I would say that of all of my biases, my recency bias is by far my most … recent.
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Given the most recent results, Maryland basketball fans can be forgiven if they haven’t been racing to book their flights to Birmingham just yet. After three losses in the last four games for the Terps, it feels a little less like “March Madness” and a little more like “March…Marginally Aware-ness,” emmirite?
I get it. It was just two weeks ago that Maryland was pantsing a very good Northwestern team, setting up a very realistic scenario where the Terps could have been the No. 2 seed in the Big Ten tournament and had a real chance at winning their most significant outright championship in nearly two decades.
But since that moment, Maryland’s only win has come over a team (Minnesota) that will finish as one of only five power conference teams to fail to reach double-digit wins on the season. Unless, of course, they make the PS8, which I am to understand is both A) a thing and B) a college basketball event of some sort.
The Terps settled for threes a little too much than during their best stretches this season. Foul trouble and depth issues continue to sneak up on them. And admittedly this is a fan base that is probably a bit more sensitive because one of the fairest criticisms of the last coach was that his teams were never playing their best basketball come March.
Yet the irony is that if somehow Maryland were to win a dogfight against West Virginia on March 16 and then somehow shock Alabama on March 18, we’d probably be ready to give Kevin Willard a fully guaranteed five-year, $250 million contract. Recency bias, man.
I don’t come to be the bearer of cold water. It is not outside the realm of possibility that the Terps could pull off one of their most shocking wins in NCAA Tournament history against Alabama this weekend. But if we’re being fair, it is far more likely that they won’t even get the chance.
And what’s important to remember is … that’s OK.
Look, the Terps are playing in the games, so they might as well go ahead and try to win them. It would be wrong to declare that Maryland is playing with “house money” at this point, as at least two players (Don Carey and Patrick Emilien) are definitively playing their final collegiate games and others (including Jahmir Young, Hakim Hart and Donta Scott) could be as well. Those players absolutely aren’t playing with house money. They want to accomplish something significant before their career comes to an end.
But the program as a whole is a different discussion. I believe the program is playing with a bit of house money. If somehow there were to be a deep tournament run, this would go down as one of the most significant seasons in Maryland basketball history. There would be an electricity surrounding the program that could help to accelerate a climb back toward national prominence.
And as nice as that sounds, we can’t forget that there are legitimate reasons why we don’t think it will happen. We’re still talking about a first-year coach whose team has largely overachieved just to get to this point. Preseason prognostications had Maryland has one of the bottom teams in the league, and almost no one saw them reaching the NCAA Tournament at all. Willard has done a mostly excellent job of pushing buttons to get the most from the group.
We need to remember that if this is the final week of the season. We need to be fair in how we talk about what has happened. Even if the Terps ultimately sputter to the finish line, this was a wildly successful season that sets an excellent foundation for this era of Maryland basketball. We’ll definitely need to see improved results on the road in the future, but we will have every reason to believe the program is on the correct trajectory.
Some more casual fans may have only started paying attention once the calendar turned to March (I’ve heard “same old Terps” a few times recently) and will need to be reminded about the realities of the season. It would be a frustrating end, but it needs to be viewed in context as a complete picture.
And hey, they’re gonna play the game(s?) anyway. They might as well go ahead and win them.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Maryland Athletics