With nearly a week between games and the Terrapins men’s basketball team struggling to hold onto the ball, coach Mark Turgeon turned to old-school measures in practice.
When a player turned the ball over twice in quick succession, they had to run up and down the stairs on the wall of the student section. Other times, Turgeon punished the team for turnovers with sprints.
Turgeon hopes those grueling practices will help the No. 10 Terps correct their turnovers woes Saturday when they travel to No. 20 Purdue. The Terps have turned ball over 33 times in the past two games with point guard Melo Trimble accounting for 13 of those giveaways.
With tournament play just two weeks away, Turgeon wants the Terps to take a step forward against the Boilermakers and treasure the basketball.
“It’s not just about Saturday,” Turgeon said Friday. “It’s about the rest of the season. Hopefully we can really correct that because when we do, when we keep it around eight nine or 10, we’re a heck of a basketball team. That’s kind of the goal moving forward.”
The Terps (23-5, 11-4 Big Ten) are 12th in the 14-team Big Ten with 13.3 turnovers per game. While Trimble has garnered accolades — he was the Big Ten Preseason Player of the Year — the playmaker has struggled recently. He had seven turnovers and just two assists Sunday in an 86-82 win over Michigan. He had as many turnovers as assists (six) in the previous game, a 68-63 loss at Minnesota.
Luckily for Trimble and the Terps, though, the Boilermakers (21-7, 9-6) are last in the Big Ten in turnover margin. They average 2.5 more turnovers than their opponents, but have been tough to beat at home where they are 15-1.
For the Terps, Trimble’s struggles have correlated with a dip in the team’s performance. He’s had five or more turnovers in the past three games, two of which have been losses. He’s not the only one at fault, though. Forward Robert Carter Jr. had four turnovers in the defeat to the Golden Gophers.
But Trimble is expected to run the Terps offense, not Carter.
So with extra time this week — the Terps didn’t have a midweek game for the first time since mid-December — Trimble watched film with Turgeon in addition to the regular team sessions. Teammates and assistant coaches Juan Dixon and John Auslander spoke with Trimble and provided encouragement. Friday, when Trimble spoke to reporters he didn’t appear fazed by his recent stretch of play as he constantly flashed his trademark smile.
“Coach preaches a lot about our offense, us sharing the ball,” Trimble said. “It kind of got to us. But at the end of the day, we have to play basketball. He wants us to be basketball players, not robots.”
The Terps’ inability to take care of the ball has hurt them on the defensive end, too. In the past two games, they have surrendered 40 points off turnovers and left Turgeon exasperated.
“Some of the turnovers have just been ridiculous to be honest with you,” Turgeon said. “Traveling with no one guarding you, losing the ball. We’ve just lost the ball and handed it to them. Really the worst part of our turnovers is they’ve led to layups.”
So Turgeon got tough with his team this week. With three games left in the regular season, including two road contests against ranked teams, the Terps have a chance to correct their turnover issues.
“It’s been a bigger focal point because we have been having so many turnovers at periods of time during the game,” Carter said. “We feel like if we stop doing that we’ll be pretty hard to beat.”
