Turtledroppings.com – Maryland Football And Basketball Blog

Yesterday Maryland took down another opponent that was overmatched from the beginning.  South Carolina State posed little threat to the Terps yesterday.  The final score was 61-46.  The Terps didn’t shoot particularly well, shooting just 37% from the field and 22% from three.  They did however manage to shoot 81% from the line.  Alex Len was the only player in double figures with 13 points.

Look, it is tough to take a lot from these games against teams that are so overmatched.  You can’t blame Turgeon for wanting to have a little less of a schedule with all the youth and new parts on this team, but at some point playing against inferior competition loses value, and I feel like the Terps are getting to that point.  I get having these games around finals and the holidays, but it is hard to continuously get up for these types of games when in reality if you show up and put forth a decent effort you should win.  Just ask the fans (There will be more on that during the slow period coming up).  The attendance shows what the fans think of these games.

With all that being said the Terps could very well be 12-1 going into ACC play.  My concern is with this schedule if they are a bubble team, that bubble is going to burst.  The Terps can’t rely on beating the BC’s, Wake’s, and FSU’s to pad the ACC record.  Ask Seth Greenberg.  They are going to have to get some wins against the Duke’s, UNC’s and NC State’s of the world.

If you take a look at Ken Pomeroy’s RPI, the Terps currently sit at 73 in his ranking.  As we know, that type of number usually has a bubble teams bubble burst.  If you are looking for even worse news, the rankings of the next 4 opponents are not very good either.  Monmouth comes in at 267, Stoney Brook is a respectable 116, Del State is 288, and IUPUI is 298.  Not exactly resume builders, in fact it is quite possible Maryland could drop a little lower than 73 following those games.  So far Maryland can hang their hat on 2 top 100 wins with the road win at Northwestern (82) and the neutral site win over George Mason (92).  Again, not exactly resume builders.

Turgeon knows it, and has said as much.  This schedule is not as difficult as he would like, but thought it would take awhile for his team to come together, and they are a little ahead of where he thought they would be.  I also think we might see some home and home series with some more teams from power conferences in the near future.  I just hope this exceptionally weak schedule doesn’t bite the Terps come March.  Of course if you win the games you should and steal a couple, your aren’t even on the bubble and it isn’t even an issue.  Let’s just do that boys!  The schedule is what it is at this point, and they just need to take care of each game one at a time.  Go Terps!

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2012 at 11:58 am 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.