The Coronavirus outbreak has put a halt on recruiting for college athletics. Despite a temporary ban on in-person meetings, both on and off campus, Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon knows he has work to do to fill the rest of his 2020 class while navigating through this “unique” situation.

“We’re not allowed to go out and recruit. We’re not allowed to work our players out. Most of our kids have left campus, if not, they’re going to leave campus soon, and that’s at least a two-week situation for us. So recruiting is going to be hot and heavy,” Turgeon said in a conference call with Maryland media March 16. “It’s just you can’t go see people and you can’t have them on campus. So it’s going to be more of a phone call type thing and there will be a lot of action going on. So it’s very unique.”

While being prohibited from traveling the country to scout recruits, Turgeon admitted that he’s still getting used to having more time on his hands. But he has been in communication with his staff and they are working to make the best of the situation so that they can hit the ground running once recruiting visits pick back up.

“It’s funny, when you’re very busy you wish you could have vacation and now it’s kind of like forced vacation, so to speak, even though you’re still working and it’s kind of just weird not being able to go to the office. It’s weird not being able to go out and recruit, it’s just a unique time, but we’re making the best of it,” Turgeon said. “We had an hour-long conference call with my staff [Monday] morning and we’re just trying to keep the ball rolling. We’re all in different places but it’s one of those things where hopefully we can get refreshed and do a good job of recruiting here in the spring whenever it does open back up.”

With just two players — guards Marcus Dockery and Aquan Smart — committed to Maryland’s 2020 class so far, the Terps will be looking to use the rest of their available scholarships, which appears to be at least two at this point in time.

Turgeon knows he won’t be able to get all the pieces he needs overnight, but he’s aware of the task at hand and has a primary focus right now of filling out his roster with no postseason basketball going on to distract him.

“You have to have patience because we can’t recruit for a month physically — in person or off campus,” Turgeon said. “It’s going to slow down the process of what our roster is going to look like next season. We still have to do some things for our roster next season. Even though we have a lot of great players coming back, we still need to add some pieces. So patience will be a big thing for me — which I don’t have — to figure out until we get our roster done heading into the summer and next season.”

While part of Turgeon’s mind is still honed in on the future of his basketball team as he and the rest of college athletics adapt to what’s going on, he’s not losing perspective of how the Coronavirus outbreak has affected everyone in all walks of life and his main concern is that order gets restored soon.

“It’s unique for all of us and just pray that this Coronavirus isn’t going to be as bad as everyone’s saying and that people do actually isolate themselves and in the next few weeks the numbers start to go down,” Turgeon said. “That's the best-case scenario for all of us and we can get back to being normal because it’s not normal right now. And I know everybody feels the same way out there whether you’re a basketball coach, or run a business, or you’re a mom. It’s different right now. So we have to make the best of it and just see where it takes us.”