The Terrapin men’s basketball team arrived in Greensboro, N.C., yesterday for the ACC Tournament in what amounts to its last chance to earn an invitation to the NCAA Tournament and salvage a disappointing season.

But don’t expect to see what you’ve witnessed the Terps do on the court all season long suddenly change this weekend. There won’t be a Greensboro miracle, which, for the Terps, would mean winning the conference tournament and avoiding their fourth trip to the NIT in the past seven years.

After playing 31 games, it’s evident what this year’s Terps are and aren’t capable of, and an 18-13 regular-season record capped off by three straight double-digit losses tells you all you need to know.

A five-hour bus ride to North Carolina isn’t going to radically turn the Terps into a dominant force that can win four games in four days. A first-round win against NC State tonight is a good possibility, but if the Terps do advance to tomorrow’s second round, a matchup with Duke awaits.

And a win against the Blue Devils isn’t happening.

Still don’t believe me? Here’s a rundown of just why an ACC Championship is far out of reach for this year’s team:

1. No team has ever won four straight games to win the ACC Tournament since the conference’s expansion in 2005.

“What we do now is get ready to play in the ACC Tournament,” coach Gary Williams said Saturday after his team’s 74-60 loss to Virginia. “I know no one has ever won four games down there since expansion. But at the same time, we’re going down there trying to win the thing.”

Of course, Williams is going to say that the Terps are heading to Greensboro intending on winning the ACC Tournament, but Williams is a smart guy who realizes it’s a tall task to win four straight games in an arena filled with North Carolina-based fans.

The Terps, after all, haven’t even had a four-game winning streak at any point this season. The team did go on a three-game winning streak four different times, but the first three instances happened in nonconference play against inferior opponents and the last came against Clemson, Virginia and Georgia Tech — not exactly the cream of the crop in the ACC.

There’s no reason to expect that the Terps will be able to win four games starting with NC State, Duke and, if seedings hold true, Florida State and North Carolina.

2. The Terps lack a strong perimeter game.

All year long, forward Jordan Williams has waited and waited for one of the team’s guards to step up and fill the role of a lights-out shooter, but it just hasn’t happened. Looking around the ACC — and all of Division I basketball, for that matter — nearly every good team has at least one player that can hit 3-pointers on a consistent basis.

The Terps don’t.

Their best 3-point shooter this season has been guard Terrell Stoglin, who is shooting 36.7 percent from beyond the arc. Compare that to Duke, which has Seth Curry (43.8 percent) and Andre Dawkins (43.1 percent), and it’s easy to see why the Terps can’t compete with the upper tier of the ACC.

Sure, Stoglin, guards Cliff Tucker and Adrian Bowie and forward Haukur Palsson will hit an occasional 3-pointer, but their inconsistency is the problem. With few outside threats to worry about, opposing defenses can slouch down to cover the Terps’ strong interior presence in Williams and Dino Gregory.

3. After three straight losses, the Terps look demoralized and, instead of improving, have actually regressed.

In a span of just six days, the Terps went from holding a spot on the NCAA Tournament bubble — thanks to their victory over Florida State — to falling completely off the selection committee’s radar following double-digit losses to North Carolina, Miami and Virginia.

“Any loss is disappointing,” Jordan Williams said. “It’s a bad feeling. I hate losing. I don’t know who likes losing.”

It’s hard to rebound from constant setbacks, and the motivation inside the Terps’ locker room is waning. The team’s seniors — Gregory notwithstanding — have looked listless.

“We just have got to want it ourselves,” Stoglin said. “I mean, [Gary Williams] can’t want it more than us. And he has been wanting it more than us, so we’ve just got to fix that.”

4. The Terps are still a team in the making.

When your top two players are a freshman and a sophomore, it’s hard to make a deep run in any postseason tournament.

And whenever a coach talks about finding “the right guys” for his team in March — as Gary Williams did Saturday — it’s even more of a red flag.

But it makes sense with this year’s group of seniors, who just haven’t been able to live up to the precedent set by last year’s class. Bowie and Tucker have been reluctant to take on leadership roles this year, burdening younger players with hefty responsibilities earlier than expected.

In spite of their issues, the Terps still believe a new-and-improved team will show up on the court in Greensboro tonight.

“We’re struggling right now, but next week, it’ll be a whole different team,” guard Pe’Shon Howard said Saturday. “I promise you we’ll be a whole different team in the ACC Tournament.”

For players, that mindset is necessary to compete. For fans, it should stand as a small ray of hope. But for realists, it just seems unlikely.

jengelke@umdbk.com