Monday morning, the news broke that Terrapin forward Joshua Tomaic had put his name in the transfer portal. Here’s what that means for an already depleted Maryland Basketball roster.
Just when Terp fans thought their transfer struggles couldn’t get any worse, they did. Redshirt junior Joshua Tomaic announced that he had placed his name in the NCAA transfer portal. While the forward has said that he is open to returning to College Park, the prospect of losing yet another forward should be extremely alarming to Maryland Basketball supporters. To recap, here’s a list of the players already leaving Mark Turgeon’s frontcourt for 2020-2021:
- Jalen Smith (NBA Draft)
- Will Clark (graduation)
- Ricky Lindo Jr. (transfer)
- Makhi Mitchell (transfer)
- Makhel Mitchell (transfer)
With Tomaic’s potential departure, that leaves the Terrapins with *checks notes* two returning frontcourt players for next season: 7’2″ center Chol Marial and 6’7″ forward Donta Scott. While Scott had a fair amount of playing time this past season, an injury-plagued Marial played just 65 minutes in his freshman season and had ten total field goal attempts. Maryland stands to bring in forward Jairus Hamilton, a transfer from Boston College, but Hamilton’s eligibility for next season is pending a transfer waiver.
Interestingly, this wave of transfers out of College Park is not the first mass exodus the Terps have experienced under Coach Turgeon. Back in 2014, five Maryland players left the team; all of them were contributors from the season before.
Should Tomaic ultimately choose to leave the program, Maryland Basketball’s recruiters will need to scramble even harder than before to fill the massive gaps in their roster. One potential name to look at is Evansville forward DeAndre Williams, who will be transferring from the Purple Aces after leading the team with 15.2 points per game and 6.9 boards per game. After striking out on many other potential transfer targets this off-season, Maryland can’t afford to miss many more.
In his career thus far with Maryland, Tomaic has averaged 1.3 points and 1.1 rebounds per game after having his playing time steadily decline since his freshman year. Barring a sudden influx of big men, Maryland already projects to have a rough season in 2020-2021.