Turgeon:  10 years at Maryland.  1 Sweet 16.  1 NCAA win against a team with the better seed.

Williams:  22 years at Maryland.  1 National Championship.  1 additional final 4.  5 additional Sweet 16 appearances.

Driesell: 17 years at Maryland.  2 Elite 8's, plus 3 additional Sweet 16 appearances.  Plus, coached the second best team in the country that was unable to reach the tournament because the #1 team was NC State and it was only 1 team per conference back then.

There's only a perception that Turgeon underachieved?  There's absolutely zero question that he underachieved.

But by all means, go ahead and keep arguing why Turgeon didn't underachieve at a major program like Maryland's.  Show off that basketball intelligence of yours.

We get it Mailvan, you know better than every Coach. They all can't Coach, you'd be better.

You hated all over ML while he was here too, "underachieving" with Hobbs leftovers.  

Gary Williams took Maryland to height no other Coach has (and that Gary himself never came close to repeating)  it is worth noting those are the only Final 4s, and they came back to back 20 years ago. Otherwise you'd have to go back over 45 years to find a team that got beyond the Sweet 16 (1975)

Danny Manning is what an actual Power 5 Bomb hire looks like.  Ironic he is the interim Coach.

It had been since 2003 since they even Reached a Sweet 16.  Maryland fans may want to adjust their expectations.  Or hire you.  

Last edited by The Dude (12/03/2021 7:25 pm)

One name we could be front of the line for, though, is our friend Mike Brey.
His team got stomped by BC last night in what was supposed to be a bounceback year at ND.
I understand from the ML hiring process that Mike was actually consulted, so he is indeed connected.
Let's see if TV is a real AD or just a Nero apologist.

Last edited by Mentzinger (12/04/2021 8:07 am)

I meant to jump into this thread earlier, but I do find the tenure of Turgeon to be very interesting in terms of did he underachieve or not. Just a few thoughts I had on the topic.

1. Guiding MD to the Big Ten, which is obviously not a geographical fit, and compiling a .571 win percentage in the league should be viewed as a significant achievement.

2. The program was in pretty rough shape when he got there. Gary had not been to the second weekend in his last eight years, which featured three NIT's and not even playing in the postseason his final year. It took him a few years to get the program fixed, but once he did, the regular season results were consistently there, the postseason results just didn't quite match (I honestly think it was a bigger disappointment he never got MD to a big 10 final than the lack of NCAA 2nd weekend appearances.)

3. The cancelation of the 2020 NCAA Tournament hurt him a lot. His team was 24-7 going into the Big 10 tourney and was borderline top 10 all season long. All it takes is two hot weeks in March to change the perception of a coach or team (see UVA). That team was probably his best chance at an Elite 8 and didn't get the chance to play for it.

4. None of this is to say that his tenure may not have run its course. From 2014-2018, Turgeon had a top 13 class or better in the country every other year. Even in the years he didn't he landed studs (Stone in 2015, Fernando and Morsell in 2017). The recruiting has dropped off the last three years according to all the services and it certainly doesn't help perception wise when you lose Jordan Hawkins (UConn) and Benny Williams (Syracuse) right from your own backyard. I have to imagine the recruiting dropoff had just as much to do with the pressure he faced than the results.

5. Finally, how good of a job is the UMD job? I think it's a job that has plenty to work with (fertile recruiting ground, major conference, Under Armour, etc..) but it does not have the legacy of a top 20 program, its history is all in a conference it no longer plays in and it is competing for recruits with programs of TWO major conferences that make more geographical sense. 

All of this is to say in ways Turgeon is a victim of his own success. He succeeded in recruiting really well to Maryland and won a lot of games November - February that put Maryland in a position to go on a postseason run in 4-5 of his years there. They just never went on the run (and one time didn't even get to try because of Covid). I don't think it's unfair to question if his abilities as an in game tactician played a role in them not getting over the hump, but I also think MD may find it difficult to find someone who puts them in that position as often as Turgeon did. 
 

Class of 13 wrote:

5. Finally, how good of a job is the UMD job? I think it's a job that has plenty to work with (fertile recruiting ground, major conference, Under Armour, etc..) but it does not have the legacy of a top 20 program, its history is all in a conference it no longer plays in and it is competing for recruits with programs of TWO major conferences that make more geographical sense. 

Although a few years old now, this all time program ranking based on time in the AP poll does in fact show that Maryland is a top 20 program, #17 to be exact. Georgetown ranks #15 and GW #88.

https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2017-03-29/ap-releases-top-100-college-basketball-programs-based-poll

 

Don't even try to put us in the same category as UMD or Georgetown. We may be old but not senile yet!

Certainly after Jarvis, though we'll never know what might have been.
The "obsession" related to our nose dive into the deepest depths five years after winning the NIT.
   And also, while it would be odd if this was an astronomy board or a football board, we discuss basketball issues from 50 years and up on this board, sometimes even longer. It would be odd if we ignored the elephant in the room. Or more aptly, on our standing today.

DC Native wrote:

It's an accumulation of polling data from 1949 to 2017, so while I'm sure we've dropped a bit, I doubt its much considering the number of years in the data. Also, I just don't understand the obsession with Lonergan on this board. I've been following GW since 1991 and in my estimation, he is only the 3rd best coach we've had, after Jarvis and Hobbs.

With how we were rising, wouldn't be surprised if a ML led GW men's basketball wouldn't have made the NCAA and at least won a game or 2 in there a couple of times these last 5 years. Most wins ever in a season. Only championship ever, NIT or not. A promising 2016-17 group that a first year coach even managed to get to 20 wins. Now put ML behind the helm and thats a solid tourney team. The possibilities were endless. The Athletic Department ended them. It's a damn shame. Now we debate if losing to bottom tier teams in one bid conferences counts as a bright side. Enjoy the 7-23 season. TV and Forest earned it

The Dude wrote:

Hobbs was a vastly more successful Coach, 3 straight NCAA trips, an NCAA win, the team ranked #6 in the nation, and didn't end up being fired for player abuse.

But the same endless, incessant whining about his firing was also present on the board from the same guy in the early years of ML.


 

So, you accuse me of trying to get every GW coach run out of town.  But in the case of Hobbs, you can acknowledge that he was highly successful and that I whined about his getting fired?  Exactly how is that an example of trying to get someone fired, when all I did was defend the guy's record?

Oh that's right.  It's not.  At all.  In the slightest.

In the case of Lonergan, I admit to being uninspired initially by the hire, and thought he had a very tough first year trying to force Hobbs players to play the way Mike wanted.  Not once, and I mean once, did I ever suggest that he ought to be fired.  If you're going to insist that he's yet another one of those coaches who I tried to run out of town, then I'll have to refer to you as a blatant liar yet again.  Later that season, I met Mike and he won me over.  Loved that he was the coaching equivalent of a gym rat.  Loved that he could X and O arguably as well as any GW coach.  (The biggest coaching difference between Hobbs and Lonergan was that Hobbs would play the same way almost each time out.  When he had superior athletes as players, he knew he could rarely be beat.  Whereas Lonergan looks at his own team and then the other team, and then says "OK.  Here's what we need to do to win today."  As a coach, Lonergan had far greater versatility.)  Loved that he genuinely wanted to be at GW.

As for other coaches, all very simple.  Jarvis was going to leave and I was probably less offended by his looking at major openings than some were, only because it was unrealistic to believe he would stay at GW forever.  Penders should never have been hired and yes, I wanted him gone from day 1.  And yes as FQ wrote, he essentially phoned it in while he was here.  MoJo just wasn't ready.  Wanting him to move on simply meant that the school could make a more suitable hire and move on from the ML/PN days.  Nothing at all personal towards MoJo.  And unlike some of you, in my mind, the jury actually is still out regarding JC.  There is zero point in calling for him to be fired when this really can't happen until March, 2023 at the earliest.  Even so, I feel he deserves more time to get this right. 

Joel Joseph wrote:

DC Native, fan since 1991?
Maybe you were overseas serving your Country between 2013-2016 (or in Federal Prison) that would cause such a response

Not really.  He's absolutely the third best coach behind Jarvis and Hobbs.  Unlike the other two, ML never won the A-10; in fact never really came close to winning the A-10 (I believe a distant 4th place was our best finish).  I think Mojo beat VCU as many times as ML did. None of his GW teams ever won multiple games in the A-10 tournament.  And on multiple occasions we squandered great OOC resumes (including being nationally ranked) and ended up in the NIT.

It's sort of the anti-JC approach where we won a bunch of OOC games early but we never played our best basketball towards the end of the season or in the conference tournament.

I do wonder what Mike's legacy would've been had he endured a swoon like Hobbs had after Omar-gate.  Probably would be like Chris Mooney at Richmond.  With the transfer portal as it is I REALLY doubt he would've been able to keep the 2016 recruiting class together like he did with the Core Four (which ended up being the Core Three + Cavanaugh anyway).

Now that doesn't mean I wouldn't take that resume in a heartbeat over what we've had to watch over the past 5 1/2 years. ML's teams are absolutely in the history books of the program and the NIT team will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in due time.  But I agree with DC Native that it's really not close when comparing ML's accomplishments to Jarvis or Hobbs.