Unless it loses to a 4-5 Oakland team on Dec. 27 at Xfinity Center, the Terrapins men’s basketball team will emerge from nonconference play without a single damning loss.
So what does that mean?
Well, for one, it marks a much better start than last season for coach Mark Turgeon. The 2013-14 Terps dropped several games to middling teams in their first 12 games of the season.
It started with a defeat to Oregon State at home in the third contest of the year. The Beavers finished the season 16-16 and lost in the first round of the College Basketball Invitational.
Three weeks later, the Terps fell to George Washington on a buzzer-beater — a game characterized more as a missed opportunity than a bad loss, as the Colonials finished the regular season 24-8 and qualified for the NCAA tournament. But then later in December, the Terps dropped a home contest to Boston.
The Terriers went on to win 15 of 18 games in the Patriot League to earn a bid to the National Invitation Tournament. But it was a game Turgeon expected to win, and the result left the coach grasping for answers.
“I don’t know,” Turgeon said after the loss. “That’s the perplexing thing.”
This season, despite the extended absences of forward Evan Smotrycz and guard Dez Wells because of injury, the Terps have avoided a letdown while compiling a series of impressive wins that will almost certainly come into play come the postseason — namely November wins over Arizona State and then-No. 13 Iowa State at the CBE Hall of Fame Classic in Kansas City, Missouri.
In Wells’ first game on the sideline, an admittedly shaken-up squad held off Monmouth for a five-point victory behind 24 points from guard Melo Trimble. The Terps then handled business against VMI on Nov. 30, and the next day, made their first appearance in the Associated Press Top 25 since 2010.
After a loss to then-No. 7 Virginia without Wells and Smotrycz in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, the Terps rattled off three straight wins while overcoming a series of sluggish starts to cement a 10-1 start to their 2014-15 campaign.
Last year, Turgeon was at a loss for words when trying to pinpoint his team’s problems. This season, with more injuries and less experience, the Terps have played to a level at which the fourth-year coach doesn’t have to address any issues.
They’ve won the games they were expected to win.
And now, the No. 19 Terps have a legitimate chance to enter conference play in a worse-than-expected Big Ten at 12-1 with three wins over Power 5 teams — the third possibly coming next week at Oklahoma State in their first true road game of the season.
Smotrycz returned for Saturday’s victory over South Carolina Upstate and avoided any setbacks in 18 minutes while Wells could be back in action for the Terps’ conference opener at Michigan State.
But even if the Terps can wrap up their nonconference schedule with two more victories, it’s important to note that a strong early-season showing doesn’t always translate to conference success and a coveted spot in the NCAA tournament’s 68-team field — an accomplishment Turgeon has missed out on in his first three seasons in College Park.
The Terps team from two years ago is a perfect example. It went 12-1 in nonconference play but struggled with consistency in the talented ACC, dropping games at Boston College and Georgia Tech en route to an 8-10 conference record.
In the end, the Terps’ conference struggles proved detrimental, and they missed the NCAA tournament by a slim margin before stringing together a semifinals run in the NIT.
However, only one of those 12 nonconference wins in 2012-13 came against a Power 5 team, and that was Northwestern, which finished the season 13-19.
This year, behind a quartet of talented freshmen and the vastly improved play of forward Jake Layman, the Terps have overcome adversity to compile an impressive nonconference resume thus far.
If it avoids a loss to Oakland and returns to full health, Turgeon’s squad will enter its inaugural Big Ten season with no limit on what it can achieve.
