Turtledroppings.com

Turtle Droppings

Welcome everyone to the latest blog featuring all things Maryland Sports!  For those not familiar with us, we are a group of friends that basically all met on the 7^th Floor of Denton Hall back in the mid 90’s.  We spend most of our time and energy on our Tailgating Website known as D7tailgate.com, but lately we’ve been looking for a different avenue in order to get our feelings out about our Beloved Terps.  So from that we have launched the “Turtle Droppings” Website.

Now before we go too far, I just want to be clear.  We do not possess any special inside connections, our goal isn’t to break any Terrapin news, we are just simply a bunch of fans who like to write about Maryland Sports and we like to think we can do it in a way that is enjoyable for the casual fan to follow.  I know we’ve all been sitting at the computer the Friday before a big football game just combing over the internet looking for any nugget of Terps news, and though there are certain sites, mainly the Baltimore and DC papers that can give you some information, we wanted to provide an outlet for a less formal look at what is going on in the University’s Sports Landscapes.

So with that, let’s get into our first ever post.  And let’s start off on a good note.  On Tuesday night I was lucky enough to score some free tickets to the Maryland-Michigan game.  Now usually I don’t get very excited for December Non-Conference Basketball games, but any chance to see Maryland take on a school that encompasses a whole state, (not like an Eastern Carolina, or a Middle Tennessee State) you got to take it.  Especially when it involves the ACC-Big 10 Challenge, or what is soon to be name the ACC-Big 10 “Lightly Contested Match Up”.  I mean come on what are we at, 10 in a row?

Any way one of the catches about the free tickets was that all the seats weren’t together.  Not in the way where you have 2 and 2, but in the way that you have 3 and 1.  So however you sliced it, someone would have to sit by themselves. As always due to traffic we were late getting inside and missed the tip.  But to our dismay there were plenty of seats still available.  So we grabbed some just off to the side of the student “Wall” so that we could all sit together.  No sooner did I mentally start to write an article about fans not showing up for this game, all the seats started to fill in.  In fact I was worried about having to be moved by the rightful owner of the seats we were sitting in until I realized we were in the students section where it’s first come, first serve.

The first half was sort of so-so, I mean we were down by 6 going into the break but then all of a sudden the place came alive.  Now here is where you can call me crazy, but at half time the National Championship Field Hockey Team was introduced and paraded around their NC Trophy.  The place went nuts!  It was the loudest it had been all night, and I think some of that energy carried over into the 2^nd half.  When we came out at half time and drilled two quick 3’s to tie it, Comcast was in “It’s on B#$@h!” mode.  It was nice to see.  Reminded me somewhat of our days in Cole Field House.

Anyway, one thing I want to point out from the game.  I don’t know why I notice these things but I do, but one of the Michigan players really caught my attention.  It was one of the bench players who no matter how bad it got from the Wolverines standpoint, he would always be standing, clapping, and encouraging.  Unfortunately he never took his warm ups off so I don’t know who it was, but judging by his height, he was one of the smaller players in the huddle, so based on the Michigan Roster it was either Kelvin Grady or David Merritt (One’s 5’10, the other is like 5’11…neither were listed as Centers by the way).  That really made an impression on me.  I wonder if I could either hire him or befriend him.  I mean life is tough, we could all use one of those guys in our lives.

Picture this, you wreck the car.  You get out to see the damage and (we’ll go with Kelvin) Kelvin is right there clapping and saying “That’s OK, we got this, we’re fine, keep your head up”.  Who wouldn’t want that?  You can’t put a price on that kind of positive thinking.  Which brings me to my next question, do you think coaches look for those kind of players, or do they just hope someone emerges as the season goes on.  I can picture Coach Beilein going over his off season to do list “OK, we need a big man, a back up PG, and a swing man…Oh and someone to be the first guy off the bench giving out high fives and hugs”.  Sounds funny I know, but who wouldn’t want someone like that in their life or on their bench?

Anyway back to the point.  The Terps put on an excellent display in the 2^nd half.  Vasquez put the team on his back, and despite the two “Milk House Debacle” games in Orlando, we have a second big win to put on our NCAA resume. 

Extra Droppings:

I really enjoy Gregg Easterbrook’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback article on ESPN.com.  I think he is extremely talented and I love how he works in obscure information into his article.  He makes great points and is always well informed.  But when ESPN bought the rights to the BCS games, and the title of his article the next week was called “A college playoff system will cause big problems”.  It was kind of like finding out about Santa again.  I just kind of felt cheated by the world.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 5:25 pm and is filed under Maryland Terps Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.