There’s Finally Reason to Fear the Turtle Once Again
The last time the Maryland
Terrapins basketball program began a season with such high expectations and
national recognition, the year was 2001. Pluto was a planet, Destiny’s Child
was atop the charts and I was right on the cusp of puberty. Fast forward to now
and Pluto is a “dwarf planet,” a solo Beyoncé runs the world and adulthood
still eludes me. As for the Terps, they enter this season as the #3 ranked team
in the country.
It has been a long — and often frustrating — journey
since 2002. Maryland basketball won its first and only National Championship
that year, but has since failed to maintain the lofty standards it had set and has
been mired in relative mediocrity until last season. While it may seem the
Terps’ basketball program has come full circle, its biggest tests still lie
ahead as this year’s Terps prepare to build on last year’s surprisingly
successful campaign. If Head Coach Mark Turgeon, star point guard Melo Trimble
and company are able to do that, Maryland basketball will find itself in the
same position it was heading into the 2003 season. The college basketball world
will be their oyster.
But for shucks sake, let’s crack this
preview open, add some lemon and hot sauce and slurp down some hot takes!
(Note: There will be more bad puns later, you’ve been warned.)
New Faces
The Terps’ lofty preseason ranking is due in large
part to an injection of talent that Mark Turgeon did not have at his disposal
last season. The cast of returning players is good — very good, in fact. It’s not
“consensus preseason Top-5 team in the country” good, but certainly Top-25
good. That’s where these three — with their experience, talent, and versatility
— come in. Arguably the biggest question mark the pundits and prognosticators
have regarding the Terps is how the new additions will gel with a team that
went 28-7 last season. Well, pundits and prognosticators, I’m going to tell you.
Diamond Stone (Not one of the aforementioned puns, that’s actually his real
name!)
The four-time state champion, consensus
Top-10, five-star, McDonald’s All-American, FIBA U-17
World Champion, freshman big man will likely start this season coming off
the bench. But that’s no knock on Stone (pictured above), who
has arguably been the team’s best low-post scoring threat since the day he
walked on campus. Look for the Milwaukee native to be brought along slowly
behind junior Damonte Dodd and sophomore Michael Čekovský, as he settles into
the college game on the defensive end and improves his conditioning. No matter
how impressive he may be on offense, until he tightens up his defensive
positioning and conditioning, he’ll attract foul trouble — which is a death
knell for any post player, even one
as talented offensively as Stone. Early on Stone will give Turgeon great
flexibility as he figures out his best lineups and substitution patterns. When
his high-scoring guards and defensively dominant big men need a breather, Stone
offers a perfect change of pace.
Rasheed Sulaimon
For those still lamenting the Terps
jettisoning from the ACC, here’s a juicy storyline for you: Duke’s
evil Coach K unfairly throws a talented player in the doghouse and then uses an
unsubstantiated sexual assault claim as cover for dismissing the player from Duke’s
program, a first for Krzyzewski. Now imagine that player transfers to Maryland.
Well, that’s exactly what happened in the case of Duke transfer Rasheed
Sulaimon (pictured above). The senior guard is a versatile scorer, who brings defensive
toughness and experience handling the pressures of playing on a highly
publicized team. He transferred to Maryland largely because of his relationship
with Mark Turgeon — who he’s known since he was 13 years old — and the trust he
and his family have with the coaching staff. At Duke, when Sulaimon’s
relationship with Coach K was strong, he was one of the best freshman in the
country. When the relationship soured, so did his play. The hope is that with a
new coach and a fresh start Sulaimon can let his undeniably immense talent
shine.
Robert Carter, Jr.
Another transfer from a former ACC rival, Robert
Carter, Jr. arrived in College Park by way of
Georgia Tech in June 2014 and has REALLY taken to the weight room. Seriously,
look:
Now he’s basically a more explosive and better conditioned
version of what he’s always been — an elite rebounding, low-post scoring, occasional
mid-range jump-shooting big man. Carter’s impact will be seen most in the
rebounding column, where he racked up 11.2 rebounds per 40 minutes during his
time at Georgia Tech. The players in the ACC are no slouches and Carter proved he could be an effective
and efficient post player in a tough conference. This has Maryland coaches
excited to see what he can do with a new and improved body, as well as a
stronger supporting cast. The Thomasville, GA native spent last season working
out and practicing with the Terps, but was unable to play due to NCAA rules
regarding transfers. That season’s worth of familiarity will help the humble
country boy hit the ground — and hopefully the glass — running.
Biggest Games
One could make a great argument that
a college basketball team’s eventual placement in the postseason hierarchy largely comes down to two questions: who did
you beat outside of your conference to start the season and how did you finish
up your conference slate? With that in mind, the three games that will make or
break the
Terps’
season relative to their expectations are two early season out-of-conference
matchups and a tough late season game on the road against a conference rival.
Also contributing to my rationale are pettiness, rancor, resentment and indignation. But
seriously, Georgetown and North Carolina are awful and everything about
them stinks.
Nov. 17 vs. Georgetown
From an “impact on the season” perspective, this
game is only important to the Terps in the event that they lose it. From a rabid
and tribal Maryland fan’s perspective, this holds special significance as the
rekindling of a long dead local rivalry. The last non-tournament game the DC metro neighbors played was in 1993 and would prove to be a seminal moment for
Maryland basketball. That overtime win against then mighty Georgetown signaled a
withdrawal of the dark clouds that hung over a program still reeling from the death
of Len Bias and the NCAA sanctions levied against the Terps in 1990. Since that
game, Georgetown has looked down their snotty noses and refused to schedule a
rematch in College Park… until now. Despite being clear favorites over the
unranked Hoyas, Maryland players, coaches and fans will enter this game with a
chip on their collective shoulder that has been growing for decades. Some proof
of the cathartic enormity of this game? Noted
Maryland super-fan and ESPN personality Scott Van Pelt will be airing his new show
SportsCenter @ Night live from the
Xfinity Center at the conclusion of the game. Said Van Pelt, “On November 17,
either I’m not doing a show or we’re going to do the show there. Because I will be in that building that night.”
See you at Bent’s afterward, SVP.
Dec. 1 @ North Carolina
Unlike the Georgetown game, Maryland’s ACC/Big Ten
Challenge matchup is both a renewal of a bitter and storied rivalry as well as
a game that could have huge implications toward the end of the season. If
everything goes (mostly) according to plan for both teams, the result of this
contest could go a long way in determining which team gets a #1 seed in the NCAA
tournament, and which team has to pretend they’re happy with a #2 seed. Like
Maryland, North Carolina returns a ton of talent from a successful squad and
looks like a bona fide Top-5 team in the country. This game will feature a
marquee individual matchup, as North Carolina point guard Marcus Paige is pitted
against Maryland’s Melo Trimble. The two have
eerily similar games and are always the most influential player on the court
for their respective teams.
March 5 @ Indiana
There could be a lot riding on the Terps’ season
finale in Bloomington against a tough Indiana team. The result could end up
affecting NCAA and Big Ten tournament seeding, not to mention the Big Ten
regular season crown. Assembly Hall is a notably tough place to play and
Indiana will surely be trying to improve their own tournament resume, so the
atmosphere for this game will be electric. Expect another great individual
matchup between Trimble and Indiana’s stud point guard Yogi Ferrell (pictured below), who scored
24 points and dished out five assists against the Terps in Bloomington last season.
Ferrell is a cat-quick, waterbug of a player, who glides by most defenders with
ease. This will be a nationally televised game, so if both teams come in highly
ranked with a lot to play for, it should be one of the best games of the season
from even a neutral perspective.
Hidden Statistics
Taking Care of the Basketball
Last season when Trimble wasn’t the
primary ball handler, that responsibility belonged to seniors
Dez Wells and Richaud Pack. This season, when Trimble isn’t the primary ball handler,
the responsibility will belong to Rasheed Sulaimon and Jaylen Brantley. Adjust
your pun settings to hacky because this… wait for it… “changing of the guard”
represents an upgrade in assist-to-turnover ratio, colloquially known by
linguistically banal coaches since the dawn of time as “taking care of the
basketball.” The Terps struggled to do that last season, finishing with a ratio
of .87 assists for every turnover, good for 265th nationally out of
345 teams. Wells and Pack were key contributors last
year, but combined for a net negative .95 AST/TO ratio, falling just short of breaking even.
Compare that to a ratio of 2.13 between Sulaimon’s sophomore year at Duke and
Brantley’s JUCO season at Odessa College. While Sulaimon and Brantley can’t do
some of the things Wells and Pack could, their presence this season will
help to improve one of the Terps’ biggest problem areas from last season.
Maryland was +.129 Lucky Last Season,
Whatever That Means
For those unfamiliar, Kenpom.com is the sabermetrics of
college basketball and Ken Pomeroy is Bill James. He has developed a
relatively accurate methodology for predicting the outcome of a given game on a given night. And that jerk says
the Terps were, not only lucky last
season, but extremely lucky to win the
28 games they did. Mark Turgeon’s squad was exactly +.129 lucky, Pomeroy’s
analysis indicates. That is A LOT of luck — the second luckiest team in the
country, in fact. Texas Southern was the luckiest, though, miraculously managing
to win 22 games while trotting out a starting five of: Madarious Gibbs, two
German Shepherds, an eight-year-old girl and a card board cut-out of Karl
Malone, apparently. So a mean person on the Internet with a cool website called
the Terps lucky last season. Why care? Because he’s probably right. Any team
that isn’t remarkably awful will play at least a few close games over the
course of a season and more often than not they’ll win their “fair share” of
those games. “Win some, lose some,” the old adage goes. Pomeroy’s super cool
algorithms say the Terps won, quite literally, more than their “fair share” of
close games last season. From an analytical point of view, it makes sense to
view close games between relatively evenly matched teams as simply toss-ups, the results seem to indicate that is the
case. But that ignores context for which there is no algorithm. Last
year’s Terps were clutch, plain and simple. More specifically, sophomores Melo
Trimble and Jared Nickens have already proven they want to take — and will make
— the big shot when the team needs it. Pomeroy’s
ratings on how the team performed last season, all minutes of the game being
weighed equally, didn’t seem to match up with
the final outcomes. However, I would bet that the wins make much more sense
when you look at the team’s performance in the final two minutes of a close
game, and there is more to that than just luck.
To follow a college basketball team from
November to March is to follow multiple seasons taking place simultaneously,
and that is what makes it great. Teams in any sport
measure success by winning championships, enshrining trophies or hanging
banners, and college basketball is no different. The obvious way to measure
success is based on NCAA Tournament results. But basing a season’s perceived
successfulness on a single-elimination tournament? That’s unfair. After all, did the 18-1 Patriots have an
“unsuccessful” season? Some — these are great — might argue yes, but
they would be wrong.
It is my humble opinion that the
Terps, with the talent they’ve assembled, will be the best team in the country next
season, and that “title” — if you want to call it that — won’t be won or lost in March. I see the Terps finishing the regular
season 28-4 and dropping contests at UNC, in
NYC vs. UConn, at Michigan and at Michigan State, on their way to the Big Ten regular season title. As for the conference and NCAA
tournaments, who knows? Anything can happen in a tournament format. If the
season goes as I think it will, however, at
the conclusion of the regular season Mark Turgeon and his team will have every
reason to be confident about going the distance and winning the Big Ten and National Championships.
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