Is Maryland’s Season Done?
Posted by KCarpenter on February 14th, 2012This was a bad weekend for the Maryland Terrapins. On Thursday, starting point guard Pe’Shon Howard tore his anterior cruciate ligament, and on Friday the team announced that he was out for the season. Howard is no stranger to injury; he missed most of Maryland’s non-conference slate with a broken foot. Then, on Saturday, the Blue Devils tore apart Maryland in a second half that featured the prominent benching and subsequent sulking of star player and ACC leading scorer, Terrell Stoglin. After the game, Stoglin made his displeasure known on Twitter. At 4-6 in conference, Maryland stands on the precipice of a collapse. Is Maryland done for the year?
It's Been A Long Season For Mark Turgeon
The Terrapins were never going to win the conference championship, and, coming into this season, making the NCAA Tournament seemed like a longshot. None of this has changed. The expectations for this team at this point are simple: avoid collapse and prepare for the future. Howard is a gifted player, but his contributions to the team have been limited this year. He has a team-low 80.4 offensive efficiency rating and a team-high 34.9% turnover ratio. While his defense and playmaking (including a team-high 22.4% assist rating) helps to offset his shortcomings, there is a case to be made that the team is fine without him. His replacement, freshman Nick Faust, isn’t much better in terms of offensive efficiency and turnover percentage, and has yet to find his footing under Mark Turgeon. Howard’s absence means more minutes for Faust, and while that may be hard to watch now, the live game experience well help the promising young guard develop faster. Turgeon hopefully realizes that right now (with six conference losses), this season isn’t as important as next season.
That’s not to say that Maryland shouldn’t keep trying to win games. Obviously, winning games is the point of having a team, but this season needs to be looked at in terms of realistic expectations. If the team is still gunning for a gaudy record and an NCAA Tournament berth, there is bound to be a lot of disappointment in College Park. If instead the team can look at the remainder of the season as an opportunity for growth and development, it can end as a success. Of course, the biggest key to all of this is Stoglin.
While the guard’s display on the court and the Internet leave a lot to be desired in terms of maturity, let’s consider the situation. Stoglin is a sophomore in the midst of a breakout season which has made him the leading scorer in the conference and a legitimate college basketball star. Even when the cause seems lost, as it did against Duke, Stoglin plays with a passion and a desire to win that’s a credit to him and his team. In this case, his post-game passion was mis-channeled, but otherwise, he has everything you’d want in a star player and team leader. If I’m Mark Turgeon, my number one priority for this season is making sure that Stoglin is on board for the long-term future of the team. He obviously has no problem playing for the moment, but if Turgeon can convince the young player to channel his energy towards playing for next year and beyond, Maryland could become incredibly dangerous in coming seasons.
Is Maryland done for the season? Outside of a big win or deep ACC Tournament run, it seems likely. For the Terrapins, it’s not about getting a few more wins this year, but rather about laying the foundations for conference championships to come.
