Maryland fans will finally get the new coach they wanted after letting Mark Turgeon down

Mark Turgeon missed the NCAA Tournament in his first three years at Maryland, then looked at five player transfers, all of which created the perception that Year Four could be a lucrative deal. Show real improvement, make NCAA Tournament, and he will have a fifth season. If not, he may not.

Turgeon responded by going on July 28, 2014-15.

He then returned two of his top three scorers, enrolled two McDonald’s All-Americans, and Maryland placed third in the Associated Press Top 25 poll ahead of the 2015-16 season . And with that in mind, I visited the Maryland campus just before the start of that season to spend time with the Terrapins. I talked to Turgeon about a lot of things – but mostly about how it felt to step into the fore on the so-called Hot Seat, and how great it felt to turn things around. The result is a positive story detailing how a coach survives and thrives. But at one point, I noted how quickly things can turn around for a coach who perseveres and actually writes the following words:

Turgeon just needed enough wins last season to show real progress and calm fans, and a trip to qualifying Round 32 should be enough. But finishing second in the Big Ten and losing in Round 32 this season would technically be disappointing, compared to expectations, because there’s so much more to it than that. So as always, there’s a new bar to meet.

Fast-forward the years, and Turgeon’s 2015-16 team really fell short of pre-season expectations (even if they made the Sweet 16), and from that point on, he hasn’t. never returned to the nice kindness of the Maryland fan base (even if he did take the Terrapins to five of the past six NCAA Tournaments). His teams are almost always good – but never really great. Maryland fans forever wanted more and/or a different coach. And now, just eight games in Turgeon’s 11th season, he moved.

“After some in-depth conversations with [Maryland AD] Damon [Evans]”I have decided that the best thing for Maryland Basketball, myself and my family, is to resign, effective immediately, as head coach of Maryland Basketball,” Turgeon stated. “I have always preached that Maryland Basketball is bigger than any individual. My departure will create a new voice to guide the team moving forward.”

The thing I remember most about my time at Maryland just before the start of the 2015-16 season was the conversation I had with Mark Turgeon about entering last season with so much of his work and the impact of it. it was for his family, most especially his eldest son, William, who was a teenager at the time. As the story goes, the father and son were in a car together. That’s when William asked the question.

“He said, ‘Dad, do you think I’m going to get fired?’,” Turgeon recalls.

The way I remember it, Turgeon explained that his eldest son was simply worried about having to move house again because that kind of work isn’t always easy for young people. Just three years earlier, they had moved from Texas A&M to Maryland, leaving friends behind. Now, William fears, he will have to move again.

Turgeon tells his son that everything will be fine.

That’s what dads do.

And it was fine – for the most part. But the truth is that Turgeon lost some of its fan base when that 2015-16 season didn’t go as planned. And when he never returned to Sweet 16 in any of the following seasons, it was just a nasty year – the only exception being the 2019-20 season, in which Maryland finished first in the Big Ten but never had a chance to make it through to the group stage as the 2020 NCAA Tournament was canceled because of the global pandemic caused by COVID-19.

As for this season, it started off promisingly thanks to a number of transfers that Turgeon added; Maryland was ranked in the pre-season. But the Terrapins have lost three of their first eight games, including one at home first George Mason. So the boos inside the Xfinity Center started to get louder than the cheers. By all accounts, it was payable to Turgeon. So Wednesday night, after a loss at home to Virginia Technology, Turgeon and Evans begin to discuss a possible divorce, based on washington articles. Two days later, it was done.

The most unlikely part of this story is that Turgeon actually lasted eight full seasons after he made his first appearance on everyone’s show. Hot seat list, eight full seasons after his eldest asked him if he thought he was about to be fired. That’s usually not how these things work. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from following the sport for two decades, it’s that once the fan base no longer trusts a coach, it’s very difficult for that coach to win back. get that fanbase. Not impossible, but certainly very difficult.

Turgeon never did.

That is part of what has led to this.

Earlier this week, after Maryland dropped to 5-3, some people pull strings with a twitter account decided to tag William Turgeon, now an adult, in a tweet endorsing his father’s termination. (No matter how you feel about any coach’s job performance, we can agree that tagging a coach’s children is pretty classless.) Naturally, William looked. see that. Less than an hour after his father resigned on Friday, William responded.