Mark Turgeon is facing a crossroads entering his eighth season as Maryland Basketball’s head coach with the FBI circling and an unsatisfied fan base.
Maryland basketball has always been in a weird spot. It’s a basketball school, for sure. The program has an extremely passionate fan base, is among the national leaders in attendance every year, has a storied history, and is right in the middle of a fertile recruiting area.
But the program has rarely found itself at the forefront of the sport – or any part of the sport for that matter.
During its years in the ACC, Maryland always felt overshadowed by the Tobacco Road rivals of Duke and North Carolina. Those feelings helped create some rivalries, particularly the bitter one between Maryland and Duke (even though Blue Devils fans will claim it wasn’t really a rivalry outside of the early 2000’s), but the Terrapins always felt like they were playing second or third (or fourth or fifth) fiddle and didn’t get the respect a program of their stature deserved.
They were always “little brother” so to speak, and they weren’t necessarily wrong in feeling that way.
Financial problems caused the school to move to the Big Ten, but once there, fans expected the program to immediately become one of the conference’s elite right behind Michigan State.
The Terps were that during their inaugural Big Ten season. Head coach Mark Turgeon put together a roster that, led by star freshman Melo Trimble and senior Dez Wells, surprisingly ripped off a 28-7 season and a second-place finish in their new conference. This was right on the heels of four consecutive years without a winning record in ACC play, so for Maryland fans, everything was trending in the right direction.
A new conference, a new star, and a promising young coach in Turgeon who had shown he could continue the Maryland basketball tradition left to him by former head coach Gary Williams.
Now, not even four years later, Turgeon is entering his most important season in College Park. People I’ve talked to with close ties to the program tell me that, unless things turn around for Turgeon and the Terps this year, Maryland will be looking to part ways with the 53-year-old.
Where did things go wrong and how did we get to this point?