Maryland men’s basketball’s 2023-24 season did not go as planned. The Terps had high expectations coming into the year but a poorly constructed roster never put the pieces together and Maryland finished with a rare losing season at 16-17.
Head coach Kevin Willard is looking to clean up the mess this offseason. Willard faces serious pressure entering his third season in College Park to build a roster that can get the Terps back into the NCAA Tournament and into contention for a Big Ten title.
The modern transfer portal and the continuing expansion of NIL have changed the way coaches build a roster. Former Wake Forest star and current college basketball analyst Randolph Childress believes a program can turn it around in one offseason, but it’s no easy task.
“I think the most underrated thing that’s out there is not to get caught up in the names, but how you construct a roster,” Childress said on Glenn Clark Radio March 27. “You literally have to know what that kid is and how he fits into what you’re doing. And you literally have to be the best general manager.”
Maryland’s lack of success this past season did not necessarily stem from a lack of talent on the roster. Consensus four-star recruits DeShawn Harris-Smith and Jamie Kaiser Jr. headlined a strong recruiting class. Proven veterans in Jahmir Young, Julian Reese and Donta Scott returned from an NCAA Tournament team the year prior. The Terps were picked to finish third in the Big Ten preseason media poll. They finished 12th.
Maryland’s lack of outside shooting was the primary culprit. The Terps shot just 28.9 percent from 3-point range, ranking 340th of 351 Division I schools. Opponents frequently doubled Reese on post-ups and clogged driving lanes for Young, forcing Maryland to kick out for perimeter shots, which often missed.
Willard knew he needed to make changes, and he is doing so. Five-star big man Derik Queen committed to Maryland on Feb. 21. Virginia Tech transfer Rodney Rice followed suit, committing to the Terps on March 24.
But Queen will be a freshman in a league that is notoriously tough on first-year players and Rice has little college experience himself. Injuries limited Rice, the former four-star recruit out of DeMatha, to just eight games as a freshman and he announced his entry into the transfer portal before the 2023-24 season began. It’s unfair to place significant expectations on players who provide a lot of unknowns.
“I’m a fan of Rodney Rice. I know his dad. I’ve talked to him. But can any one of us tell me what he’s done in college and what he’s done yet?” Childress said. “We don’t know. We don’t know what he’s going to bring. … Can he be what we project him to be or does he still need time to adjust?”
Maryland acquired a player with more experience with the commitment of Belmont transfer Ja’Kobi Gillespie. The 6-foot-1, 180-pound guard had a breakout sophomore season that earned him second-team All-MVC and first-team All-MVC defensive honors. Gillespie averaged 17.2 points, 4.2 assists and 3.8 rebounds per game on elite efficiency, shooting 56.1 percent from the field, 38.7 percent from beyond the arc and 83.1 percent from the free-throw line.
Gillespie will have big shoes to fill in replacing first-team All-Big Ten selection Young as the team’s starting point guard. But Maryland still needs more, and Willard will be tasked with finding a winning solution with a team that is likely to feature a lot of new faces.
“Finding those gems and those jewels and how they fit into a team,” Childress said. “Like I said, being a GM is way more critical right now to me than just worrying about signing a name. As talented as a Queen is or any of these guys, you’ve got to figure out the pieces to the puzzle and make them fit.”
Maryland has two open scholarship spots after Kaiser announced his entry into the transfer portal on April 1. The Terps’ first three portal departures — Noah Batchelor, Caelum Swanton-Rodger and Jahnathan Lamothe — all played very sparingly. Kaiser’s announcement came as a bit of a surprise, as he was expected to play a major role as a sophomore.
Reese returning for his senior season should give Maryland a veteran leader and a dominant force inside it can build a team around. Willard and his staff will likely target shooters on the wings with its remaining roster spots. Players have until May 1 to enter the portal, so there could be more departures in a constantly fluid era of college basketball.
Maryland’s roster needs to look a lot different for it to regain the success the program is accustomed to. That work has already begun, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement.
For more from Childress, listen to the full interview here:
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