Terps Under Fire
Bad trend...
washingtonpost.com has a new three part series about the downswing of the Maryland Terps basketball program called Missed Shots. I have been a Terps fan ever since the Joe Smith, Keith Booth, Laron Profit, Johnny Rhodes and Exree Hipp days in the early/mid ’90s. I liked that they were always and still are the underdogs of the ACC. They played scrappy, hustle basketball and usually performed best when not expected to win.
There has been chatter about the Terps losses and Gary Williams’ lack of recruiting (especially local talent). Gary fires back that recruiting is not his only job, but part of his job. His top recruiting coaches have left for other jobs, so that slack has not picked up since those departures. With the Redskins being the other favorite franchise in the area, having similar problems, it is evident that they’re both in need of recruiting and (for the Redskins) drafting help. Coaching and recruiting go hand in hand and each is hopeless without the other. Redskins have the constantly changing variable of a new head coach but pretty terrible drafting skills whereas the Terps have a constant and proven coach in Gary Williams, but lackluster recruiting.
In the past decade, out of the last 10 NCAA champions, the Terps have the worst winning percentage and have missed the most NCAA tourneys. Not a good stat.
Hopefully by the end of the three part series they reveal something positive for Gary and the Terps future, and don’t call for his head as a knee jerk reaction like another flailing franchise.
Missed Shots: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
