What Could Have Been
Lance “Born Ready” Stephenson is leaving Cincinnati for the NBA. You may remember Stephenson as the pivitol piece of the story that the Washington Post ran on Gary Williams’s inability to recruit. Stevenson had Maryland as one of his final schools, but as the spring grew closer to summer, he decided to cast his lot with the Bearcats. Another typical Gary Williams failure. The Post article came at probably the darkest period of Gary Williams career. The Terps were looking like they were going to miss yet another NCAA Tournament, but the boys would not be denied and went on to play deeper into the post season than any other ACC school not named Duke or UNC.
Stephenson then played a stellar game to lead the Bearcats over the Terps early in the year, and it looked like the ultimate insult to injury. But that wasn’t the case. Instead Maryland came within a miracle shot of going to the Final Four (Yeah I said it, you can’t prove me wrong!). And Cincinnatti, well…were they even in the tournament? Anyway just like that Lance is off to the NBA. Had things been different and Gary had landed the big fish, you can only speculate on what would have been. I for one think that he would not have fit in. Would he have given us that one additional point we needed to beat Michigan State in round 2? Maybe, but the theme to the 2009-2010 Terps was team work, would a 1 year rental help that, or hurt? We could only guess. I think we were better off without him. Truth is we’ll never know, but what we do know is that Cincinnatti got him, and a lot of help it got them.
Extra Droppings:
I saw my first snake today (though he was a road kill victim) but that doesn’t make it Snake Day (the first day the snakes are out for the year). Our good friend Justin reported a garder snake in Calvert County on March 27th. (Hopefully I got that date right), therefore Snake Day comes a little early to Maryland this year. That either another sign of Global Warming, or else they are stepping up their offensive against me in 2010.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 8:32 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.
April 8th, 2010 at 7:58 am
I think it turned out best for the Terps. Stephenson seems like a tempermental and selfish player. I’m assuming he will be a first round pick but I don’t expect big things from him in the NBA.
April 8th, 2010 at 11:39 am
I think most years, he would have helped, but this team really bought into playing as a team and knew their roles. Whose minutes would he have taken?