The past week has been an absolute nightmare for the Terrapin men’s basketball team, easily the worst stretch since at least the very beginning of coach Gary Williams’ tenure.
A 41-point loss at Duke, a blown 16-point lead at home against Boston College and a public feud between Williams and the Athletics Department that became national news.
Winning is usually the best solution to any problem, but unfortunately for the Terps, there simply aren’t many winnable games left on their schedule.
Starting with Saturday night’s home game against Miami, the Terps have 10 games left before a probable first-round loss in the ACC tournament and a possible game in the NIT (though at this rate Terp fans might be getting their first look at the CBI instead).
In my humble opinion, the Terps will be lucky to win an absolute maximum of three more games–which would put them at 5-11 in the ACC–but could very conceivably go winless the rest of the way.
That’s not even being pessimistic, that’s just the way things are in the ACC when Dave Neal is your starting center.
Let’s go game-by-game…
You can throw out the home-and-home against North Carolina (Feb. 3 and Feb. 21), the game at Clemson (Feb. 17) and the home games against Duke (Feb. 25) and Wake Forest (Mar. 3). Those four teams are just too strong this year, and an upset like the ones the Terps scored the last two seasons against UNC just don’t seem remotely possible this time around.
Miami has been somewhat of a disappointment this year, but they’ve already beaten the Terps once this season and have beaten the Terps six out of seven times since joining the ACC. This is probably the Terps’ best shot at a win, but given the trends a loss wouldn’t be surprising.
The Terps other remaining home game is against Virginia Tech, who beat Wake Forest this season and who is 4-2 against the Terps since joining the conference. The Hokies will be tough.
That leaves road games against Georgia Tech, North Carolina State and Virginia. The Terps beat Georgia Tech and Virginia already, and N.C. State isn’t anything special, but it’s never easy to win on the road in this conference. The Terps may win one of these three, but that’s probably it.
So you have five games left with no chance of winning, and five others in which a win is varying levels of improbable.
A 12-game losing streak probably won’t happen. But it certainly could.