Cowan to lead with body and mind

Junior says change in his on-court persona will be noticeable this season

COLLEGE PARK – As a former college point guard, Maryland men’s basketball coach Mark Turgeon has spent a lot of time watching tape before, during and after each of his first seven seasons with whoever was manning the position.

In his sessions with Anthony Cowan Jr. since the Terps finished a disappointing 19-13 season in March, Turgeon has spent much of their time together talking about the junior point guard’s body language.

Along with all t he positive t hings Cowan brought to the team his first two years — namely his scoring and his defense — he at times sent the wrong message to his teammates, his coaches and referees when things didn’t go well.

“We’ve showed him some different things. We’ve talked about it a lot,” Turgeon said last week on Media Day. “He has changed. Will he have [bad] body language when he goes in and thinks he was fouled and didn’t get the call or whatever?

“I’m sure we’ll see it, but he’s a totally different kid. I think he likes the new Anthony. Man, is he playing well. But practice is scripted. No one is in the stands. We’re not on the road. I think it’s Ex-Terps AD Anderson told commission that turmoil after he left led to lineman McNair’s death Exhibition Tonight, 7 TV: BTN Plus

COWAN , a comfort level he has with his teammates and the respect they have for him.”

Fans can get a glimpse of the new Cowan — and a roster with many new faces — when Maryland plays its lone preseason game tonight at home against Lynn University, a Division II program in Boca Raton, Fla. The regular season begins next Tuesday against Delaware.

Cowan thinks the change in his on-court persona will be noticeable.

“I think it’s becoming more [obvious] now. I’ve been working on it so hard that it’s just becoming natural for me to have better body language,” Cowan said in a telephone interview Monday. “It helps me, it helps our team and when they see me like that it makes them be like that as well.”

Cowan said it’s something he has been reminded about since he started playing organized basketball when he was 9 years old. At the time, his father, Anthony Sr., was his coach and “was always calling me out for it,” Cowan Jr. said.

“I definitely remember him always telling me to change my body language. I really didn’t know what it meant. When I got through high school to college, I had coaches telling me and I knew it was something I needed to change. …

“I am a quiet person. I think it took me so long to change it because I didn’t realize what I was doing, I was just being myself. I wasn’t being like an angry-type person at all. It was just who I was. I think that was one of the biggest issues that it was like that.”

Cowan is coming off a season in which he put up career highs for nearly every statistical category — from a team high in points (16.2) and assists (5.1) to rebounds (4.9) and steals (1.5) — while being named third-team All-Big Ten as well as to the league’s all-defensive team.

But he is coming off a season when his decision-making, as well as the emotions he displayed when he wasn’t having plays called for him, or getting passes from his teammates or calls from officials, brought his ability to be a leader into question.

Cowan acknowledged that he struggled at times last season in his role as both a point guard and scorer. While he has improved in that regard since his freshman year, it is still a balance he is trying to find.

“Just being able to read different plays just being able to make the best decisions,” he said. “I think my decision-making has grown a lot in terms of knowing when there’s an open lane or knowing there’s a man open. I think that’s what I got better at.

“As a point guard, I think the hardest thing first is obviously leading your team to win. Always looked at the best points [by] how much they won and not look at individual numbers. For me it’s always been a process learning what decisions to make at certain times.”

After playing a complementary role two years ago with fellow freshmen Kevin Huerter and Justin Jackson to then-junior star Melo Trimble, Cowan shared the role of scorer and leader last season mostly with Huerter, especially after Jackson tore his labrum and underwent season-ending surgery in January.

Cowan will certainly have help this season, perhaps more than he did in 2017-18. Along with sophomore center Bruno Fernando, whomadethe Big Ten’s all-freshman team a year ago and a freshman class led by