Last night, Maryland eked out a five point victory over the Fighting Erick Greens of Virginia Tech in a game that was far closer than it should have been. The Terrapins have been playing excellent defense this season and hitting the offensive glass with an almost-scary ferocity. Yet Maryland kept Virginia Tech in the game for the duration because the Terrapins penchant for turnovers is getting ridiculous.
How bad was it? Maryland had 14 turnovers. Compare that with the Hokies mere six giveaways and the discrepancy in attempted field goals makes a little more sense: Maryland shot the ball 52 times, while Virginia Tech got 65 attempts. What’s even more impressive about those numbers is that the magnitude of the differential is obscured by how much worse it would have looked if Maryland hadn’t been so much better getting offensive rebounds. Maryland grabbed something like 48.4% of their own misses while Virginia Tech could only get 23.2% of their own clunkers. The point is that if 13 extra shots sounds bad, it’s actually way better than what the differential would look like if the Terps weren’t so dominant on the offensive glass and that’s the maddening thing. This team is an excellent defensive team and an above-average offensive team as things stand. If the Terrapins turned the ball over even just a little bit less, this team would take a leap from good to great.
It’s simplistic to say that turnovers are the one thing holding the Terps back, but it’s not far from the truth. Pick a category and Maryland, by just about every measure is doing good-to-excellent. Yet Maryland sits at 5-5 in the Conference, when the could easily be at 7-3 or even 8-2. The turnovers are that bad. On the season Maryland has turned the ball over on 22.7% of possessions, good for 292nd in Division I. They are easily the worst team in the conference in this category and since the beginning of intra-conference play, the turnover problem has actually gotten worse (23.3%). What amplifies the problem for Maryland is that this team is something of the embodiment of a perfect gentleman: so polite that they will gladly give you the ball on offense and so deferential that they wouldn’t dream of taking the ball from you on defense. Maryland forces their opponents to turn over the ball on only 15.1% of possessions. The Terrapins never win the battle for turnover margin and hardly ever even come remotely close.
If you take all the teams in Division I, and subtract their opponent turnover percentage from their own turnover percentage (thanks, Ken Pomeroy!), you get an idea of how bad Maryland routinely loses this battle. In all fairness, the Terrapins are not the worst in the country by this ad-hoc measure. That dishonor belongs squarely to Grambling (-14.2%) and Lamar (-10.3%) which seem to dominate the bottom of just about any basketball list. Maryland comes in at fifth worst in the country at -7.6% (just behind Idaho and Buffalo). Just for fun, I checked the worst 25 teams in the country by this measure: Maryland was the only one with a winning record. Hawaii (number 26) was the next worst team with a winning record thanks to an incredibly gentle schedule.
What’s my point? This approach to turnovers isn’t a winning strategy. The teams who follow the same pattern as Maryland are some of the worst teams in the country. That Maryland has been able to win as much as they have is a testament to how well the team is playing every other aspect of the game. The truth is, however, unless the Terrapins figure out how to fix this turnover problem, it’s very possible that this team has hit its ceiling. If, however, the team is able to fix this one issue: Maryland suddenly becomes incredibly dangerous.