Turtledroppings.com – Maryland Football And Basketball Blog

It was a very newsworthy week last week, and I didn’t have computer access since my wife took the laptop to a conference.  Sure I have the WordPress App for iPhone, but that usually is better left for short news updates.  So, here I am to talk all things Maryland from last week.  The Terps provided a roller coaster of  emotions both on and off the field.

First lets start with the Basketball team getting that road win monkey off the their back.  It was the first road win for Mark Turgeon and the first one in over a calendar year.  The game was however one of the ugliest games I can remember by two teams in a long time.   Still it was an ACC win on the road, and I really don’t care.  In that game Terrell Stoglin played nearly a perfect game.  He made some nice passes.  Was on fire shooting, and did a semi-decent job on the defensive end.  Shot selection was pretty good and he was very efficient.  Call that a high for his week.

Thursday itself was the true up and down day of emotions.  First came the news that Pe’Shon Howard was going to miss the remainder of the season with a torn ACL.  Look, everyone could see that Pe’Shon was not having the type of season any of us had hoped he would be having.  Still he is the ONLY true point guard on a team that can’t afford to lose anyone.  His absence is going to be missed going forward.  There is no way around it.  Here’s to hoping he can just really put this entire season behind him and start  fresh next year.  He shows at times he can play, and others he looked a little overwhelmed out there.

Then we got the real tug of emotions when it was announced to Twitter that Danny O’Brien was going to transfer.  Only to have O’Brien squash that by saying “Contrary to rumor, he was still a Terp”.  Just the type of news you need to hear from your star quaterback, the day before the #2 rated wide receiver is set to announce his choice for college.  Throw in the fact that O’Brien hosted Stefon Diggs on his official visit the week before, I thought for sure it was all a farce.  For the time being it was.

Friday comes and we get the news that Diggs is going to announce from Looney’s Pub in College Park.  No way he is going to slap Maryland in the face by announcing he is going to Florida or Ohio State a mere 100 feet from Campus.  Right?  No way he would come to Maryland if Danny O’Brien is transferring right?  Well by the early evening, we got word that Diggs was going to play in Collge Park.  Elation.  Immediately I thought that would squash the O’Brien transferring rumblings.  For one night I went to bed feeling good about the direction of Maryland Football.  Mike Locksley for President!  More on this later.

Saturday brings us Maryland at Duke.  I went into this with tempered enthusiasm.  Pe’Shon was out.  Nick Faust as PG at Cameron.  It didn’t give me the warm and fuzzies.  Still Maryland jumped out to a great start, and Duke didn’t.  By the second half Duke had built a double digit lead, and Terrell Stoglin was having one of his worst games of the season.  The Terps managed to mount a comeback thanks mostly to the play of Nick Faust and Mychal Parker.  It was a great game for them.  Hopefully they both can build off of that.  Before too long though, Duke was building a lead again, and  a disgruntled Terrell Stoglin was still on the bench as the lead was built for Duke again.  You could see it in his body language.  By the end of the game, the Terps were on the wrong end of the score.  Within a half and hour of the end of the game, Stoglin tweets about not being in the game and sitting the bench.  When it was all said and done, he deleted it and said he was just frustrated.  But the damage had been done.   No one is denying he is the #1, 2 and 3 scoring option on this team.  But he did not help the team on Saturday.  He wasn’t just missing shots.  He was taking really bad shots.  And at times this year it is really hard to call any of his shots bad, but truth be told, they were some really bad shots.  Hopefully, it was an eyeopener for Stoglin.  Hopefully he is capable of seeing what his coaches are trying to teach him.  If he becomes the complete player he could become, he has a career in the NBA.  If he stays as a one dimensional player, he may not get the chance he could deserve.  As of today, Scott Spenelli says everything was taken care of in house.  It will be interesting to see how that plays out Thursday.  Turgeon and Stoglin have butted heads all season, and this was the biggest public display of that.  Hopefully this doesn’t turn into a Danny O’Brien situation!

Now we are up to today.  The Maryland football team makes it official Danny O’Brien is transferring.  Going out the door with him is the second starting offensive lineman Max Garcia and linebacker Mario Rowson.  Obviously losing the face of the program is crushing.  O’Brien burst onto the scene two seasons ago, and gave Maryland fans a hope that we haven’t had in a long time.  I thought the change from Gary Crowton’s offense to Mike Locksley’s was going to be a good thing for Danny.  Obviously he didn’t.  Good luck to him.  Sorry to all of you who thought buying a #5 jersey was a solid investment.  Who knew?

Now, just as concerning is the loss of Garcia.  Coupling that with the departure of R.J. Dill and yet again Maryland is going to have an extremely young offensive line.  Is it just me, or have we been saying that since the Bush administration?  Oh and I meant the first Bush!  Seriously, what is with Maryland that they can’t get enough offensive lineaman year in and year out that we find the need to play freshman and walk ons at quite possibly the second most important position on the field?  I don’t get it.  Here’s to hoping that the next guys in line are ready to go.

Sorry about my rants, but I had a lot to discuss.  In review:

• Good road win at Clemson
• Oh No, Danny O’Brien is transferring
• Oh No, Pe’Shon is out for the year.
• Oh, It’s all good, O’Brien is still a Terp
• Whoop, Diggs is a Terp!!!!
• Hey Faust is starting to show signs of how good he can be
• Oh no, Stoglin is going off the deep end
• Oh no, O’Brien really is transferring
• Double Oh no, he is taking Garcia with him.

As you can see, it was a really bad week to be sans computer.  Things happened all over the place.  Some good, some bad.  Mostly a lot of question marks going forward!  I have to wish Danny O’Brien the best.  If ever you wanted a poster boy for what you wanted the face of the program to look like he was it.  Excellent student, great team leader, never sulked publicly during his benching.  Just an all around great Terp.  Even if he is leaving.   C.J. Brown, the time is now yours!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 13th, 2012 at 7:40 pm and is filed under Maryland Terps Basketball, Maryland Terps Football. 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.