Mark Turgeon
NEW YORK — Mark Turgeon was growing impatient. His Terrapins men’s basketball team had just stumbled through yet another road loss against an ACC bottom-feeder — this time at Georgia Tech — and he was running out of options.
No matter what adjustments the second-year coach tried to make, the young Terps continued their chaotic ways. For whatever reason, the message wasn’t being heard. And with just four guaranteed games remaining, Turgeon was starting to wonder whether his erratic team could salvage an up-and-down season.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know if we’re ever going to figure this out,’” Turgeon said Saturday. “That would’ve been a really long summer.”
But something changed after the Terps hit what they now call “rock bottom” during that Feb. 27 defeat against the Yellow Jackets. A me-first group finally unified. The Terps started cutting down on turnovers, finding open men and delivering consistent effort. They stopped fretting over playing time or points and started focusing on having fun.
An inexperienced team was growing up, Turgeon said. The Terps (25-13, 8-10 ACC) notched just their second conference road win at Wake Forest in their next game, and built a 17-point first-half lead at Virginia eight days later.
And then they shocked the pundits. The Terps ousted then-No. 2 Duke in the ACC tournament quarterfinals, handing the Blue Devils their first loss in 19 outings with a healthy Ryan Kelly in the lineup.
A three-point defeat to North Carolina the following day ensured the Terps’ third-straight NCAA tournament absence, but Turgeon’s squad felt no shame accepting an NIT berth. It was all part of the maturation process for a team boasting six newcomers in its 10-man rotation, players explained.
With forward Dez Wells continuing to lead the way, the No. 2-seed Terps rattled off wins over two regular-season conference champions — Niagara and Denver — and dealt top-seeded Alabama its first home defeat since late December.
So when that inspired run ended with Tuesday’s semifinal loss to No. 3-seed Iowa, players didn’t take long to find positives from a season filled with highs and lows.
“We can take away a lot,” guard Pe’Shon Howard said. “We played our best basketball at the end of the season, and that’s what good teams do.”
“I’m proud of my guys,” Wells said. “Nobody really expected us to even be here, but we made it.”
True enough, but Terps fans likely hoped for more from Turgeon’s second campaign than an NIT semifinals appearance. Shortly after the NCAA approved the team’s appeal on waiver to allow Wells to play this season in early November, the Terps seemed an NCAA tournament lock.
They nearly upended then-No. 3 Kentucky at Barclays Center in the season opener, they cruised through a lean nonconference slate with 13 straight wins, and center Alex Len emerged as a surefire NBA lottery pick. This was the season, many fans figured, the Terps would regain a spot in the Top-25 rankings.
But then their inexperience began to show. The Terps struggled to gain any semblance of stability throughout ACC play, and earned a reputation as the conference’s most turnover-prone team. They rushed offensive sets, forced passes through traffic and slowly drifted out of the March Madness discussion.
A chaotic nine-day stretch in mid-February showcased the Terps’ chronic inconsistency. Less than a week after a sluggish home loss against Virginia, they sent students streaming onto Route 1 to celebrate an 83-81 win over the rival Blue Devils.
The Terps followed up the stellar display with a double-digit defeat at Boston College, a team that owned a 3-9 conference record at the time.
Turgeon did his best to remedy nagging errors. He shuffled players in and out of the starting lineup. He aired his grievances to the media. And he even stripped Howard and forward James Padgett of their captaincies. This was his team, Turgeon told players. If the Terps were going to experience the postseason, he’d lead them there.
The message eventually resonated. They pieced together their first three-game winning streak since nonconference play during the NIT, and they ultimately managed to tally the program’s most victories since 2006-07.
“We’re totally different,” Turgeon said. “We know how to coach our team now. We feel confident. We feel good about ourselves.”
The Terps must overcome a new set of challenges if they hope to translate that confidence into a March Madness bid next season. Len is widely expected to declare for June’s NBA Draft, leaving underclassmen Shaquille Cleare and Charles Mitchell to man the frontcourt. And the addition of Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame will make an already-tough ACC even more daunting.
But the Terps aren’t too concerned. They’ve finally figured out how to win, and they know they have the tools to build on a late-season run. It’s just a matter of continuing to mature.
“I think we’re highly motivated for next year,” Howard said. “We know how good we can be.”
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