Maryland Basketball: To The Next 1,000

NC State Wolfpack (13-6, 2-3 ACC) vs.
Maryland Terrapins (12-5, 2-1 ACC)
Comcast Center – College Park, MD

There’s no good time to ever play Longwood, but the Terps played them at the absolute worst time. I understand the reasoning behind it. Gary Williams looked at the ACC schedule before the season started, saw two straight road games and a week off following those games. He’s worries that Maryland is going to lose two in a row on the road and then not play for an entire week. He’s worried the team will have no momentum before their home game against NC State. So he schedules an easy game, a game which Maryland will certainly win, so the Terps can stay in the flow and feel good about themselves heading in to two straight home games.

Fast forward to late January. Maryland gets a solid home win against Florida State. They play exceptionally well at Wake Forest, even though they lose in overtime. Then they blow out Boston College. The Terps sit at 2-1 in the ACC and are feeling pretty good about themselves. Suddenly, that game against Longwood isn’t necessary. Unfortunately, they still have to play it. Maryland takes care of business and blows out Longwood (while I sit there the entire game making offensive “Longwood” jokes). So what’s the problem? Maryland wins by 57, and I spend two hours of my day making somewhat dirty jokes. Seems harmless. Well, Maryland’s RPI falls from 52 to 61, and their strength of schedule crashes from 29 to 54 (they’ve both since gone up a little bit to 57 and 46, thanks in large part to Indiana’s win over Penn State on Thursday night). Maryland could have won that game by 200 points…their RPI and SOS were still going to take a hit. It would have been worth it had Maryland been on a two game losing streak and struggling. However, because of the solid start in ACC play, the game against Longwood did more harm than good. Hindsight is 20/20.

Hopefully the strength of the conference will boost Maryland’s numbers up the rest of the season. Even though the conference appears to be stuck in mediocrity and parity this season, the RPI/SOS numbers are solid. As of Friday, there is only one team that’s above 100 in the RPI, and that’s Miami at 102. Right now, there are only two other teams that are in danger of falling below 100…Virginia (98) and Boston College (94). Everyone else is comfortably within the top 90. Which means that most of Maryland’s wins from here on out will be deemed “quality wins” by the selection committee. The game against Longwood hurt their tournament profile, but the rest of the schedule should help.

Maryland’s next two ACC games are at home. And they are two very winnable games. They’ll also be career games #1,000 and #1,001 for Gary Williams in his coaching career. Gary is currently 637-362. He’s 430-229 during his 21 seasons in College Park. He’s won 28 NCAA tournament games. He owns 71 wins against Top 25 competition. He owns 33 wins against Top 10 teams. He’s beaten the #1 team in the country seven times. Gary owns the 1995 and 2002 mythical regular season ACC titles. He won the actual 2004 ACC title by winning the tournament. And of course, he owns the 2002 National Championship. Not bad at all.

For all those who doubt what Gary Williams means to Maryland, and there’s a small faction of the fanbase (including the current Athletic Director) who have forgotten, this is a man who rescued Maryland from the depths of probation. There is no Maryland basketball without him. There is no National Championship without him. There is no Joe Smith, Keith Booth, Terrance Morris, Juan Dixon, Steve Blake or Greivis Vasquez without him. Obviously the past five years have not been as successful as any of us would have liked. But I’d take the current state of the program over the state of the program in 1989, the year Gary took over. Coaches and programs have bad years. It happens. Even with the powerhouse programs. Jim Boeheim went four years without a tournament win (2004-08). During that stretch the Orange miss the tournament twice. Jim Calhoun whiffed on the postseason completely a couple of seasons ago. The Huskies went 17-14…two games worse than any Maryland season under Gary since 1993. Kentucky was in shambles the past three years before John Calipari and his wads of cash came back to save it. Arizona is struggling to stay afloat at .500 in a terrible conference this season. UCLA, yes the UCLA with more championships than any other program and three straight Final Four appearances from 2006-08, is going to finish below .500 this season and probably next. Even Ratface had two awful seasons in the mid-90’s. At least Gary stuck around through his struggles. Ratface bailed on his 1995 team with “back problems” and “exhaustion” midway through a 2-14 ACC campaign. The worst Gary has done since getting probation off the books was the 19-15 2007-08 season. And the Terps were even on track to make the tournament that year until a late season swoon.

Just look no further than last season. Gary had a team with only one player taller than 6’6” playing in an ACC loaded with future draft picks. He willed that team to the NCAA Tournament and a first round win. I will still argue today, and for a long time, that Gary Williams was the only coach in the entire country that could have made the NCAA Tournament with the Maryland roster last season. Give any other coach in America the roster he had, they’d be lucky to go .500. Gary won a tournament game and got the team within one game of playing for the ACC title. Say what you will about his recruiting, but there is no doubt in my mind that he’s one of the top five game day coaches in college basketball.

Williams’ 1,000th game comes against a team he’s owned for the past five years, the NC State Wolfpack. The Wuffies are still for some reason led by Sidney Lowe. Lowe passed Oliver Purnell, Paul Hewitt and Leonard Hamilton a long time ago as the worst coach in the ACC. Even the addition of Tony Bennett to the conference couldn’t help Lowe escape this dubious honor. This is Sid’s fourth season in the Triangle, and he has a superb 17-36 record in conference play. His best finish came in last year, when the Pack went 6-10 and finished 10th in the ACC. He managed to wriggle his way to a fourth season, and based on what’s happening so far, he may trick NC State into giving him a fifth.

The Wolfpack currently sit at 13-6 and 2-3 in conference. They’ve lost to Clemson, Wake and UVA. Nothing really embarrassing there, but it remains to be seen how good Virginia really is. However, the Pack can howl it up about their two conference wins. They beat Florida State on the road two weeks ago and earlier this week they manhandled Dook. And when I say manhandled, I mean MANHANDLED. They embarrassed the overrated Dookies for pretty much the entire game, despite the 33-26 discrepancy at the free throw line (it was even worse before the Nerds started fouling intentionally). The only thing more embarrassing that Duke’s effort was Sidney’s red blazer.

State also owns out of conference wins against Marquette (ok) and Auburn (meh). They’ve also lost to Northwestern (not terrible), Arizona (usually not bad, but certainly not good this season) and Florida*. The asterisk denotes the fact that NC State lost that game on a 75-foot prayer in overtime. Overall, not a bad slate so far for the Wolfpack. Nothing about this team screams tournament ready, or even top half in the mediocre ACC ready, but there’s still a slight chance they surprise me. The narrow wins over Austin Peay, Elon and Winthrop say otherwise.

The problems for the Wolfpack this year are the same as in years past. The backcourt for State is dreadful. They have no point guard who I would trust with the ball in the second half. Javier Gonzalez continues to try to moonlight at point. And while he averages 4.7 assists per game, he averages 3.5 turnovers as well. That includes a lovely 4 turnover/0 assist performance against Clemson and a 6 turnover/3 assist game against FSU. In fact, the game against Duke was the only ACC game in which Gonzalez had more assists than turnovers. A good backcourt, which the Terps possess, can grab steals and get easy transition points. Maryland is among the best in the nation when it comes to forcing turnovers. The Wolfpack turn the ball over 13 times per game. Big advantage for the Terps there.

Unlike the last three games for Maryland, the Terps are going to face a team that can shoot from outside. Of the four players who typically take three’s for State, three of them shoot 38% or better. Dennis Horner is the best shooter at 42%, but Gonzalez and Scott Wood will take more threes. Both are streaky shooters, but as we saw against Duke, they can both get hot at the wrong time for the opposition. NC State is not great underneath. Tracy Smith, who went for 19 and 9 last year in Raleigh against Maryland, added some muscle in the offseason and is now averaging 17 and 8.6 a game. More impressive from Smith is that average has basically held in ACC play. He had 18 against Virginia, 16 against Clemson and a season-high 23 against the Nerds. The good news for Maryland is that Lowe doesn’t have wave after wave of big men to throw on the court. This team has more in common with BC than with Wake or FSU. Horner, who is 6’9”, only grabs 4.2 boards a game. State relies on their guards for rebounding more than any team in the ACC…and that includes the Terps. If Smith gets in early foul trouble (and he’s had three or more personals in three straight games), the Pack really struggle getting second chance opportunites on the glass.

For Maryland to win the three-quarters court press and the trapping game will have to work. If they can force turnovers, there really should be no problem. The only way Maryland gets in trouble is if they let the Wuffies get out to an early lead and allow State to play a half-court game. Maryland cannot allow Sid the Kid and company to actually think they have momentum coming off their win over the Floor Slappers. I think Maryland’s recent momentum continues and the Wolfpack have a classic let down game.

Maryland 76
NC State 64

Elsewhere in the ACC…

Another 4-2 weekend leads me to an 8-4 overall record in the crazy ACC. I took the week off because Maryland did as well, but I’m back for four more conference games.

Boston College at Virginia Tech
Like the Terps, Virginia Tech’s Chrome Dome scheduled a meaningless out of conference game against North Carolina Central during the week. So far the Hokies have beaten Miami (but who hasn’t) and lost convincingly to UNC and FSU. Home court advantage should be enough to squeak by with ACC win #2.
Pick: Virginia Tech 67, Boston College 61

Virginia at Wake Forest
This undefeated Virginia fad has to end eventually…right? Note to Dino Gaudio: stop Sylven Landesberg. You do that, you win. This UVA team is similar in many ways to the Singletary team of two seasons ago. Except Landesberg is nowhere near as good as Singletary was. Shouldn’t be hard to beat these guys on the road.
Pick: Wake Forest 75, Virginia 62

Duke at Clemson
The Great White Nerds are 0-2 on the road in the conference, and 0-3 if you count the Wisconsin game. Nothing in their three previous true road games have suggested to me that this team can come close to winning on the road against a half-decent team. Plus, this is a primetime game for Clemson at Littlejohn, and the Tigers have had Dook’s number recently.
Pick: Clemson 85, Duke 76

Georgia Tech at Florida State
Two of the more talented teams in the conference led by two men who have no idea what to do with their fully-stocked rosters.
Pick: Georgia Tech 72, Florida State 70