Maryland Basketball: Feeling Minnesota About The Students

Minnesota Golden Gophers (2-1) at
#23/20 Maryland Terrapins (4-1)

Comcast Center – College Park, MD
ACC/Big 10 Challenge

I’ll get to the actual game in a minute. First off, I think it is necessary to address the fan support over the Thanksgiving break. That was just pure disgraceful. Shame on you, students. The Comcast Center was 1/3 of the way full. Usually against lesser-named competition, it is the alumni who don’t show up. But this time, it was an almost completely empty student section that was responsible for most of the empty seats. I understand it was Thanksgiving and all, but students were allowed back on campus early Sunday, and the game was late Sunday afternoon. I don’t care if it is Nicholls State or N.C. State, students should pack it in at all the games. In a school of 30,000 students, I would think that we could find 2,500 or so to attend the basketball game.

The lack of student support is a recent and disturbing trend. My first two years at Maryland, the student support for all sports, not just football and men’s basketball, was amazing. It would be hard to argue that from 2001-2003 that there was a better group of sports fans anywhere in the country. Football and basketball games were sold out, women’s basketball would see crowds of 10,000 plus, soccer games would be packed at Ludwig Field and lacrosse games in this area were always popular. Now, unless Marcus Vick and ESPN come to campus, you can’t get a decent student section to any Maryland contest. I think we started having problems with the class of 2007, but the class of 2008 has been almost non-existent at sporting events. Usually, the student section is packed with underclassmen, as most of the older students have moved away from campus and it becomes harder for them to get tickets and go to the game. But the last two years, the crowd has been compromised of mostly older students. That is because the new crop of students are way to lazy and clearly don’t give a damn about the university.

There are two factors that I think have contributed to the new student approach. First off, the classes of 07 and 08 are spoiled. They assumed coming into Maryland that all the teams would be good. But at the first sign of trouble, those classes cut and ran, leaving only the classes of 04, 05 and 06 to attend the games. More and more, the students coming into Maryland show signs of being ultimate fair-weather fans. These are the same fans who root for the Yankees/Red Sox, Lakers and Cowboys/Eagles/Patriots until those teams start losing. Then they look for the next bandwagon to be jumped on. These fans are the worst kind. It doesn’t help that too many Maryland students come from the New Jersey-New York-Long Island corridor and feel no true loyalty to the university. Now that the classes of 2004 and 2005 have graduated, and the class of 2006 has moved off campus a bit, the true problems with the fair-weather students are becoming evident. And even when these horrible underclassmen show up, they hardly care about the game at all. As a freshman and sophomore, I remember the student body being absolutely crazy and really having an impact on the game. We would show up two hours early, throw things like batteries, bottles and pennies and get on the opponent from the word go. Just ask Carlos Boozer and his mother if the student section was out of control or not. This year and last, it seems the big concern of the student body is what color t-shirt to wear. And the best insult the students can come up with is chanting “F*** you J.J.” over and over again. I don’t mind the foul language. It is just uncreative, ineffective and stupid. The student body I was a part of was definitely classless, but we took pride in that label. We were imaginative, inventive and helpful to the home team. Obviously throwing stuff may have been over the top, but it is definitely better than coming to the game and talking on cellphones or sitting on your hands, like the current group of students do.

The second factor is the computerized ticket policy. It makes it too easy for any student to get a ticket. In my freshman year, students had to go pick up tickets themselves. Often times, as was the case for the big Duke game and final game at Cole Field House in 2002, students had to camp out and wait several days for tickets to be handed out. The only people who got tickets were true fans, who would go see the Terps whether they were terrific or terrible. Now, any fat, lazy, fair-weather student can click his/her mouse a couple of times and go to the game. Not only that, because of the loyalty point system, most students get their tickets, go to the Comcast Center, get their ticket scanned, collect their points, and walk right out without seeing a minute of the game. This is done so students can be assured of have having just enough loyalty points to get a ticket to the Duke game, which is the only game this fair-weather student body cares about anymore. And they care about it not because they want to see Maryland win or Duke lose, but because Duke-Maryland usually means network TV and there is chance that they can be seen for two seconds as a part of the crowd. Pathetic.

And now it appears that Gary is making excuses for the students. He blamed the Thanksgiving brake, the Redskins game and the fact that Maryland is located next to D.C. as reasons no one showed up. He also implied that no one wanted to come see Nicholls State. That may be true, but Gary, you don’t insult the opponent that was nice enough to come to College Park and get beat down so you could get an easy win. This is the first time that Gary has done something like this. Usually, he gets angry if he sees even a few rows of empty seats and tells the students to get to every game they can. This student body is lethargic enough Gary, they don’t need help not showing up.

Now to the actual game. Maryland comes in 4-1 and should now be fully recovered from the Hawaii jet lag and the Thanksgiving dinners. The Terps have only played one complete game so far. They looked really good against Arkansas, who I have as one of my darkhorse teams in the NCAA this year (look at post from yesterday). Other than that, the Terps looked bad against FDU, Chaminade and Nicholls State in the first half, and looked bad all together against Gonzaga.

The Golden Gophers hail from the Big 10, but are often overlooked in a conference with Michigan State, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. Dan Monson, a coach I mentioned when talking about Gonzaga (see Maryland vs. Gonzaga post), has assembled a pretty good team. Too bad three of the best players won't be in uniform due to injury or academic problems. They have a special player named Vincent Grier. The 6-5 guard/forward averaged 18 points a game last year for a poor Minnesota team. Grier was named to the preseason All-Big East first team. Unfortunately for the Gophers, Grier broke some fingers recently and is out 4-6 weeks.

The rest of the team is nothing to write home about (but enough to write about in a blog). Maurice Hargrow has stepped it up in Grier’s absence, averaging almost 20 a game. 6-2 guard and UNC transfer Adam Boone is a decent shooter if left unchecked, but plays average defense and has problems creating his own shot. Spencer Tollackson is decent big man. He is 6-9 and a wide load at 275 pounds. He averages 11 pts/g and 5 reb/g. No one on the team is taller than him, so Ibekwe, Gist and Garrison should be able to go to town tonight.

To compound problems for Minnesota, they lost on Monday to Gardner-Webb. I'll give anyone 10 dollars if you can tell me the nickname for G-WU, where it is located, and the leading scorer on the team without looking it up online. This is bad news for both UM's. Obviously Minnesota can't afford to lose to these small schools. For Maryland, it is going to hurt their RPI later in the season. The ACC/Big 10 Challenge is usually a game that benefits Maryland in strength of schedule. But when the team Maryland is facing is losing to Gardner-Webb and barely beating North Dakota State, it is going to sink the Terps as well. A win this time around for Maryland in the Challenge is not as important as previous years (like 2001 against Illinois and 2003 against Wisconsin). An unthinkable loss tonight for Maryland would be even more harmful than usual (unlike losses to ranked Indiana in 2002 and ranked Wisconsin in 2004).

For Maryland, D.J. Strawberry continues to look healthy. He is shaping up to the be the team leader this season. Chris McCray continues to struggle from beyond the arc, but is playing consistently on defense. Nik Caner-Medley is up to his old tricks of disappearing in games against good teams (Gonzaga, Arkansas) and padding his stats against the poor teams so it looks like he averages 12 points and 6 boards a game. I wouldn’t mind seeing Nik as the sixth man for Maryland, with a starting lineup of McCray, Strawberry, Gist/Jones, Garrison and Ibekwe. I think that would be a great starting five and would motivate Caner-Medley to get his ass in gear.

The ACC is struggling a bit, as they are tied with the Big 10 so far at 3 games apiece. But how about Florida State last night. A 40 point beat down of Purdue. I didn’t realize Purdue was that bad. Clemson may be better than people think this year, and I’m not basing that off their win against dismal Penn State. Miami, a trendy sleeper pick in the ACC, looked pretty bad against a Michigan team that is going to get Tommy Amaker fired at the end of the season. Maybe The U is a bit overrated and Clemson a bit underrated. You heard it here first. Maryland and Duke should get wins tonight, and Michigan State should beat GTech and Northwestern should cruise over UVA, so the Challenge is going to come down to N.C. State and Iowa. Looks like the Big 10 may actually win this year.

As for Maryland, I just said they should get the win. Strawberry will be able to shutdown Hargrow, McCray must clamp down on Boone outside (how many times in the past two years has one decent shooter thrown off the entire Maryland defense), and just put a couple of big bodies on Tollackson, and there should be no problem for the Terps. Offensively, I would love to see the three point shot start falling, so lets get the ball into the hands of McCray tonight, and lets get Jones off the bench some more. I expect the Terrapins to win, and I expect them to win big. I just hope there is a crowd there to watch it. Just tell the students the game is on ESPN2 and they’ll show up.

Maryland 88
Minnesota 65