided the Terps to a national championship, two Final Fours and an ACC title, watches every Maryland game and, certainly, he understands what it’s like for a team to go through a rough patch. What did he do when those patches arose?
“Whenever we went into a game, and it didn’t always work, but I would try to get our best players involved in the offense right away,” he said this week on The Kevin Sheehan Show. “In other words, if I had a Greivis Vasquez, he was gonna shoot the ball. Whether it was a good shot, bad shot I didn’t really care. He was gonna get a shot off in the first minute of the game.
“You look at Maryland and say, your two best are (Anthony) Cowan and (Jalen) Smith. Well, I would like to see Cowan penetrate in the first minute. When he does that in the second half, they can’t keep in front of him. He’s too good. And I would rather Maryland go inside-outside.
“Don’t shoot the threes to try to get the defense to extend and then dribble-penetrate, but dribble-penetrate first and then as the defense sags to try to take that away, then you have the open threes. And the same with Smith …
“Where, ‘This is what we’re going to do tonight. We’re gonna pound it into Smith and you guys gotta cover that first.’ That’s just me and the way I looked at the game. I always liked to go inside-out if possible.”
Inside-out, in fact, is what helped Maryland to its nine-game winning streak, along with great defense. But as the Terps so often have, they got away from what was working. It’s as though the concentration slips, particularly defensively, because Maryland had been able to overcome its inability to score consistently from the outside with a defense that created offense.
The inside-out took pressure off the outside shot as well, helping it, in turn, to begin to fall with more frequency. Yet out of nowhere, it vanished into nowhere. So it had better come back and come back quickly because a lot of good work this season — great work — is teetering on the edge of a deep March run or an extended stay in Neverland.
Thus, if this ends badly, should a change be made? Should Mark Turgeon be fired? That depends on how complete a season-ending spiral might be. Right now, though, it is so frustrating — maddening, in fact — particularly the appearance of a lack of preparedness, even though I find it hard to believe that could be the case. Yet if it’s not the case why isn’t the message ever getting through?
First of all, Maryland is winding down a brutal stretch of schedule these last five games. No other team in the country has had to run the gauntlet the Terps have, particularly the grouping and the starting times of some of the games. On top of that, there is still time to move forward for Maryland. If Terps fans were told in October this is the position they’d be in on March 6, Terps fans would have gladly taken it.
Barring a complete and embarrassing finish (as in losing the next three games to end the year), I don’t believe Turgeon will or should be fired, as Maryland is already paying several former football coaches over $8 million not to coach. But with this team, and with the way things have suddenly turned, it is impossible to even guess what comes next, which is almost unfathomable, and why all that matters now is what’s next — Michigan at home.
With a win on Sunday in Anthony Cowan Jr.’s final home game in front of a sellout crowd much will be forgiven, with a share of the conference title in hand to boot. What has already happened — Ohio State, Michigan State, Rutgers, even the win at Minnesota — is not what matters. Not now. What matters now, and only now, is Michigan.
Still, if this spiral does conclude with just three more Maryland basketball games this season, that would, indeed, be another very unhappy ending for Maryland basketball and for a team that will lose its two best players after much of a season of being ranked in the top 10 and among the highest projected NCAA seeds.
That, of course, has happened before, and if it happens again, what has gone down at the conclusion of previous seasons will once more matter a great deal to Mark Turgeon. And it will come with a heavy hand in determining how his story at Maryland really does play out.
Mike Burke writes about sports for Allegany Radio and Pikewood Digital. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s County Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984. He was the sports editor of the Times-News for nearly 30 years. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @MikeBurkeMDT