Maryland finished the 2013-14 season with a 17-15 record in the ACC and then saw four players transfer out of the program.
Entering this season the Terps are the preseason favorite to win the Big Ten title and are a consensus top-5 team in the nation, with ESPN installing them as the preseason No. 1 in August.
How did all this happen so quickly?
“I think it just kind of all came together,” Maryland coach Mark Turgeon told ESPN’s Andy Katz and Seth Greenberg on their weekly Podcast. “We had a really good recruiting class. We have some older guys, Jake Layman’s been a part of the program for a while. We’ve added some transfers that are really good players. It just kind of all came together. Guys stuck around and didn’t go to the NBA…
“And we were kind of the hot thing with the media and everybody voting for us, so we’re excited about. I like the No. 1 better than anything else. It’s been really good for us. When ESPN came out what that poll, people look at us differently. We really embraced it.”
Expectations are so high in College Park that sophomore wing Jared Nickens told me in June he and his teammates fully expect to make the Final Four in 2016.
“We want to go to the Final Four and win a national championship,” the 6-foot-7 wing from Monmouth Junction, N.J., said then.
In freshman big man Diamond Stone, Layman, a senior forward, and sophomore guard Melo Trimble, Maryland has the Nos. 11, 24 and 36 projected picks in the 2016 NBA Draft according to DraftExpress.com.
Meantime, they have been on a massive recruiting roll, too.
The Terps recently landed point guard Kevin Huerter to the 2016 class and have hosted a slew of big-time (mostly Under Armour) players in Josh Jackson, Wenyen Gabriel, Billy Preston, Trevon Duval and Taurean Thompson, among others.
“We’re excited about it,” Turgeon said of the general hype surrounding the program. “There’s a lot of excited people here in Maryland and Maryland fans across the country, so it’s a fun time for us.”
Some other highlights from Turgeon’s comments:
**The coach is understandably very high on the 6-10 Stone, the projected No. 11 pick in the Draft.
“What the kid can do is he can put the ball in the basket,” he said. “He’s a terrific scorer and has a great feel for the game.”
**Georgia Tech transfer Robert Carter, a 6-9 junior forward, should also make an impact immediately.
“Robert Carter’s been terrific from day one,” Turgeon said. “He’s just totally changed his body. He was 257 when we got him, he’s down to about 235. He’s changed his body fat from 22 percent down to about 11 percent and gotten a lot stronger. He was a good player at Georgia Tech and we expect him to be a really good player for us. What he can really do is stretch the defense. We have a team full of good shooters, and Robert’s right up there with all of them. He can flat out shoot it.”
**Turgeon wants to see the 6-3 Trimble up his assists number from the 3.0 it was last year to go along with 16.2 points per game.
“We still need Melo to score and Melo does that as well as any point guard in the country and he’ll continue to do that,” Turgeon said. “We need Melo to become a better team leader for us and become better with assists. I don’t see why he can’t average 5-5.5 assists per game and still get the points that he needs to get for us to be successful.”
Turgeon also said Trimble now weighs 185 after coming in at 207.
**Turgeon expects Duke transfer Rasheed Sulaimon to be an elite defender and also to play some point guard.
“He will be a tremendous asset for us on the defensive end,” he said. “I think Dez [Wells] took on that challenge every night for us defensively. I think Rasheed’s going to have to do that for us. He’s really a fast player, gives us a little bit of speed. And he gives us another shooter. I also think that he can play a little point guard for us.”
**As for playing Maryland playing Georgetown in the Gavitt Tip-Off Games on Nov. 17 — the same night as the Champions Classic featuring Kentucky vs. Duke and Michigan State vs. Kansas — Turgeon is excited.
“Isn’t that great?” he asked. “We need about a 100,000-seat arena for that game. We’ll have 18,000 people in here for that Tuesday night, it’s a great game. There’s excitement in the city….There’s just a lot of pride within the area here about the game. It’s a two-year series for sure.
“Two great teams. Georgetown I think is going to be a top-15 team. They got great players and a great coach so it should be a fun, fun night.”
Photo: AP
