No. 7 Terps give their fans a quick peek
COLLEGE PARK — Going into his ninth season, Maryland men’s basketball coach Mark Turgeon let several hundred fans peek behind the curtain Sunday afternoon at Xfinity Center to watch the end of practice, as well a spirited 30-minute scrimmage between the members of a team ranked No. 7 in the Associated Press Top 25 preseason poll.
The Terps followed up by interacting with the crowd, answering questions from a couple of younger fans and signing autographs and taking selfies.
It followed a team midnight run with students that was held earlier this month and was part of the buildup leading to Friday’s exhibition game against Division II Fayetteville State before Maryland opens the regular season Nov. 5 against Holy Cross.
“I think today is about younger kids
coming. It’s a good time for them, you see a lot of young kids here, parents with ’em,” Turgeon said. “They get really close to the players. They’re getting autographs now. They got good seats. They get to see us actually play and play an organized practice with referees, which was pretty good.”
Turgeon thought his team, which returns seven of its top players from last season, also benefited.
“I think for us, anytime whenever you can get a team in front of people, it helps,” Turgeon said. “We’ll be better Friday when we play an exhibition game because of what we did today. Last year, we had an open practice for the students. I thought it was a good day, I thought it was a good turnout.”
While the portion most of the fans saw Sunday was more pickup game than practice, with the two teams evenly divided by Turgeon, the coach had no plans of intervening.
“I wasn’t stopping it,” he said. “I thought we played through a lot more mistakes than we normally do, but we’ll be learning from it.”
What fans might have gleaned from watching the workout were the offensive pace and defensive adjustments, two things Turgeon has often been criticized for during his tenure. This year’s team appears to be playing faster and switching out of its man-to-man defense more often than any other Turgeon coached in his previous 21 seasons running Division I programs.
“We always try to play fast. I think our depth will allow us to play faster longer in a game,” Turgeon said. “We still want to be great in the half-court [offense]. We have to beat teams in the half-court, too. Hopefully, our depth from makes and misses can wear teams out as games go on. But you’ve got to take good shots and take care of the ball.
“If we’re not doing that, we’ll have to bring it back in check a little bit. The bottom line’s about winning, right? If you’re playing fast and not winning, it’s not the right way to play. We’re still building depth, too. Right now, there’s some guys playing because it’s a practice or they’ll play in a game because we might win that game. Our depth’s got to get a little bit deeper and a little bit better.”
During the scrimmage, both teams flashed the 3-2 defensive zone that Turgeon has used only sparingly in the past, including twice last season with great success. Maryland also pressed at times, which helped the Terps get back in last year’s ACC-Big Ten Challenge game against eventual national champion Virginia before losing 76-71 at home in early December.
“I thought our zone was terrific again. We’ve really worked on it hard,” Turgeon said. “It was a zone we ran last year. We’re actually doing some different presses back
Season opener to it, which I think [will] help it. Today is only our13th day together, we’ve got a lot in. We’re actually doing pretty well for this early. We’re just kind of getting started.
“I do think there’s two more presses that we’ll still put in before December, maybe January. It might take some time. We put in a different man-to-man defense yesterday. So we didn’t show it today, we practiced it today before everybody got here. We want to be a little more complicated on defense, a little more simple on offense because we think we have got really good players.”
Sophomore wing Aaron Wiggins can’t wait to switch defenses, going from the man-to-man to a zone and the press.
“I love it. It’ll allow us to get out and run more,” Wiggins said Sunday. “We’ll be able to go deeper in our bench when guys get tired. Just switching it, it confuses the offenses of the other teams going from a press to a man-to-man to a zone.”
Sunday’s event was as much about engaging the fans as it was educating them about what they might see the next few months.
The meet-and-greet between the players and the fans began with each player introducing themselves, telling the crowd where they were from and what they were studying in school. The biggest cheers were for senior guard Anthony Cowan Jr. when he told those attending that he had graduated in three years.
But two questions that drew the most buzz came from two younger fans.
“Can everybody on the team dunk?” one asked.
It was followed by sophomore forward Jalen Smith being asked if he planned on staying all four years.
The former Mount Saint Joseph star deflected it well, saying he was focused on the present and not looking too far down the road.
Just like his coach, who was already thinking about Monday’s practice, that one back behind the curtain.