A New Era

A new era dawned, unofficially at least, on Friday night at the Comcast Center when new coach Mark Turgeon led a skeleton crew of eight scholarship players into an exhibition battle against the Northwood Seahawks of Big Faced Rollie Massimino. The atmosphere was a bit odd, with a surprisingly sizable, if quiet, student crowd surrounded by a nearly non existent general public. The game seemed to lack fanfare, and the Terps seemed lethargic at times. They went up by almost 20 early in the second half, but never really blew the doors off of Northwood the way they should, allowing them to come nearly all the way back before holding them off for a single digit win.

Of course there's no reason to panic for two reasons:

a) More than one team has already lost an exhibition game this preseason, including Arizona, Butler, West Virginia, and Utah. Even Duke beat the powerhouse from Shaw University by only 14 and

b) We're simply not going to be that good anyway, so why get too heated about anything. There really can't be any concourse games if the expectations are nil.

That's not to say you have to give up, but the first two months of the season without Alex Len and Pe'Shon Howard will be rough. The point guard situation is pretty dire, what with the backup spot being held down by a committee of freshman SG Nick Faust and walk-on Jonathan Taylor Thomas of Tiger Beat fame. The big man situation will not be much better with a three man rotation. The walk ons didn't even get a minute last night, so it would seem that if foul trouble hits the lineups will get really unconventional. Nick Faust may have to do his best Magic Johnson impersonation and play every spot on the floor at some point.

Let's focus on the good things here. Nick "Swag" Faust did quite a bit to live up to his advanced billing, scoring 14 points in 27 minutes before missing most of the second half. His scoring included 4 threes, one of which was a highlight half court (plus) buzzer beater. Bmore what up. Even with the great seasons put up the past two years by Stogs and Jordan Williams as freshmen, it doesn't seem like a stretch to say that Faust could have the most impact of any freshman in College Park since Joe Smith, at least statistically. With the lack of depth and scorers, Faust could very easily average a dozen a night, even without being particularly efficient.

Sean "Bonecrusher" Mosley and Stogs also looked pretty nice offensively, combining for 43 points. You can't expect that to happen every night, but you almost have to expect that in most wins they'll be closer to that then the 20 or so they combined for last season.

Ashton Pankey also looked pretty great. Maybe not great, but damn good. This guy was a lightly regarded recruit coming in who hadn't really played (save for one single minute against Seattle last year) in the past two years due to various injuries, but he showed a lot last night. He's got the size and build to be successful, and he showed a lot of toughness. He scored a dozen points, doing everything from post moves to putbacks to face up shots.

Inspector Padgett also had a nice game, nearly getting a double double and missing only one shot on the night. Also of note is that he recorded two assists. As you may (not) recall, he somehow failed to get a single assist last year despite playing nearly every game. It seems pretty hard to do that even if you tried. Even the great Ekene Ibekwe managed to record double digits in that category every season of his career.

We also got our first taste of Alex Len which will be, of course, our last taste for another seven weeks or so. He's clearly a mountain of a person, living up to his 7-1 listed height. He wound up with 4 and 6 in 16 minutes, not exactly setting the world on fire, but showing enough potential that we will all eagerly anticipate the first game after Christmas to see what he can do in a real game.

As for the negatives, well, there were a few. The team was extra sloppy with 23 turnovers, 10 of them by Mosley and Stogs. The defense was also lacking. Berend Weijs may have gained ten pounds, but still wasn't much of a factor, playing only 11 minutes. He'll certainly play much more with Len out for a few months, but as much as I like him, it's tough to hope for much more than a few blocks and about 15 minutes a game.

Mychal Parker had a pretty awful game. Actually it wasn't so much awful as completely uneventful. He had only 4 points on 3 shots in 26 minutes. At times it was tough to remember that he had even been in the game. It's tough to remember at this point that he was a consensus top 50 recruit who was highly sought after. Of course he'll play quite a bit no matter what and will have plenty of chances to prove me wrong here, but he will have to improve if he wants to still get that time when and if Howard comes back later this winter. It was pretty striking to compare him to Faust last night, a guy who is a year younger and a similarly touted recruit.

I don't think we really learned too much about the team after this game. Time will tell. The conversation we had was how many wins it would take to make this a satisfying season. Not necessarily one that you're happy with, but one you won't starting bitching about Turge after.

It's a tough question. You can start by chalking up 8 wins against the cupcakes. Even though recent history has shown us that these games do indeed sometimes end up as losses, it's not unrealistic to think that even with a weak team we should beat every team that we pay to come to Comcast Center. The field in Puerto Rico is not especially strong so winning one of the final two games - likely to be a weak Colorado team and then either Iona or Western Michigan - is realistic. Let's say the team loses at home to Illinois, at the BB&T against Notre Dame (of course), and then against Temple at the Palestra. That puts us at 9-5 in the non conference. Given how week the ACC is, let's shoot for six wins there - let's just say Wake, UVA, Boston College at home, a sweep of Georgia Tech, and one wild card in there somewhere. Totally believable, right?

So there you have it. Here in College Park we're shooting for 15-15. Average starts here?