The Sad Truth

The Maryland Terrapins Men's Basketball team will not make the NCAA Tournament. Sorry, it's just not going to happen. Not with this team. It's a pity, because this year was ripe for the taking, at least ripe for getting a good seed. Duke is the only team clearly better than the Terps -- with Chris McCray. However, without McCray, this team simply is not going to go anywhere.

Without McCray, Mike Jones, a defensive liability compared to McCray's excellence in that area, is playing starter's minutes, and so far, as not proven himself capable of being more than a nice three point shooter. That's the extent of his worth. Jones is now Maryland's only quality three point shooter, with McCray out. When playing teams like Duke or NC State, Maryland routinely loses up to 20 points in the three point differential. Those are points that need to be made up somewhere, and right now, the Terps really have no way of doing that.

Second, the entire guard rotation has been screwed up, so that Parrish Brown is now playing 20 minutes a game, as he did at Clemson. Brown, who looks completely overmatched out there, is not going to help Maryland win any games. Unless Sterling Ledbetter is in serious foul trouble, he needs to be the primary guard option off the bench, because he actually has a clue how to run the offense.

Finally, without McCray's solid 15 points a game, the Terps are having trouble scoring, as demonstrated in the 62-58 loss to NC State, in which they played great, they just couldn't score when they needed to. The answer so far has been Nik Caner-Medley, which would be fine, except it means a lot of fadeaway jumpers from the top of the key, which are not going to start falling consistently any time soon.

The Terps have winnable games coming up. Home against Georgia Tech should be won. But ganes at North Carolina and Florida State could both be losses, putting the Terps at 6-8, and marking the third straight year they fail to finish with a winning record in conference play. Miami at home is winnable, as is Virginia on the road, but seeing how the Cavs gave the Terps such a struggle in College Park last time around, it's tough to envision the Terps winning that game. Will 7-9 get Maryland into the tournament in a weaker ACC? No, unless they have a 2004-esque run in the ACC Tournament, to the Semifinals at the very least. Sadly, this team, at this moment, probably is not as good as that team, which started 4 sophmores.