GREENSBORO, N.C. — It was an ending that felt inevitable early in the season. Nothing went right for the Terrapins men’s basketball team throughout the early part of the season and into the past month, as what-ifs, almosts and could-haves all piled on top of one another to construct the discouraging image of a fourth straight season missing the NCAA tournament and a second straight season potentially relegated to the NIT.
But entering Thursday’s matchup with No. 9-seed Florida State, the Terps finally had tangible hope after escaping a deflating end to regulation in their overtime victory over then-No. 5 Virginia on Sunday.
Finally, the Terps had turned the corner in a close game. Finally, they’d banished the late-game woes that will undoubtedly be the lasting theme of the season. And finally, there was real reason a run deep in the ACC tournament — possibly deep enough to catapult the Terps into the NCAA tournament — was a distinct possibility.
But yet again, it wasn’t to be, and another Terps forward sat slumped over on a court in North Carolina with an ESPN camera in his face after Florida State center Boris Bojanovsky flushed the game-winning dunk in the final second.
Forward Charles Mitchell’s layup at Duke almost one month ago bounced out, and cameras found him even before the final seconds ticked off the clock. Yesterday, forward Jonathan Graham collapsed after guard Dez Wells’ full-court heave with 0.4 seconds remaining didn’t get off in time, and ESPN once again broadcast another close-up of Terps’ agony.
“We’ve lost a lot of games by two points, one point,” coach Mark Turgeon said. “We had a big win Sunday, and that was great. I was so happy for the players that they could taste that. This was hard because I thought we did everything right defensively and it kind of bounced their way. 0.4? Why couldn’t it take an extra second and be late? They all hurt.”
There wasn’t a point when everything went wrong. The Terps didn’t unravel in embarrassing fashion, and true to their form over the past two months, they played Florida State tough and didn’t let things spiral out of control. The Terps could have let the Seminoles pull away early, but guard Seth Allen hit 3-pointers on three consecutive attempts to keep the game close.
The Terps also could have fallen out of contention about midway through the second half, when Florida State built its lead up to 11. A 10-1 run featuring baskets from forward Jake Layman, center Shaquille Cleare and guard Roddy Peters brought the Terps back to within two. And when Florida State tried to pull away again, Wells and Allen reeled the Seminoles back in.
With 1:49 remaining, Layman threw down a vicious dunk to tie the game at 63. The Terps hadn’t folded, and they had a chance to win.
“I’m never out of any fight,” Wells said. “We are never out of any fight. So even when I took that last heave with 0.4 seconds left, I thought we were going to win the game. So when it didn’t go in, my heart dropped. But that’s the nature of basketball.”
Despite the fight and effort, the Terps suffered a loss by six points or fewer for the eighth time this season.
The latest close call leaves them firmly on the outside looking in to the NCAA tournament picture — entering Thursday, the Terps likely needed to win four games in four days for the ACC tournament title to qualify for the national postseason. And now they’re probably looking at an even lower NIT seed. Some projections yesterday had them as a No. 4 seed, and after another loss, there’s room for them to slide only further down.
“This really hasn’t been our year,” Cleare said. “We really don’t know what it was, why we’ve struggled so much this year. It really hasn’t been our year at all, man.”
The Terps haven’t gotten the right bounce or the right roll or the right call late in games all season long. It’s what’s going to define a season of underachievement after expectations were so high back in October. The Terps were supposed to touch up a resume for the NCAA tournament this weekend, not work on their NIT positioning.
So there’s not much else for the Terps to do now but wait, something they’ve done plenty of this season with their games hanging in the balance.
And just like it has most of the time this season, the result at the end of the wait won’t be the one the Terps wanted.
“I don’t know, man,” Graham said. “It just sucks.”
