Status of Maryland Men's Basketball - Terps in trouble?

In a recent article on ESPN.com, Dana O'Neil talks about how Maryland's Men's basketball program has gone from "One Shining Moment" in 2002 to a state of scrambling to find scholarship players for the 2008 season. I think the article could have been 100x's better and I'm shocked that Dana's editor actually let some of the stuff in the article become published. For one, she mentions Sean Mosely as the only scholarship player in the class of 2008, which simply isn't true. Jin Soo Kim is possibly reclassifying for 2008 and Maryland will soon be officially signing center Steve Goins (http://mbd.scout.co m/mb.aspx?S=174& F=2580&T=2634500 &P=1) giving Maryland a solid class for 2008.

Dana also refers to Maryland as "bottom feeders" in the ACC, which is bullshit. She seems to forget that they won the ACC tourney in 2004, in 2005 they were 7-9 and should have made the NCAAs, in 2006 they were 8-8 in the ACC and didn't make the tournament but should have, in 2007 they were 10-6 and went to the NCAAs and then last year they were again 8-8 in the conference. Yes the program isn't at its best, but I blame that on a few bad recruits, who were all consider GREAT coming into college, but didn't pan out (Travis Garrison, Mike Jones being good but not a super star, Chris McCray failing out his sr. year, Caner-Medley not having a good sr. year). You mention none of that in your article as to why this program has struggled. Maryland brought in All-Americans, but they just had some bad luck, which hurts a program for a few years.

Maryland's biggest problem, which ALSO isn't mentioned in the article is Gary's style of recruiting. His assistants do a lot of the work and with some of his best assistants gone, he now has to go out himself (which he's been doing lately) to recruit. And Chuck Drissell is one of the best recruiters around so once he establishes himself more, you'll see the benefits.

Gary also likes to take guys who are kind of under the radar, and build them into champions (Juan Dixon, Lohnny Baxter, etc.) and that style doesn't work as well as it use to since players can no longer skip college and go right to the NBA. Because of that, more "1 and done" players are playing college basketball and Gary needs to get his hands on them.

I think Maryland will be 8-8 in the ACC, make the tourney and get back on track for 2009-2010, when they have a huge talent poll around them to draw from and when you'll have Vasquez and others as Sr's and Jr's for what could be a fantastic team.

Oh Jeff Goodman, how responsive you are?

I had to update this and give Jeff credit...he responded to my email and was very nice and explained his views to me regarding Paulus. I still don't agree with him and wish he would have said more of what he said in his article, but I'm not going to bash him in this post anymore.


Jeff Goodman recently wrote an article on the top college point guards in the nation. Much to my dissatisfaction, Greg Paulus of Duke was ranked 15th while Grevious Vasquez of Maryland was ranked 26th and Eric Hayes was unranked. Both of the latter had much better assist-to-turnover rations. I've copied my email rant to Mr. Goodman below for all of you to get a laugh.


Subject: Why is Greg Paulus ranked so high?

Seriously, he's not a good point guard! He'd be a much better shooting guard, I'd agree with that. Assists per game mean nothing when compared to assist to turnover ratio! You could average 10 assists per game yet if you turn the ball over 20 times, who cares?!?

Paulus had 124 assists last year and 101 turnovers! a 1.23 assist to turnover ratio is not good!

Compare his stats to Vasquez of Maryland, 1.71 assist-to-turnover ratio, averaged 9.8 pts and 3.3 rebounds / game or Eric Hayes who averaged a 1.83 assist-to-turnover ratio.

You say Paulus's assists need to go up this year, as he averaged 11.8 pts. and 3.8 assists. SMART GUY, Vasquez averaged almost as many points and did a WAY better job then Paulus! Why have someone ranked 11 spots below him who was statically better then him in most categories, doing all of this as a FRESHMAN, and without starting part of the season.

Oh, and check the final records for Duke and Maryland last season....not how Maryland finished 10-6 in the ACC and Duke was 8-8 and lost to Maryland twice.