What?  You thought we were going to talk basketball today??

Thanks to our friend at the ACC SEC Blog for pointing out that ACC projected win totals have been posted for 2012.  The good news is that Maryland is projected to win WAY many more games this year than we actually won last year.  I mean we should more than double the 2011 win total!   That’s the good news.

The bad news is that our line has been set at 4.5.  So if you are looking to bet Maryland O/U, and you are somewhere that sports betting is legal (Damn You!), you could bet on whether or not the Terps get that allusive 5^th win.

On a personal note, I wrote just a few days ago that I thought our “Mason-Dixon Line” for 2012 was 5 wins.  Good for me!

Oh and more bad news, only Duke has a lower O/U with 4 even.

Here are the whole conference worth:

FSU 9.5

VT 9.5

Clemson 8.5

GT 8.5

NC St 8

UNC 7

UVA 6.5

Miami 6

Wake 6

BC 5

Maryland 4.5

Duke 4

Looks like it could be another long year in College Park, unless of course you are taking the under.

Again, thanks to www.accsecblog.com for the information.

Extra Droppings:

Also congratulations to Alyssa Thomas for being named Woman’s Basketball ACC Player of the Year.  Alyssa is just the second sophomore to receive this honor.  She joins fellow Terps Vicky Bullet, Crystal Langhorne, and Kristi Toliver as ACC POY recipients.  Thomas averaged 17 points a game for the Lady Terps and 8.5 rebounds.   Don’t forget to check out the Woman’s basketball team as the open their ACC Tournament play on Friday (I believe Comcast Sportsnet will be covering them).

It’s that time of year again, time to schedule your baby sitters and send regrets to those jerks who planned their wedding during college football season.  That is right, as of 2:00 today, the ACC Football Schedule is out.  Here is a first look at who our Terps will be facing, or more importantly when they will be facing them.

William & Mary 9-1

@Temple 9-8

UConn 9-15

@WVU 9-22

WF 10-6

@UVA 10-13

NC St 10-20

@BC 10-27

GT 11-3

@Clemson 11-10

FSU 11-17

@UNC 11-24

I couldn’t help but laugh as I typed that out.  Talk about balance, one at home, one on the road, one at home, one on the road.  Pretty balanced.  I also like how spread out it is since you don’t have to ask your spouse if it is okay to go tailgate three Saturdays in a row, while she watches the kids.

So there you have it.  Words can’t express how excited I am to read this over.  And since we have the schedule, why not do a quick prediction.  Remember this is knee jerk, gun to my head with no real homework put into it.  But I won’t let the lack of research and analysis stop me from posting something!

William & Mary should be a win, granted “Should” is tough to use after last season, but I’ll give the new team the benefit of the doubt.  At Temple, I want to say win, but after last year maybe I should curb that enthusiasm.  We’ll go with loss.  That puts us at 1-1.

Hosting UConn in a revenge game.  I don’t want to over sell this one, but if Randy can’t get it done verse UConn, it will be time to fire up the Bunsen burners under the coaches seat.

At WVU, well that’s a loss, hosting Wake, who knows about Wake, they seem to wobble from one extreme to the other, for the sake of not starting us off 2-3 I’ll say win.  On the road to UVA, well good things never seem to happen in Charlottesville, so I’ll say lose, that puts us at 3-3.

I think we can beat NC State at home, considering they needed an epic choke job to beat us in a meaningful game at home last year.  Then off to BC, I think that is winnable.  Again taking the glass half full look at things (and why not half a year prior to kickoff), that would put us at 5-3.   Then we probably lose to Georgia Tech, we played them tough last year, but I think they are the better team.  So we are now 5-4.

The trip to Clemson will be another L, as will the following week when we host the Seminoles, and then it is off to Chapel Hill to see if we can keep our season alive (assuming we can use the W&M win for Bowl eligibility).  We beat them, and it is 6-6 and Maryland is back in the post season!

You heard it here first!

On a more serious and thought out level, I could see us winning 2 games again this year, and best case scenario maybe going 8-4.  Not really going out on a limb with that, but you can set the bar at 5 wins.  If we get 5 wins, Edsall can say progress is being made, and the Administration can stand behind him.  Anything 4 or less and things will be very ugly in Terpland.  Any win over 5 gets Edsall that much more leash from the currently disgruntled fan base.

Of course, who knows how this will all shake out.  What I do know is that I have 6 dates with Lot 1 and my cooler, and two very makeable Road Trips to think about.  If only fall would hurry up and get here!

Let me preface this by saying I have no inside information, no connection, no idea what is going on inside Danny O’Brien’s head, so everything to follow is just opinion and speculation in the highest degree.

With all that being said, the big winner this week that no one is talking about is CJ Brown.  I don’t know what he did to get this lucky, but whatever it was, he needs to keep doing it.  First he gets two new offensive weapons to work with next fall, assuming Wes Brown and Stephon Diggs get immediate playing time.  Wait a minute, I just realized we have another Brown.  Maybe the reason we don’t have names on the back of the jersey’s anymore is because eventually everyone on the team is just going to be named Brown?

Conspiracy theories behind, CJ gets two new weapons, AND the only player on the team that is capable of taking playing time away from him is gone.  Pretty much “Here you go kid, the keys to the car, oh and be careful, I tuned it up a little and added some horsepower”.  CJ Brown has to be on cloud nine.

But back to O’Brien, why do you think he would transfer?  First he was all on board with Edsall, second he loves his team mates, the University (he will graduate from Maryland and be considered an alum) and the area.  We were transitioning back to a more pro-style offense which he ran during his highly successful Freshman season.

So why change?  Here’s my thought.  Because he wasn’t going to win his job back.  I touched on this earlier, but CJ Brown is 100% healthy, DOB is still limited going into Spring Practice.  A new system, even if it is like the old system will still take some adjustments.  CJ Brown will be running that system and learning it all spring long.  He will be getting his timing down, and figuring out the reads.  He is talented, and though sometimes the intended receiver isn’t in the TV frame when one of his passes hits the ground, he is still capable of moving the team.

So Danny did not want to risk losing time getting his job back.  Granted as I said, there are a lot of dots being connected with few numbers on the paper to guide me, but no other reason makes sense.

I honestly think we were in a situation where we had two talented QB’s and one spot, if Danny stayed and it appeared he was going to win his job back, then I think we would be talking about CJ Brown leaving.  So it was going to be one or the other.  DOB just took fate into his own hands by bowing out now.

Symbolically this still and will continue to hurt, but many forget we had a actual QB controversy last season that was only truly ended by Notre Dame, and though I was behind DOB the whole way, it wasn’t an easy decision.  CJ Brown brings a lot to the table and now he will see every snap in spring and quite possibly (and God willing) every snap this fall.

Fear not Terps fans, the world is not ending in fact it could be much better.  Then again, one of my biggest flaws is being too optimistic, looking for silver linings in fog banks if you will.  But I’m high on this team and am excited for the fall campaign.  With Danny or not, I was hoping it was with, but without may not matter as much as initially thought.  Time to move forward, we wish Danny the best, but CJ is now our guy.

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!

As much as the Terps Football team seemed on cloud nine after the Diggs commitment, things are back to being a mess, as Danny O’Brien, Max Garcia, and Mario Rowson all announce they will be transferring from Maryland.

There are two ways to handle this news, cry “Woe is me?” until the pain passes, or pick up the pieces and move on.  Quite frankly I’m tired of cursing the Football team and more importantly Randy Edsall, so I’m saying let’s pick up the pieces and move on.  Danny is obviously a huge loss, and symbolically a devastating loss, but CJ Brown is still here.  Last I saw he was capable of moving the offense up and down the field.

Granted, Danny O was made for a different offense, the offense we should be getting back into, and that is what disturbs me the most about him not remaining, but things still look bright.

Though it is risky to make statements like this, I think we can finally say the purging has ended.  Whoever is leaving is gone, whoever is here will remain here.  Let’s move on and focus on Spring Practice.  Remember Danny would be limited this spring CJ Brown is not.  That means our QB will have all spring and summer to become accustomed to the new offense (and to work on his accuracy).

So cry if you want, but I’m ready to move forward.  I love Maryland Football too much to keep bashing it, so best wishes to Danny O’Brien, and here’s to CJ Brown.  Now the only issue we fans need to face is how much longer till fall.

The University of Maryland Football team landed a huge fish when Stephon Diggs committed to the Terps today.  Diggs represents the first 5 Star Recruit the Terps have landed since 2007 (Bruce Campbell).  The Terps recruiting class, depending on the source was ranked 6th or 7th in the ACC and in the mid 40′s nationally.  I imagine this would bump it up at least a little.

Diggs choose Maryland over Ohio State, Florida, and Auburn.  He is ranked the #2 WR in this years class of incoming seniors and the only 5 star prospect left to commit.

Some days it’s a good day to be a Terp, some days a bad day to be a Terp.  This one is an excellent one to be a Terp.  Who would have thought we would be able to pull this kind of talent coming off a 2-10 season.  Heck had Diggs gone elsewhere, I’d still say we over achieved this year.  But this is icing on an undeserved cake!

Of course signing a 5 star kid, and having said kid play like a 5 star talent are two different things.  You could fill a canyon with stories of stars who flamed out, or never amounted to much so perhaps we should reel in our expectations, but all indications are Diggs will make an immediate impact on the Terps offense.

Now the attention of Maryland Nation switches to Danny O’Brien, we should find out early next week what his long term plans are.  You never can tell what a college kid is thinking, but you’d have to figure this one would go into the “Pro” column when deciding whether or not to remain in College Park.  If he does stay, I think expectations for the program will go through the roof, and for once Randy Edsall may begin to stick his head out of the dog house door.

Of course you cannot mention this story without bringing up Mike Locksley, this is what he was brought in to do, and boy is he ever doing it.  If he can pull in two local studs in such a short time, what can he do given an entire year?

Like I said, today is a good day to be a Terp!!

Twitter is a great thing, but sometimes it can be maddening.  If you want to hear a joke or witty observation from a friend or celebrity, it works just fine.  If you want it to be a source of news, well then you are taking some risk.  Just like yesterday when word leaked that Danny O’Brien was transferring from Maryland, all hell broke loose.  Finally it took a tweet from O’Brien himself to set the record straight, that in his words, he was still a Terp.

So that put that fire out….for now.

But let’s take a closer look at the situation.  I have always been one to believe that where there is smoke, there very well could be fire, and I think there is merit to this story.  Per the Washington Post Danny will decide his future this weekend.

Here is why I think he is staying.  First we are moving away from the spread offense and back to a system more like what we saw his Freshman year.  How many interceptions did O’Brien throw this past season that were completely uncharacteristic?  Well those stem from not totally grasping the new system, moving back towards what Mike Locksley wants to do will benefit him.

Another reason I think he is staying is that word on the street was that he hosted Stefon Diggs this past weekend.  That doesn’t really make much sense for anyone involved if Danny was indeed heading out the door.  So hopefully this is just a rumor, and it will quickly be put to bed.  After all, if you were the type of person who enjoyed starting rumors (or wanted a certain 5 Star Athlete to pick OSU over Maryland….just saying), wouldn’t this sound believable?

And finally, Danny O’Brien seems happy to be in College Park and has been working with Under Armour up in Baltimore.

OK, that’s the good news.  The bad news is Edsall didn’t really show a lot of faith in O’Brien after his early struggles.  To go from ACC Rookie of the Year to the bench has to hurt.  Another reason is that Danny will soon be graduating which may allow him to go the Russell Wilson route.

Also Danny will be limited this spring as he recovers from his broken arm.  As a new offense is put in place, there will be somewhat of a learning curve.  With a healthy CJ Brown, and a not yet healthy O’Brien, perhaps Danny feels he will fall behind in the competition for the starting job.  Why lose another year of eligibility in a situation where he has to win back what was once his to begin with?

Whatever does end up happening, QB’s transfer all the time, and wouldn’t one expect either CJ Brown or Danny O’Brien to leave this spring?  They can’t both play QB, and I am sure both think they are worthy of starting in College Football, so even if O’Brien does stay, then that probably means we will lose CJ Brown.   So if the unthinkable does happen, we all shouldn’t be shocked.

In fact, I will even go out on a limb and say we will be all right.  I am an O’Brien fan, but I think there is a lot of potential in CJ Brown.  I think we can move forward with either of them, but all that being said, losing O’Brien means more than losing his services, it is a drastic blow to the program and another strike against Randy Edsall, which Randy can’t really afford.  It would also in my mind take us out of the Stefon Diggs conversation, and would bum out everyone who bought the #5 Pride Jersey.

So here’s to hoping he stays.  It isn’t the end of the world if he goes, but it sure makes the world seem like a better place if he doesn’t.

Here are the list of officially signed Terps from the UMTerps website.  It looks like there are a few stragglers out there.  Let’s just hope everyone who committed signs.   And keep your fingers crossed maybe we can get a surprise signing as well.  For those who made it official, welcome aboard, and we look forward to seeing you in uniform.

Signing Day Log (confirmed NLIs)

• P.J. Gallo (7:01 a.m.)
• Alvin Hill (7:02 a.m.)
• Nick Brigham (7:10 a.m.)
• Stefan Houston (7:19 a.m.)
• Malcolm Culmer (7:24 a.m.)
• Kenneth Goins (7:28 a.m.)
• Joe Riddle (7:32 a.m.)
• Wes Brown (7:44 a.m.)
• Brock Dean (7:50 a.m.)
• Perry Hills (7:54 a.m.)
• Anthony Nixon (7:55 a.m.)
• Shawn Petty (7:57 a.m.)
• Caleb Rowe (8:23 a.m.)
• Mike Madaras (8:32 a.m.)
• Albert Reid (8:41 a.m.)
• Avery Thompson (8:45 a.m.)
• Amba Etta-Tawo (8:47 a.m.)
• Roman Braglio (8:50 a.m.)

It is hard to be too optimistic after the disaster that was the 2011 Maryland Football season.  Enter DC Recruiting specialist Mike Locksley, and maybe, just maybe there is a sliver of hope us Maryland fans could be pleasantly surprised.  I guess the worst case scenario is that the 23 players who “committed” actually sign tomorrow.   The best case scenario is that Locksley swoops in and nabs an player who has yet to make a commitment, or “steals” one from a certain school up north with a new coach.

Personally, I think Locksley got involved too late this season to truly have a positive effect on this class.  Next year is another story, but I think the combination of the 2-10 record and Locks coming on board just a month ago aren’t really going to help us this year.   That being said there is still some top talent that at least have the Terps listed.  The biggest get would be WR Stephon Diggs from Olny/ Good Council.  I would put this at about a 1% chance of happening, but…   The bad news is he never took an official visit, and just a couple of days ago went to USC.  So I guess the hopes of him wanting to stay close to home is about our only hope.

Ronald Darby is a Penn State commit that did take an official visit to Maryland.  The CB from Oxon Hill could find his way to Maryland if he wasn’t enamored with all the drama at Penn State.  Again the odds of this is very low, but you just never know.  Stranger things have happened on signing day.  Usually they happen to Maryland, not in our favor.

So don’t forget to keep an eye on all the signing day craziness.  I have a pretty busy day tomorrow, but maybe I will be able to update where the Terps stand at lunch time.

One final football note.  I would like to point out that Gary Crowton did indeed find his next job.  He is on his way to Canada and will be the OC for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.  We will always have fond memories of Coach Crowton from that Miami game.  And that is all!

The original post was going to be about how great Maryland plays basketball down the stretch, but…well….

Anyway, Chris and I both followed this story close on Twitter and know that this has a lot of meaning to many of our friends.  In fact, this has a lot of meaning for anyone who has lived near or around Annapolis.  One of the great, well you can’t really call it a secret, but one of the great restaurants in the Capitol is Chick and Ruth’s.

I know I have had many a breakfast there back when I lived in Annapolis, mostly after a night out on the town, and before taking an out of towner back to the airport.  In many cases both.  Well Chick and Ruth’s is famous for hosting all the important political figures in the state (there is a table for the Governor aways at the ready), but they also have the Food Challenges.

The Challenge has 4 versions; first is “Man vs. Food” which is 6 lb milkshake and a 1.5 lb sandwich.  Number two is the Colossal Milkshake Challenge which is just the 6 lb milkshake (I use the term “just” lightly).  The third is the Super Colossal Sandwich Challenge which involves a 3 lb sandwich, and fourth is the Super Duper Colossal Burger Challenge, which consists of a 3 lb cheeseburger.  Win and you get your photo on the Chick and Ruth’s website.

Well thanks to Twitter we know now the Maryland’s own AJ Francis is among the latest to finish the 6 lb Milkshake Challenge.  It didn’t seem as though he had much trouble consuming the milkshake, but keeping it down was another issue.  Congratulations to AJ on being part of an Annapolis tradition (a tradition for others, not me!).  I’m sure he has on less thing hanging around on his bucket list.