With guard Pe’Shon Howard injured, the Terps have seven healthy players on scholarship for the upcoming season.
Terrapins men’s basketball sophomore guard Pe’Shon Howard will miss the next 10 to 12 weeks with a broken left foot, the team announced yesterday, in the latest blow to the already thin program.
Howard, one of just three returning players who started a game last season, broke a sesamoid, a small bone under his toe. He had felt pain for the past week, but the team didn’t discover the break until Wednesday.
Coach Mark Turgeon had slated Howard to start at point guard for the team this year after an impressive freshman campaign in which he played in all of the team’s 33 games, had a game-winning basket and posted a 1.89 assist-to-turnover ratio.
“I feel bad for Pe’Shon,” Turgeon said in a press release. “He worked so hard and had a great summer and early fall. He’s been practicing and playing well for us. Hopefully, we’ll get a lot better by the time Pe’Shon joins the team later this year.”
The loss has put the first-year coach in an even more difficult position. He lost forward Haukur Palsson to a professional career overseas this season, and without Howard, Turgeon has just seven healthy, eligible scholarship players to open the season. The Terps still haven’t received word from the NCAA regarding the status of freshman center Alex Len.
Sophomore guard Terrell Stoglin is expected to shift to point guard, while freshman guard Nick Faust or sophomore guard Mychal Parker could make a move into the starting lineup.
However he splits up the rotation, Turgeon won’t have much experience to rely on this season. If he were to split up the 200 minutes per game equally among the team’s seven scholarship players, each would average more than 28 per game. Only departed forwards Jordan Williams and Dino Gregory averaged more than that a year ago, and only Stoglin played for that long in any single game last year.
Parker, forwards James Padgett and Ashton Pankey and center Berend Weijs combined for just 23.1 minutes per game a year ago. Each of them could surpass that individually this season.
The lack of depth already has Turgeon worried.
“Terrell can’t play 40 minutes every game,” Turgeon told The Washington Post yesterday. “That’s where the big problem is, so we’ll do it by committee. If there’s good timing, it’s good that it happened at this time in the year. I felt like we were really practicing well — Pe’Shon, especially.”
If the sophomore heals according to the current timetable, he would return to the team in mid-January, in time for the start of the Terps’ ACC schedule. At the team’s media day earlier this month, Howard spoke of his excitement to pick up from where he finished last year.
Over the summer, he played with several NBA stars, including Kevin Durant, Michael Beasley, Carmelo Anthony and John Wall in games through the Goodman League, a basketball league in Southeast Washington consisting of athletes ranging from high schoolers to professionals.
Howard said he expected to play a big role in his second year in College Park.
“I’m trying to be a leader,” Howard said. “Even though I’m a sophomore, I’m one of the veterans on the team.”
Instead, he’ll be stuck cheering from the sidelines.
ceckard@umdbk.com
