Turtledroppings.com – Maryland Football And Basketball Blog

Looks like there might be a future for Maryland walk on’s after all.  The revolving door that is the Maryland Men’s Basketball team, took another spin as Ashton Pankey announced that he was leaving the University of Maryland in order to play closer to his home in New York.

Pankey averaged 4.7 points and 4.9 rebounds last season for the Terps.  This of course will open up more playing time the front court players like James Padgett and Alex Len.  And it will also mean more significant minutes for incoming freshman like Shaquille Cleare and Charles Mitchell.  Though I have nothing other than speculation to go on, seems like the thought is Damonte Dodd will be red-shirting, then again who knows what news is next for this team.

Though Maryland surely will survive the loss of Pankey, it is interesting that only Pe’Shon Howard is left from the 2010 recruiting class. Parker, Stoglin, Palsson, and Weijis have all moved on.  Thus the gradual transition from the Gary Williams era to the Mark Turgeon era is being expedited.

The only thing that does worry me, is that though talented, this incoming class is being throw right into the fire and will be putting in a lot of minutes.  Pankey was only going to be a Sophomore (though he did redshirt) so it isn’t like we lost a ton of experience there, but every bit would have helped.  Though talent wise this isn’t a loss that can’t be replaced, we are getting younger each week.  Maybe our goal of returning to the NCAA Tournament next season, is a little too ambitious.

Only time will tell.  Then again I can’t predict what will happen in Maryland Basketball in the next 24 hours, yet along next season.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.