Maryland Basketball: No Challenge

Illinois Fighting Illini (4-1) at
Maryland Terrapins (4-2)
Comcast Center - College Park, MD
ACC/Big Ten Challenge

As I work on more important subjects for this website, we’ll keep the Maryland roundup short and sweet. As of now, I’ve seen no proof that Maryland can beat any team from a major conference. They turn the ball over way too much and their outside shooting is atrocious. Those two elements together are usually a losing combination in this day and age of college basketball.

Illinois is very similar to Maryland. The Illini saw major recruits (Eric Gordon, Derrick Rose) leave at the last moment and are now stuck with a decent, but not special team. Bruce Weber, once hailed as a mastermind after leading a bunch of players that weren’t his to the National Championship game, has shown his ability to almost single-handedly ruin a program with his inability to lock up major local talent. With Chicago an hour away, that’s completely unacceptable (much like Maryland allowing both Baltimore and Washington talent to go elsewhere).

So now in the ACC beats down Big Ten Challenge, Maryland will have a chance to land another blow for the best college basketball conference in the country. In fact, I believe a Maryland win would clinch the Challenge for the ACC, leaving the conference record spotless since this foolish event started. I like the idea of having conference play conference, but could we please do it with the Big East, SEC, Big XII or Pac-10. Not a big fan of playing a football conference.

On that note, I don’t see Maryland winning, even at home, because of what I said before. Until the Terps show me that they can win against a decent team, there’s no reason to think or predict that they can.

Illinois 72
Maryland 67