Jarring juxtaposition of events this week for Maryland Terrapins men's basketball fans.
On Monday, it was announced that longtime Maryland coach Gary Williams was elected to the Naismith National Basketball Hall of Fame, reminding Terps fans of that glorious time, not so long ago, when their team was among the nation's elite.
On Tuesday, it was announced that three current Maryland players had decided to transfer, reminding Terps fans that the present state of the program is, well, neither glorious nor elite.
Talking about Williams' achievements at Maryland - the 14 NCAA tournament appearances, the seven Sweet Sixteen runs, the back-to-back trips to the Final Four and the 2002 national championship - doesn't do justice to what he did for the program.
He brought it back from the dead. After Len Bias' death, after Bob Wade's disastrous three-year run, after the NCAA hit Maryland with far harsher sanctions than the school deserved, Williams got the Terps going again. By the mid-1990s, Maryland had returned to the stature it held under Lefty Driesell. By the early 2000s, Williams had taken the Terps to never-dreamed heights. For about a decade, Maryland was the equal of any blue-blood basketball program in the country.
Williams landed a few big-time recruits. But mostly he took mediocre players and made them good, and good players and made them great. No one who saw Juan Dixon and Lonny Baxter as freshmen would've predicted they would become All-American superstars who would play in two Final Fours.
No question, by the mid-2000s, Williams had lost his zeal for recruiting. The talent Maryland was getting wasn't in the same league as the talent Duke or North Carolina were bringing in year after year. Still, the Terps shared the ACC regular-season title in Williams' next-to-last year and Greivis Vasquez became the last example of how much players improved under Williams' guidance.
It's unclear whether players improve under current Maryland coach Mark Turgeon.
He has been lauded for his recruiting classes, but three seasons on the job have produced nary an NCAA tournament appearance. (Heck, even Wade got one team to The Big Dance.) Turgeon's apparent inability to get along with players hasn't helped.
Nick Faust, Shaq Cleare and Roddy Peters are the latest to bolt from the program with eligibility remaining. They join, among others, Terrell Stoglin and Pe'Shon Howard. Stoglin sent out a scathing post on Twitter about how much better off Maryland would've been with Williams as its coach and about how Turgeon doesn't know how to coach "talent." As for Howard, who transferred to USC, how different would last season have been if the Terps had had him at point guard, particularly early in the year when Seth Allen was injured?
A lot of Maryland fans heard about this transferring trio and issued a "good riddance" to players who didn't live up to their potential. All were supposed four-star recruits. Cleare was rated as one of the 10 best big men coming into school two years ago. Clearly, none met expectations (although Peters was barely on campus long enough to even meet his professors).
The question is, why did they not meet expectations?
There will be a lot of pressure on Turgeon and the Terps next season, their first in the Big 10 - a conference that put three teams into the Elite Eight this season. A sub-par first year in the new league would have many calling for Turgeon's head, but considering he would only be halfway through the eight-year deal he inked, his firing would be highly unlikely.
Turgeon has his best recruiting class yet, with a pair of 7-footers, a McDonald's All-America point guard, and two athletic shooters already signed. There's a chance this group will be the true beginning for the Turgeon Era at Maryland in much the same way the arrival of Joe Smith and Keith Booth truly began the Williams Era.
If a few of these incoming freshmen are gone three years from now to the NBA after helping Maryland to considerable team success, then Turgeon will have proven himself to be the right hire and the program will have reassumed its status as a top-20 national program.
But if a few of these incoming freshmen are gone three years from now to other schools after playing on more disappointing Maryland teams, then Turgeon's hiring will simply be another misstep by an athletic department that has made quite a few lately.
And fans will be even more appreciative of the job Williams did in College Park.
