His Name is Frank Haith

Last night was a tough lost. Of course, nearly every time Maryland basketball loses I'm inclined to describe it as such. I care too much. With Terps football, I expect it to be second fiddle on campus and can subsequently live with the expectations of 4 or 5 losses in a normal year. My beloved Orioles have lost 90 games a season since I was in elementary school (note: I am now a grad student (allegedly)), and I simply don't care enough about the NFL to have that kind of emotional attachment to the Ravens outside of big conference and playoff games. Certainly not on the day to day.

There's actually a very specific set of criterion for a Maryland loss that won't cause me to - at very least - stare at the wall in shock (possibly after punching it):

a) It has to be early in the season. Nothing that could come close to irreparably damaging our tournament seeding, conference finish, or bubble status. I need to be able to rationalize how we can reel off 7 of our next 8 and be in great shape.

b) It has to be against a good team (likely top 10), but that team cannot be Duke. Any loss to Duke ipso facto (!) a painful loss.

c) It has to be close, but not too close. Certainly no buzzer beater daggers or anything close enough that I can point to a play or two that turned the tide and lost us the game.

d) Similarly, there can't be one glaring weakness. If we lose by 7 to a top 10 team in December, that's cool, but if we shoot 14-27 from the line, I'm going to be up in arms.

This really has nothing to do with the main point of this post. I'm really just justifying the way I am to myself because I am whatever you say I am otherwise. I just felt that it would be instructive to look back at the last few years of losses to ACC newcomer/bottom feeder Miami. It's damn sure more exciting than watching Wake get blown out at home by a 3-11 Georgia Tech team.

3/2/11 - Miami 80, Maryland 66. Nothing to really say here given that this just happened, other than to say that I just realized the Terps shot 12-44 from inside the three point line last night. So yeah, that doesn't help.

1/14/09 - Miami 62, Maryland 60. This was a game that the Terps led 52-35 with 12 and a half minutes left. Surely we would cruise to victory and get to 2-0 in the conference to take the sting off the loss at home to Morgan State the week before. It was not to be. The Canes hit 7 threes from that point on including one by Jack McClinton with 0:24 that would be the decisive shot. Maryland wasted a career-high 23 points by Anthony Bowie (I believe this was his debut), and as was frequently a theme, got just 5 bench points on the night.

2/23/08 - Miami 78, Maryland 63. This was not unlike last night's game in that it was a complete blowout to shut the door on our tournament hopes*. I remember this as being the first time that I realized that Gary was completely owned by Frank F Haith, and please say the Motherfucking. The game was close at halftime (Canes by 3), but was less so after the intermission. I am pretty sure there was a thunderous putback dunk by Jerome Burney during this game as he had a career night (4/5 in 12 minutes).

*not exactly true but we are NOT discussing Senior Night vs Clemson.

3/8/07 - Miami 67, Maryland 62. Oh yeah, this was a game. The Terrapins were FLYING HIGH, winners of seven straight to take a share of third place in the conference. They had beaten Duke and a top 5 North Carolina team (in one of the best games ever played at Comcast) during that stretch. They were a threat to win the whole tournament in a strong, but wide open ACC. They were a dark horse Final Four contender. They were a kenpom log5 darling! Bad news #1 was that we lost the tiebreakers to VT and BC (because, you know, there's no chance we could actually beat those either) so we got the 5 seed and the misfortune of playing a first round game rather than a bye. Bad news #2 was that we again played like steaming, smouldering shit, this time going down by 13 at the half en route to another sub 40% shooting night. Miami was 3-12 against the rest of the ACC, but they cleaned up against us this season.

1/10/07 - Miami 63, Maryland 58. It's nights like this that I need a support group. First of all, this one was actually a home game. Maryland shot 13-58 (!!!) that night, a sizzling 22.4%. From INSIDE the arc, we were just 7-35, good for 20%. That's hardly believable. If we had shot just 40% on two pointers - which is still fairly wretched - we win by close to double digits. Of course that was not to be, as the team was "led" by a particularly bad (1-11) night by Greivis which I didn't remember until looking at the box score. And,oh yeah, I punched a hole in a wall because of this game.

1/7/06 - Miami 74, Maryland 60. This game was in the interregnum between the time of "Chris McCray decides to skip a fucking final despite being a senior" and "Chris McCray gets kicked off the team for being a dumbass and failing his class because he skipped a fucking final" when we still had a chance to be a decent team. I seemed to recall this being at the height of the Terps never, ever defending the three point line. Indeed we were 270th in the country (note: lower numbers are better) that season and let Miami shoot 12-19 from range. This was even pre-Jack McClinton daggering his home team on the regular, as Miami was led by Guillermo Diaz, Robert Hite, and some clown named Anthony King. Seriously, I follow ACC basketball as much as anyone, and remember the first two vividly, but there's no chance 22 points wasn't a career high for Anthony King. I mean, come on, Anthony King!?

2/5/05 - Miami 75, Maryland 73 OT. Wow, now we're going back to when I was in high school. A time when the Terps were ranked. A time when the Terps hadn't missed a tournament in since 1993. This was the same week as loss #1/3 to Clemson. While I do remember a Clemson loss or two, I would be lying if I claimed to remember this one. But yeah, this would be one of the reasons we were in the NIT Final Four that year. At least it went to OT.

And there you have it. Each of these... 7....losses has taken a little piece of my soul. I suppose this means that if some upstart young wizard tries to kill me I will only be an undead spirit rather than a corpse. I will now light myself on fire for rehashing these losses and capping this post with that reference. Yup, these are my losses.