The stars almost aligned for No. 21 Maryland over the weekend after the Terps beat Minnesota in their regular season finale on Friday and set themselves up for a chance to earn the fourth seed in the Big Ten Tournament.
Purdue’s victory over Northwestern and Michigan State’s defeat of Michigan on Saturday furthered Maryland’s chances at a double-bye, however, Ohio State’s overtime loss to No. 19 Wisconsin on Sunday slotted Mark Turgeon’s team as the No. 5 seed for this week’s conference tournament in Chicago. It marks Maryland’s fourth top-five finish in the Big Ten in five seasons as members of the conference.
But the Terps are looking at their positioning and the fact that they get to play an extra game together as something that could play to the advantage of college basketball’s fifth-youngest team.
“That’s the way we’re approaching it,” Turgeon said March 11 during the Big Ten coaches teleconference. “I think the more tournament experience we can get, hopefully try to get that first win, which won’t be easy. You know, this league is tremendous and there are no easy wins out there. But I agree [that playing an extra game could be an advantage]. We get on the floor a little bit earlier, get a little bit more experience. We played on Friday and waiting all the way to the next Friday might have been tough. It’s one less day to wait, so I look at it as an advantage, I really do. And we’re approaching it that way and hopefully it will go work out that way for us.”
Not only does Turgeon believe his team could benefit from extra time on the floor together in the conference tournament, he also sees getting postseason tournament experience ahead of the NCAA Tournament the following week as something that can help prepare his team to make a run in the Big Dance.
“I just think it’s good for us because the Big Ten runs the tournament like the NCAA Tournament, so it will be good preparation for us for the following week,” Turgeon said. “We’re so young that sometimes our guys are naive, which is good. They’ll go in and just play...I know our guys are looking forward to it. We had a healthy practice [Sunday] night, attitudes were good. I know our guys are looking forward to getting to Chicago.”
The Big Ten Tournament hasn’t been kind to the Terps in recent years. Turgeon’s squad has been eliminated in its first game of the conference tournament in each of the last two seasons, losing a semi-home game at Verizon Center (Washington, DC) as the favorites against Northwestern in 2017 and dropping last year’s matchup at Madison Square Garden against Wisconsin.
But Turgeon doesn’t believe those outcomes will have any bearing on his team’s postseason play this year.
“Every year is different,” Turgeon said. “We made it to the [semifinals] I think the first two years, maybe the first three years, I don’t remember, and we lost. The first year we made the semis we lost in the first round to Northwestern, who was playing really well at the time and we weren’t. And then last year it was just who we were. So it’s a different season. You go in and everything is different. It depends who you’re playing and when you’re playing them, whether they’re hot or not, that type of thing. But the tournament experience is what we’re looking forward to, being in a great city. But what happened last year and the year before that has nothing to do with this team.”
The Terps’ opening game in this year’s Big Ten Tournament will be March 14 against the winner of No. 13 seed Nebraska and No. 12 seed Rutgers, which will square off in the first round the day prior. Maryland’s first game will air on the Big Ten Network 25 minutes after the first game of the day on Thursday (about 3:00 pm ET).
