For the second time since 2002, Mark Turgeon will not coach his team in the postseason.
For the second straight year, the Terrapins men’s basketball team won’t be a part of March Madness.
The Terps weren’t selected for the NCAA Tournament or National Invitation Tournament last night, meaning they will not play in the postseason in coach Mark Turgeon’s debut season.
“Given the current financial situation in the athletics department, we feel as though now is not the right time for us to be involved with any of the models of the other postseason tournaments,” Turgeon said in a release late last night.
The snub wasn’t a surprise. Turgeon indicated after Friday’s 85-69 loss to North Carolina in the ACC Tournament that it would be a long shot for his Terps (17-15) to earn another game.
“Been an unsettling day. It’s tough not to be a part of Selection Sunday. It’s something I am not used to,” Turgeon tweeted Sunday night. “But, we are working hard and doing the right things to make sure that the Terps return to the excitement of March Madness.”
Turgeon had guided Texas A&M to four straight NCAA Tournament appearances before coming to College Park last May. This will mark just the second time since 2002 that he will not coach a team in a postseason tournament.
It’s also the second straight year the NIT has passed on the Terps. Last year’s absence snapped a 17-year streak of postseason appearances by former coach Gary Williams. The program was barred from the postseason in 1991 and 1992 due to NCAA violations and did not make it in 1993.
This season’s team had its own struggles. The Terps won just once on the road, and a Feb. 25 loss at lowly Georgia Tech dealt a significant blow to the Terps’ NIT chances.
Still, they had hoped for better.
“I definitely think we deserve to play in the postseason,” guard Nick Faust said Friday. “We’ve had a lot of ups and downs this season. We might have went through the most that any team’s been through this season. … This was a positive year.”
With the departure of Williams, three players to graduation and another two to professional leagues this offseason, the Terps weren’t expected to get much better this season. The loss of point guard Pe’Shon Howard to a foot injury at the beginning of the year and an ACL tear at the end made an invitation to the Big Dance increasingly unlikely for the Terps this year.
“With a very good recruiting class coming in and looking at the positive aspects of the season we just finished, we look forward to working throughout this upcoming off-season to getting Maryland Basketball where we all want it to be,” Turgeon said in the release.
ceckard@umdbk.com
