Winter Sports – Part One
Men’s Basketball
As with the football team, questions abounded as Maryland’s men’s basketball team approached the 2014-15 season. The team had missed the NCAA Tournament in each of Mark Turgeon’s first three seasons as the Terrapins’ head coach. The roster had been semi-decimated by the departure of five players at the end of the 2014 season. The pundits certainly thought the Terps faced a transitional year picking them to finish seventh in the B1G.
But Turgeon and staff had brought in a promising freshman class headed by Melo Trimble, who would have to function as the de facto point guard, and had supplemented that class with the inclusion of transfer guard Richaud Pack. How would the veterans respond? And could the freshman Trimble succeed in taking the reins and guiding the team through the Big Ten gauntlet.
The season started impressively as the Terps overcame early injuries to seniors Dez Wells and Evan Smotrycz. The Terps cruised to three early wins against overmatched competition before showing their true potential in the CBE Hall of Fame Classic in Kansas City. On the Monday before Thanksgiving, they handled Arizona State and followed that with an even more impressive win over then 13th ranked Iowa State.
Returning home, the Terrapins picked up another pair of easy wins and headed into a match with seventh ranked Virginia with both teams sporting identical 7-0 records. Playing without Smotrycz and Wells, the Terps suffered their only home loss of the season suffering a double digit loss to the Cavaliers.
Bouncing back from that defeat, Maryland picked up three more soft home wins before traveling to Stillwater and registering a surprising nine point road win over the Oklahoma State Cowboys in a game that featured a massive 21 point 11 rebound performance by Jake Layman. Three more wins followed including the double overtime thriller at Michigan State as well as capturing the conference home opener over Minnesota as the Terps ran their record to 13-1 and 2-0 in conference play.
The season looked to be on the verge of taking a nasty turn when Maryland traveled to Champaign-Urbana to face a depleted Illinois squad that ended the Terps’ six game winning streak and handed them their first conference loss. Once again, the Terps rebounded well and responded with wins at Purdue and a pair of home wins.
Momentum and excitement seemed to be building as Maryland made the trip to Bloomington but Indiana called a timeout and shot lights out handing the Terps an embarassing 19 point loss. Though they never lost two consecutive games, this loss signaled a pattern of close wins and lopsided road losses that dogged the Terps to the end of the season.
Maryland followed the Indiana loss with the Dex Wells buzzer beater to edge Northwestern despite being outplayed by the Wildcats but then lost by 24 at Ohio State. A 16 point loss at Iowa followed a six point win at home over Penn State. However, the loss at Iowa would be the Terrapins’ last in the regular season.
The Terps closed the season on a seven game winning streak but certainly never let their fans get comfortable. The first three of those wins came by two, three and four points so, by the time the 14th ranked Terrapins edged the sixth ranked Wisconsin Badgers by six points, it had the feel of a rout. Maryland closed out their first year in the B1G with a 12-4 record and finished second to the Badgers.
Living on the edge didn’t prove to be a successful postseason formula. After the Terps shot down the Hoosiers 75-69 in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals, they dropped a four point decision to eventual national finalist Michigan State in the semis. Making their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2010, they then survived a close call with a 65-62 win over Valparaiso in the first round before West Virginia knocked them out (literally with regard to Melo Trimble) in the second round.
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