Amid this whole mess between the university Athletics Department and men’s basketball coach Gary Williams, it’s easy to forget that there are a dozen Terps players potentially reading the unrelenting news.

What are they thinking?

There has been no media availability since Tuesday night (immediately following the loss to BC) and there won’t be any availability to speak with players until after Saturday’s game against Miami.

I’m sure, even if the guys were available to speak, and you put a recorder in their face, the response would be something like, “We’re not focused on that. We’ve just got to work hard to get ready for Miami.”

But inside the Terps’ players heads, certainly there is something brewing if they have actively followed this week’s saga.

The whole muddle began with an in depth (Baltimore) Sun story chronicling the Terp’ recent struggles in recruiting.

Athletes, naturally are very proud people, and their reading of the article may be different than how a fan reads it. Probably, to some Terps, news about recruiting failures could be construed as “you’re not good enough.”

In saying that, I want to clear up that The Sun’s piece did not demean the current roster in any way — it only mentioned possibilities which could have occurred and for various reasons did not.

Regardless, it has to be tough for the young team to bounce back from four losses in five games when they have this extra cloud over their head. Williams may or may not have addressed the issue with his players. (My educated guess is that he certainly did not. And if he did, all he told his players to do was ignore it.) But the student-athletes aren’t naive enough to not recognize that there is a giant elephant in the room.

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