ALL of the Transfers

I couldn't even get the motivation to write a year in review post before all hell broke loose this evening as Jeff Ermann reported that Roddy Peters, Nick Faust, and Shaq Cleare will all seek greener pastures on the transfer market.  While none was inherently shocking - only Seth Allen and Jake Layman seemed absolute locks to return next season - the suddenness of all three transfers breaking on the same night certainly was surprising.

Nick Faust was both Gary Williams' last recruit and Mark Turgeon's first.  Faust came in with much hype, a top 50 player out of Baltimore's City College who chose the Terps over Florida State, Oregon State, and Marquette at a time when a top 50 local coming to College Park happened entirely too rarely.

He started by being thrust into the role of point guard as a freshman instead of his more natural wing position.  Faust didn't thrive there but performed admirably out of position on an extremely thin team.  Big things were expected from Faust each of the past two years, but he didn't come close to meeting them.  A large part of that was because of how out of line expectations were for a top 50 recruit, but there's no doubt that at times Nick would fall in love with his jump shot too much or swagged out when he shouldn't have.  Still, the team finished 22nd in defensive efficiency, an improvement even with the loss of Alex Len, and Faust was a huge part of it.  He was arguably the team's best defensive player, certainly on the perimeter.

Though he took slightly fewer shots this year, many of his numbers were incredible similar to his sophomore campaign.  His eFG% dipped from 47.5 to 46.6, his TS% went from 51.4 to 51.2, and his rebounding was remarkably similar at 11.3/3.7 compared to 11.6/3.8 in 2012-13.  That was probably what frustrated people most about Faust.  He simply did not improve very much as an upperclassmen this year.  That didn't make him a bad player, but he wasn't a star.

I had high hopes that Faust would thrive next year as a backup and designated defensive stopper while allowing a potentially very strong offensive backcourt of Melo Trimble, Seth Allen, Jake Layman, and Dez Wells to carry the scoring load, but now that role will fall elsewhere.  Those four could take the lion's share of the minutes, and now the path is clear for Dion Wiley and Jared Nickens to take on expanded roles if they prove capable.  There is plenty of talent still here, but less of a logjam.  It's not the end of the world.

Part of that is the departure of Roddy Peters.  If Turgeon doesn't make it past the next couple year's as the program's head man, the saga of point guard recruiting in the 2013 class may turn out to be the story.  The Terps went down to the wire with the highly touted Harrison twins before they declared for Kentucky, and Roddy Peters, another local top-50 prospect, was thought to be an incredibly strong consolation prize.  The Terps took his commitment rather than pursuing Philly's Rysheed Jordan or other lesser recruits still available.

While Peters looked good early on against weaker competition, and certainly had a flair for spectacular passes, his own weaknesses were quickly exposed against better teams.  While he experienced many of the normal bumps that a young PG will have in his freshmen season, his complete lack of offensive versatility marred his future outlook.  Despite playing significant minutes all season, Peters made just one three point field goal, and incredible statistic for a guard at this level.  That was not his only problem this year, but a guard without the talent and/or confidence to hit the open jumper from three becomes a much easier defensive assignment.  It's not hard to stop penetration when you don't have to respect that jump shot, which is why it's so important that a slasher like Peters at least develop an Adrian Bowie-level jumper to be an effective player on the offensive end.

Now Turgeon is left with only Melo and Allen, certainly more of a scorer than passer, as his options at PG, and hopefully that doesn't keep hounding us.  Those two could be a dynamite pairing, but how well they run a half-court offense is the question.

I love Shaq.  He's a guy who was clearly big on Maryland from early in his recruiting process.  He committed to HOF Gary Williams, then committed again to Mark Turgeon after Gary's retirement.  I'm not happy to see him off the team.

With all that said, Shaq was limited.  Some speculated on a lingering back injury being the culprit, but in any event, Shaq didn't thrive in any particular areas.  He was best on the defensive end, a big and strong post defender, but he lacked the athleticism to be a shot blocker and often because of his need to use physicality rather than athleticism found himself in foul trouble and on the bench.  Shaq could have provided depth because, after all, there aren't many sure things in Maryland's 2014-15 frontcourt, but there are worse gambles to take than two highly-rated, seven-foot freshmen like Michal Cekovsky and Trayvon Reed.  If even one of those can be a legit presence early, the frontcourt should be just fine.

Our Pets Heads are Falling Off!

At some point you learn from your mistakes.  No, not the Terps, but your humble author.  After years of jumping to call things a low point, you learn to just stop doing that for fear of what will come next.  Yesterday's lost to Boston U wasn't the first time that Maryland has lost to a team from the lowly Patriot League in Comcast Center, just the most recent.  The Terps led for just 4:00 total yesterday.  For those without the benefit of a calculator, that's just 10% of the game.  The Terps basically let a team from a low-major league come into our gym and do whatever they want.

The Terriers aren't awful, of course.  There's probably little different between them and Oregon State, other than name and that no one on BU was likely recruited to play at an ACC level.  Anyone who thought Maryland would win handily yesterday either doesn't pay attention to Maryland or doesn't pay attention to the sport in general.  BU had already given George Washington and Harvard - two teams better than Maryland - trouble and were picked to win their league.  It's a team likely to play in March, whether in the NCAA or the NIT.

In the postgame, the esteemed Coach Turgeon said the following:

We can’t score 77 at home and lose, so maybe it’s on the defensive end

77 points probably ought to be enough to win in most cases, but the game was 76 possessions.  I don't want to make too much about whether Turgeon understands tempo-free statistics, and I'm sure it's not lost on him that 57% FT shooting and a dozen and a half turnovers are bad looks, but make no mistake that the offense's inability to convert were just as damaging as giving up all those open 3s to BU.

The Terps are left with the very real possibility that they won't finish above .500 overall for the first time in over 20 years.  Even if they win their next two games (no guarantee), they'll need to get to 8-10 in the conference just to get to 16-15 for the season.  While the Seth Allen injury has hurt, that's a very bleak outlook for a program in Year 3 of a rebuild.

Blast-Off #3

Mumpkins and Ritchie's Blast-Off #3

51-50 W vs (14) NCST

The Terps didn't want me to write a third-straight disappointing post, so they decided to pull out a win over the (14) NCST Wolfpack tonight at Comcast. What a game. Despite not making a FG for a 10-minute period in the first half, the Terps got after it on defense all night, holding the NCAA leader in team field goal percentage (52.8%) to a measly 31.1%. They played with passion and energy and looked like they wanted to win. It was quite the contrast from the team that took the court in Coral Gables on Sunday night. Dez Wells had a SICK block, Len had a sick alley-oop down the stretch, and Len bailed out Pe on the final shot. I've watched the highlights on ESPN 4 times already, and I have a feeling it won't be getting old anytime soon.

Gary was there to receive some painting at halftime (I could explain it better but don't feel like it. Still bummed he didn't fistpump) and this W was a good way to tell our former AD what's up. Thanks for bankrupting us, a-hole, but we've moved on to B1GGER and better things. I still miss Gary a lot though:

"Kathy Worthington doesn't speak for me, she has never won a national championship, she has never done anything. She's an associate AD. This is just giving you guys stuff to make me look bad."

Let's get to it!

On blast:

1. Refs - I hate when fans blame refs for a loss, or complain an inordinate amount about the officiating in general. But Mike Eades, Roger Ayers, and Raymond Styons (thank you, Yahoo Sports) were not on their game tonight. In a physical game like that, I find it hard to believe that 8 of the first 11 fouls in the second half were on the Terps. One foul in particular stands out - with about 9:28 left in the game, CJ Leslie drove to the basket and was guarded by Padge. Leslie put up the contested shot, missed, fell to the floor, and Padge collected the rebound and looked up to pass. A full 2-seconds after the shot occurred, the foul was called. Ridiculous...

(Side note: Check out this site if you want to yell better,more personal insults to the refs of your favorite college basketball team!)

2. Students who stormed the court - It's not a HUGE deal to me, and I'm not embarrassed to be a Maryland fan because of it, but really? They were 14th-ranked coming into the game despite being picked pre-season to win the ACC. That means they have under-achieved, despite a win vs then (1) Duke in Raleigh on Saturday. They're not a top-10 team, not one of our rivals, and this game didn't clinch any sort of championship (regular season or otherwise).

Guys who get to ride up front for being good at sports:

1. Terps - Sounds really lame to just pick everyone, but it was a really balanced effort tonight. Dez didn't have the best game, but he still worked his butt off on the defensive end. Pe finally hit some shots, but 9 is still too many for him to take in my opinion. All in all though, great team win and hoping it builds momentum going to Chapel Hill on Saturday.

2. Coach Turgeon - Mainly for epic postgame quotes tonight:

''I didn't come here to be mediocre. I came here to do great things. We haven't done many great things since I've been here. This is a great thing.''

''We hadn't won a big game since Greivis was here."

Was this Turgeon's "Georgetown win?" (for those who don't know what that means, see #8 on this list) Time will tell...

We'll be roadtripping to Chapel Hill on Friday afternoon for the game on Saturday. More to come from the Research Triangle on Saturday... Go Terps!

I Don't Know, Man

Like, I just don't know.

It should be easy to be optimistic about the Terps even with a rough season. A new coach means that hope springs eternal and that the GOLDEN AGE of Terrapins' hoops is upon us with the impending commitment of the Harrison twins followed by God Knows Who Else. But here we are at 16-12, coming off a terrible loss, probably headed for 16-14 and no postseason once again, and it sucks.

Should I be so tired of this season? My expectations weren't high. I expected about 17 regular season wins, and there's still a substantially non-zero chance that happens. The team, while far from terrible as far as the talent on the roster goes, isn't nearly great enough to overcome the lack of depth that has hit it over the past few months.

But still how many games can this team play poorly in the second half? How many times can the head coach take a public swipe at his best player? How can you handle a team that has played so well at times losing to the worst team it has lost to since Gary lost to Coppin State way back in his first season here?

I counted myself an early believe in Mark Turgeon, and I don't rescind that at all. Not yet at least. I know that it's mostly frustration, but the first year could have gone better. Most folks have nothing but praise for the new guy, but me? Not so much.

More to the point, the recruiting trail has been ablaze for the Terps in the last year. Yes, there have been some nice commitments, but the program isn't really much past where it was last spring. Alex Len and Shaq Cleare were big gets, but the groundwork had been laid before Gary retired. Jake Layman was a huge win and a great scouting job by the staff, but in reality he only just replaced Justin Anderson who left for douchier pastures in Charlottesville. Seth Allen might be good but he's an unrated combo guard with injury issues - is he that much better than Sterling Gibbs would have been? And let's not get started with the latest commit. Welcome to the family, Damonte, but let's be real, if Gary had signed such an, er, under the radar prospect, people would have screamed bloody murder. No matter how good the Turge thinks he was when he saw him work out, the kid doesn't get an offer if the staff doesn't miss on Mitch McGary, Robert Upshaw, Amile Jefferson, Robert Carter, et al. It's really not a good start to have put together this recruiting class, with just one highly touted big man and no point guards (unless you think Allen is), given the team's needs and the six scholarships to play with.

Either way, it should be interesting in the coming months. Any underclassman on the roster with the exception of Padgett and Faust have to be considered as possibly not on the team for next season for whatever reasons. I still have plenty of faith that Turgeon is the guy, and I realize that I'm just being a whiny little bitch. Let's just hope that year 2 is better than this one.

A Half Dozen Events of Varying Uncertainty

To ring in the new season, and celebrate FEAST WEEK, we bring you the Coors Light SIX PACK O QUESTIONS, in leiu of an outright season preview. But it's not questions, it's more like topic/question hybrids. These responses will appear here with the original copy storied in a hermetically sealed mayonaisse jar on Funk & Wagnall's front porch. Without further whimsy, away we go.

1. How Will Terrell Stoggins Adapt - It's no secret early on that there has been something of an adjustment period between the Turge and Stogs (see Parker over Stogs in Sunday's starting five). It's also no secret that this team - both now and at least for next year - will only go so far as Stoglin takes them. There's no doubt that he's going to be a great scorer for the Terps. Only five men - Smith, Branch, Lucas, Rhodes, and King - scored more points for the Terps as freshmen. The real question is whether he can move beyond that and be a great leader. The Turge has moved him off the ball in favor of Nick Faust, himself better suited to play on the wing, but Stoglin will only become an elite player if he proves capable of running the offense again, this time in a way that maximizes his teammates opportunities as well as his own.

2. Ashton "The X-Factor" Pankey - New nickname! I have to admit that I never really envisioned Pankey doing much here. He signed as a fairly lightly regarded recruit, picking the Terps over Houston, then injured himself and missed his last year of high school ball. He played one minute last year in the season opener against Seattle and injured himself again, earning a redshirt season. It's never good when you have a big man two years removed from competitive play and a growing history of lower body injuries. So far, however, Pankey has been outstanding, having 13 and 8 against UNC-Wilmington in his de-facto debut.. Granted it was one game against a weaker opponent, but even the very solid Dino Gregory rarely did that, to say nothing of your Braxton Duprees or Steve Goins. A good performance in Puerto Rico would be very interesting indeed.

3. How will this team play? - After 20 years at Maryland and 30 as a head coach, it was pretty easy to know what you'd get with Gary as your coach. A fast pace, the flex offense, man to man defense, lots of pressure, and eight or nine man rotation, and a postseason berth. Now in comes Mark Turgeon who will make us acclimate ourselves to a whole new style. His teams at both Wichita State and Texas A&M played a slower, grind it out pace, and while Turge has said he would play differently if he had the personnell, his track record doesn't really indicate that. I'm not so sure a slower style is better for the long term, but on the other hand, even if it isn't, perhaps the team will be better able to use a zone defense, even if only as an occasional gimmick to throw at teams that can't shoot. Of course we won't really know much about this until next season because given the lack of scholarship bodies available, a more deliberate pace is almost an absolute necessity.

4. Recruiting - Lefty once said that recruiting is like shaving - you need to do it every day or else you look like a bum. There's no doubt that this staff adheres to that adage, but the results so far have been mixed. Not bad at all, mind you, but given the overall deficiencies in the program right now, there's no doubt that they have more to do. Jake Layman and Shaq Cleare are an awesome start, but the team needs another guard, preferably a ballhandler, and another big or two, depending on the development of the current roster. 2012 has a few possibilities, but this year's juniors are where to look for the next earth shattering committment. If either the Harrisons or Nate Britt were to commit during the winter, or perhaps a similar name not currently off the radar, it would give the program a huge boost both on the court in a few years, but also immediately in the buzz-susceptible world of recruiting.

5. Fan Support - Fans surely realize that this will be a tough year, but hopefully that doesn't deter them from coming out and supporting THEIR team as Mark Turgeon tries to build the progam up once again. Early results seem less than promising, and of course results could dictate how attendance looks in the new year. If the team can remain competitive early on and get a boost from the returns of Alex Len and MVPe', Comcast could be difficult in February. On the other hand, a dismal showing in Puerto Rico followed by a loss to, say, Florida International (already having nightmares about this one) could mean a sea of open red seats in the Castle.

6. Can this team go .500 or better - It's been a long time since Maryland finished with a sub .500 overall record, but this year it will be a challenge to extend that streak. Given the givens, even my somewhat optimistic predictions only cranked out a 15-15 record for the regular season. There's also the equally long streak of winning at least 7 games in the ACC, which probably goes hand in hand with the former goal this season. Neither "streak" is really much to be proud of or care about, but it will be an interesting benchmark nonetheless.

Happy watching, Terps fans!

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?