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Maryland basketball performance center to have major impact on recruiting

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — The first time Maryland basketball head coach Mark Turgeon stepped foot inside the Terps’ on-campus arena — Xfinity Center — he remembers being so taken aback by its vastness and atmosphere that the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

Now, he’s hoping that the hoops prospects he works to recruit to College Park in the future will have that same reaction once they see the new Basketball Performance Center the athletic department announced its plans for Oct. 8.

Rendering of Maryland's proposed basketball performance center.
Rendering of Maryland's proposed basketball performance center.
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Maryland Athletics announced Tuesday its plan for a comprehensive fundraising campaign to build a new Basketball Performance Center on campus, attached to Xfinity Center. The 60,000 square-foot facility would serve as the home for Maryland’s men’s and women’s basketball programs. The $36 million project will feature two full-size practice courts, a shared strength and conditioning center that is specifically tailored to the needs of basketball student-athletes, sports medicine facilities, and state-of-the-art meeting and office space for coaches and program staff.

“They’re 18-year-old kids, so you walk them in to [Xfinity Center] and they get pretty excited,” Turgeon said Tuesday during an on-campus ceremony to announce the plans for the performance center. “The first time I walked in here the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is awesome.’ So now you have an 18-year-old kid and you’re showing them that we’re an Under Armour school and all the gear we get because we’re Under Armour and all of that kind of stuff.

“And now we’re going to show them this; it’s going to be brand new locker rooms, brand new offices, medical facilities. That helps with the parents too. And the thing I love about this building: Everything is contained in here. What I mean by that is that we do study hall in here, we can eat in here, and that’s not going to have to change, but it’s just going to be a lot more convenient for everybody.”

Turgeon drew attention to the many benefits this project will bring to Maryland athletics, but one that was repeatedly touched on was recruiting. With top-25 recruiting classes — according to Rivals — each of the past two years, including a top-10 class in 2018, Turgeon has made the most of his recruiting efforts in recent years.

But with Maryland and Boston College currently being the only two Power Five schools without supplemental basketball facilities, the Terps’ lead man knew something had to be done to continue to compete for blue-chip prospects.

“It’s important in today’s world,” Turgeon said. “I’m recruiting against the best programs in the country and they all have facilities. And we have a great game-day facility, and I wouldn’t trade it for any facility in the country, but now, when people go visit those schools and then visit our school, it’s apples to apples and oranges to oranges. And it hasn’t been that way.”

Up to this point, Turgeon has only been able to allude to potential plans for a new facility when interacting with recruits. But now, he plans to make the Terps’ upcoming Basketball Performance Center a regular talking point while on the recruiting trail.

“Every recruit I’ve had in for the past two years it has been like, ‘I can’t promise you this, but this is in the works.’ So I’ve had drawings for two or three years. But now with the class of [2021], I’m like, ‘OK, I can promise you we’re going to have a practice facility, and this is what’s going to be in it, and it’s going to be so great for you,’” Turgeon said.

Although Turgeon is starting to use the performance center as a recruiting tool for the 2021 class, he is unable to promise a completion date at this time as the athletic department focuses on securing the remaining funding needed for the project.

The Basketball Performance Center will be funded through philanthropic support and other athletic revenues. So far, Maryland Athletics has raised $19 million towards the project. Tuesday’s announcement made the privatized fundraising campaign open to public donors to raise the remaining $17 million. The project will be co-managed by the University of Maryland College Park Foundation.

It is anticipated that design and construction will take 36 months. Turgeon is confident that the remaining money will be raised and construction plans will proceed without a hitch.

“We don’t know when the building is going to get done, but I’m very confident that we’re going to raise the money quickly now that we’ve gone public,” Turgeon said. “We raised almost $20 million and it has been private, but now you open it up to all Terps fans around the world. So hopefully we can get it done quickly.”

Turgeon has been a part of new basketball facility projects at Wichita State and Texas A&M, where he saw how the investment positively affected his programs.

He is hoping Maryland’s Basketball Performance Center not only will help him compete for the nation’s top recruits moving forward, but also aid him in preparing the players he does bring in.

“We have a really good culture of work,” Turgeon said. “Our guys come early and they stay late, and there are some days where you just don’t have anywhere to go. And now that should never happen again.”

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