Written by Don Markus at the Baltimore Sun.com
October, there was hype and hope and the thought of doing what only one Maryland men’s basketball team in history had accomplished more than a decade ago – win a national championship.
It seemed possible then, given the talent that converged on College Park for Mark Turgeon’s fifth season. And, for the first two months of the season, it also seemed realistic.
Eventually the talk faded along with the Terps, to the point where many thought Turgeon’s team would have a very short stay in the NCAA tournament considering the way it finished the regular season.
It seemed only fitting that Thursday’s 79-63 defeat in the South Regional semifinal to top-seeded Kansas started the same way — with hope and hype and the thought of the fifth-seeded Terps making history by upsetting the nation’s hottest team.
In the end, the second half looked frighteningly similar to some of the games Maryland had lost over the past month: the offense breaking down because of cold shooting, particularly by sophomore guard Melo Trimble, and the Terps getting crushed on the boards.
In the end, the weight of those heavy expectations got to Turgeon, too.
“It’s been the toughest 27-win season you could go through,” Turgeon said outside his team’s locker room. “I just felt the ball never bounced our way. I kept thinking it was going to change. It’s just been hard on these guys. It wasn’t for a lack of effort or wanting to get better.”
Playing in the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2003, the Terps were denied a chance at their first Elite Eight since 2002 — the year Maryland beat Indiana in Atlanta for the title.
“We fought to the end,” Turgeon said earlier, in his opening remarks of a post-game news conference.
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