The Coronavirus Effects on the Terps

As you know by now the world of sports has been almost completely shut down for now to stop the spread of the virus. The ramifications on some of the Terps athletic programs (for this article Men’s and Women’s Basketball and Football) brings many issues with it. Yes, every program is dealing with this, but our focus is Maryland.

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Terps Men’s and Women’s Basketball:

The Men’s team was primed for a deep run in the NCAA Tournament according to many analysts and fans. That was not by any means unrealistic. While I personally believe they would not have made it past the Sweet 16 due to their existing flaws;  I cannot definitely say that.  As much as you can make an argument for why they would not go deep, you can make a corresponding argument as to why they had the potential to do so. One of the bigger picture issues from this fallout at play is this year’s NCAA Tournament and Big Ten Tournament. These tournaments were going to be a great litmus test for Head Coach Mark Turgeon. The fans but more importantly the Athletic Department was going to find out whether Turgeon could make a deep run in the Tournaments with a talented team. Turgeon currently has three more years left on his deal but is looking for more. Many college basketball coaches push to have a consistent 4-5 years on their deal so that other coaches can’t negatively recruit on how little time left a program’s coach has on their deal. (Sidebar: To me 3 years left on a deal should in no way preclude a player from signing with a school. On top of that the deal is guaranteed for Turgeon, there is no buy out clause for the school. If every coach has an out clause for themselves the whole length of contract thing is kind of a joke anyway.)

The bottom line is we are nowhere near finding out on Turgeon’s ability to take Maryland to the next level in Tournament play than where we were at the beginning of the season.

Yes, winning a share of the Big Ten Conference Regular Season Title was a heck of an accomplishment but we have always known that Turgeon does a solid job during the regular season and usually has the Terps in the Top 5 of the Big Ten every year. In fact, they are the second winningest team in both overall and conference play since they joined the league in the Fall of 2014. Now Maryland is left to guess on Mark Turgeon and what they should do in terms of an extension or a new deal that would replace the current deal. If the Terps go ahead and extend him or give him a new deal, Terps fans could be stuck with a real and clear ceiling on yearly success for at least another five years with declining recruiting and possibly on the court performance.

If you were to make a list of the positives and negatives on Turgeon, here is what they would be. On the positive end Turgeon’s teams always play hard, rarely lack effort and usually play good to excellent defense. He always seems to have a good relationship with the players, rarely do you hear about locker room issues between coach and players. You can count on a consistent 20 game winner each regular season. This is Maryland basketball, that is supposed to be the norm though, we aren’t supposed to be grateful to get to 20 and call it a day.

On the other side of the coin, Turgeon’s teams have never really had an offensive identity, never seem to run any offensive half court sets, doesn’t run and gun and press enough even with the athletes he has (to be fair he did start to do some of that this year), player development has been mixed, rotations and roles questionable and his team’s have struggled in Conference and NCAA Tournament play. Lately his recruiting has not been as strong as people want to believe.

In fact, his incoming recruiting class is not strong, and I think the 2020-2021 team will struggle to get to 20 wins. If we had a Big Ten and NCAA Tournament, so many questions would have been answered.

The Women’s program was on a mighty roll coming off a share of the Big Ten Regular Season title and being the Big Ten Tournament Champions. They would have received a #1 seed and would have likely gotten to the Elite 8. I think Final Four may have been a stretch but not out of the realm of possibility. It’s just as disappointing for Brenda Freese and her team if not more as it is for Mark Turgeon and the men’s team.

Football:

At least basketball got to play a regular season and with the women even a conference tournament. The Football program is getting hit at the very beginning of the process for them as it pertains to on the field training. Year 2 for Mike Locksley is just as critical as year one. In fact you could make an argument its more important with the change over of players—parting ways with guys that do not belong or not buying into the new regime and the new guys, Locksley’s guys who fit the mold of what he his trying to accomplish with his program. Right now, the Big Ten has put a halt to things until April 6^th and then they will re-evaluate. That cancels 6 practices that the Terps were planning to have during that time. Those practices could be made up if they come back within a close period of time. No one knows for sure on a return and some are saying that these initial timelines given are soft sells and that we could be looking at two to three months. I personally don’t think two months is a crazy timeline with all of this.

Let’s be honest the whole team needs as much practice time as they can get after what we saw last season. It starts though with good personnel and Locksley did a good job of salvaging last year’s class and has the #31 class coming in this season including early enrollees and Juco transfers.

These players are here so they can participate in spring practice in order to learn the scheme and get the reps at the collegiate level, so they are ready to be productive for the Terps come the fall. The whole point was to get an early start on learning and training.

At the Quarterback position, the lack of players at the position this spring was going to be a benefit for Lance LeGendre and Josh Jackson who both need a lot of work. As we know the RB position lost a ton of production in Anthony McFarland and Javon Leake who went to the NFL early. Tayon Fleet-Davis is the man for now and has never seen the amount of reps he could see this season. The offensive line has a fair amount of experience coming back but there are two new players that will be on the line plus the backups who need to get acclimated. The defense has a fair amount of experience returning but they are counting some young guys who got some playing time last year but are still in development mode.

This Coronavirus situation affects everyone, but some programs are better able to handle this than others based on their situation and right now the timing is terrible for Maryland Football. This could very well set them back although there is nothing that can be done. For fans who are looking for some progress this year, that could be curtailed, and things set back. In the East Division we know Ohio State will be just fine. Penn State, Michigan and Indiana will be affected some but should be in fairly good shape. This will affect Michigan State and Rutgers the most as they have new coaching staffs this year.

Maryland Football has had a lot to deal with the last few years and this is not something they need right now. They could use a few years of getting a break so they can try and build their program. Unfortunately, 2020 is not going to be one of the years, I guess we will have to wait until next season.