With basketball season getting underway, and some recent interactions I've had online, I figured I should get ahead of this one: Maryland needs to move on from Mark Turgeon before it's beyond too late.
Most people in the Maryland basketball community have echoed my thoughts on this subject, but I've come to learn there is a louder community defending Turg and his tenure in College Park so far. Now, to be fair to Mark, there are many programs around the country that would love to have the record he's had at Maryland. The problem he faces is here is that standards are higher... or at least they should be.
Some people seem to think that where he has gotten this team is good enough for what we should want. I'm here to tell those people they are wrong. Turgeon has gotten Maryland to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament all of one time in 10 seasons. He has reached the round of 32 three times, and lost in the first round once. He has made the NIT once, and in fairness to him, the 2019-20 tournament was canceled so I can't say what would happen there. He has failed to not make any tournament 3 times.
Now let's take a look at the last 10 years of Gary William's tenure at UMD.
- 1 National Title
- 1 Final 4
- 1 Sweet 16
- 4 Round of 32
- 3 NITs
- 1 No tournament
The biggest argument I heard from people arguing for his recent success is that last year's team outperformed expectations before getting boat raced by Alabama in the second round of the tournament. My question is, why were expectations so low? Yes, there was a lot of turnover on the roster, but Turgeon is an excellent recruiter, the team should have been able to reload enough (like top programs do) where expectations remain high.
Now, this season, we have "all the recruits we could ask for" to quote on person I was going back and forth with on Twitter. This would be a good argument in most cases, but Maryland is predicted to finish 5th in the Big Ten, which means even the experts don't think much of them right now.
Now, let's take out the numbers and just talk about the product put out on the court. I've watched damn near every Terps game since I was born. The biggest problem I've had is how his offensive sets will consistently have 2-3 players standing absolutely still during their sets, presumably to be ready as spot up shooters. The problem with this is that if they're standing still, they become extremely easy to guard. Even a player like Donta Scott, who has shown flashes of greatness, isn't consistent enough on the perimeter for defenses to truly fear as a shooter. This makes dribble penetration a non-fact because opposing defenses will feel totally comfortable collapsing without worrying about the outside. This makes them both easy and predictable. Not a good method to be.
An argument that others have made is that Maryland have the Big Ten DPOY last year, which seems fair, if we won games more consistently. I had certain things pointed out to me like how they won against a top 10 ranked Wisconsin while holing them to 64 points. Seems fair on the surface... but we only scored 70. Neither team was shooting the lights out in that game. "Well we held Illinois to 63!" We only scored 66 and won by 3. But what about Minnesota? We held them to 49 and they were ranked. Well... Minnesota fired their coach this offseason, so what does that tell you? Well Purdue only score 60! Maryland scored 61... Ok, last one, we held Minnesota to 59 when we beat them! Again, coach: fired.
Good defense turns into good offense. If our defense was as suffocating as some people want us to believe, it would turn into easy offensive points. That was a staple of Gary Williams, and many other successful coaches. It may not be fair to compare Turgeon to Williams, they are their own unique people, but Turgeon was Williams' successor, so he's expected to fill his shoes.
The final breaking point for me is the style of play Maryland runs. Their games can be utterly painful to watch at times, and Turgeon doesn't really seem to do anything innovative. It took him a long time to just accept the team running on the break, instead of forcing them to run a half court set, giving up easy opportunities. If things aren't going well for Turgeon you can often see him throwing his hands up and walking away in defeat. I'm used to seeing a coach who doesn't accept these kinds of failures and will light a fire under his team until they reach the desired level of play.
Mark Turgeon is a phenomenal recruiter, I will not do him a disservice and act as if he is not. He's just not a good coach and Maryland needs to be better.
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