Ladies and Gentleman, Dino Gregory is in the building.
That’s probably the biggest news as the Terp men’s basketball team readies for its final pre-Maui Invitational tune up against New Hampshire.
Gregory, who hasn’t been on the bench since he was originally suspended for an unspecified violation of team rules on Nov. 3, just walked out of the Comcast Center tunnel wearing a gray blazer alongside player-turned-assistant Jerome Burney. He’s now sitting and watching the team go through its stretching. With the news yesterday that he’ll be eligible to return on Dec. 12, Gregory, who has been practicing with the team, is apparently able to watch the game with his teammates.
Fellow forward Jin Soo Choi has traded in the snazzy suit he wore on Tuesday for his Terp uniform. It appears the 6-foot-8 sophomore is going to try to give it a go on his sprained right ankle. He missed one game after being injured in the second half of the season opener. His presence means the team can at least go two-deep at both forward positions with scholarship players, a luxury it didn’t have in Tuesday’s win against Fairfield.
One person not in attendance is sophomore center Steve Goins. He will miss tonight’s game because of a violation of the Athletics Council’s class attendance policy, according to a press release just distributed. Yesterday, coach Gary Williams seemed pretty optimistic about Goins’ progress with his ailing knee, but he’s still yet to dress this season. So this suspension for missing class isn’t such a major development.
The last interesting bit of news from a fairly eventful pregame is the team distributed a press release about the three future Terps who signed letters of intent this week. It’s only interesting because yesterday Williams declined to discuss the class saying he wanted to see if they got any more early signees before the period officially ended.
It’s over now, and the Terps have officially landed forward Ashton Pankey, guard Terrell Stoglin and swingman Mychal Parker. So as promised, Williams issued his comments, even if it was via press release:
“All three players should have an immediate impact on our program. They have the maturity and ability to play at a high level,” Williams said, according to the release.
Nothing ground-breaking, but with an early morning flight to Hawaii coming in the morning for these guys don’t expect too much new ground to be broken at Comcast Center tonight.
Eric Detweiler is The Diamondback’s Terrapin Men’s Basketball Team beat writer. He can be reached at edetweilerdbk@gmail.com. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/edetweiler.