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Maryland Enters the Season A Trendy Pick to Win It All

By Matt Johnson

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The last time the Maryland Terrapins climbed to the pinnacle of college basketball’s summit, most of coach Mark Turgeon’s current crop of players were barely making their way into kindergarten.

Behind the play of Juan Dixon and the coaching of now-retired Gary Williams, Maryland coasted to a top-seed in the NCAA Tournament before dispatching of Siena, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Connecticut, Kansas, and finally Indiana to claim the school’s only national title inside a packed Georgia Dome on April 1, 2002.

Maryland has failed to follow up for the past 13 years, and as the team enters the 2015-16 campaign, all eyes seem to be on College Park. Can the Terrapins, led by stand out returners Melo Trimble and Jake Layman, along with impact newcomers Rasheed Sulaimon and Diamond Stone, put Maryland back on top?

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If you’re a lover of the “trendy” pick, it would certainly seem so. Not only has Eamonn Brennan of ESPN named Turgeon’s Terrapins his preseason No.1, so have a number of other basketball writers, including our own Chris Godfrey just three weeks ago.

But is Maryland a true top team? One look at the roster would seem to indicate a definitive “yes.”

The Terrapins bring back a potent duo in Trimble and Layman. Between them, the sophomore guard and senior forward combined to average nearly 40 points (38.7) per outing. Trimble meanwhile was named First-Team, All-Big 10 by the media while Layman was placed on the Third-Team list. With those two returning to the fray, the loss of do-everything guard Dez Wells and his 15.1 points per game average doesn’t seem quite so daunting.

The x-factor for Maryland could be either Sulaimon or Stone, both of whom come to the Terrapins with interesting backgrounds.

Sulaimon, who was infamously and unceremoniously dismissed from Duke’s roster before the Blue Devils won it all a year ago, has had a year to cool his jets and will hopefully stay out of trouble. The 6-4 combo guard didn’t exactly depart Durham on the best of notes after averaging just 7.5 points per contest before receiving the boot. Still, he could give Maryland the boost it needs to go from merely another good team to a potentially championship caliber squad.

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    • As for Stone, the 6-11 Milwaukee product choose Maryland after a heated recruiting battle with hometown Wisconsin. Considered one of the best prospects of this year’s national freshman crop, Stone brings an inside presence to a Terrapin squad that struggled at times on the backboards.

    Does it all add up to a title inside Xfinity Center? On paper, the odds appear promising. Of course, games aren’t played on paper and with the Terps on everybody’s radar for the season, the pressure to perform will be fast and furious from the outset.

    Therein lies the potential rub for Turgeon and his team. The Terrapins will be expected to not only win the Big 10 in 2015-16, but also improve on their 28-7 campaign of last season. Having the target of favorite is never an easy task, as Kentucky found out at the Final Four last season. The pressure of being a favorite can be unrelenting, and how Maryland deals with such attention will go a long ways towards determining where their campaign ends up.

    Preseason favorites almost always require precise play, unwavering toughness, and a bit of luck to emerge on top of the NCAA mountain. Like many others before them, it will be up to the Terrapins to live up to such lofty praise.

    Unlike the Wildcats of last season, nobody should expect Maryland to go undefeated. After all, it hasn’t been accomplished for a full college basketball season since Bob Knight’s Indiana Hoosiers of 1976. Still, Maryland has all the pieces to make a potential run at it all. The roster is stocked and the natives in College Park are primed. The question now is whether Turgeon and the Terrapins can live up to all the hype.

    Next: Siyani Chambers Injury Could Make Harvard a Contender

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