Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.
At least Maryland athletic director Kevin Anderson better hope we do.
After a weekend of speculation, the Maryland Terrapins have hired Mark Turgeon, who until today was the head coach at Texas A&M, to fill the (huge) vacancy left by Gary Williams’ retirement.
Turgeon played college hoops at Kansas back in the day, and was 97-40 over the last four seasons at A&M, taking the Aggies to the NCAA tournament each year.
By all accounts, Turgeon is a solid hire, competent, capable, knows what he’s doing - which is more than many Maryland fans are saying about their athletic director at the moment.
After being seriously considered and then spurned by Arizona’s Sean Miller, reportedly because of Maryland missteps during the interview phase, the Turgeon hire is less than exciting. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t know who he was before yesterday.
That doesn’t mean he’s not a good coach; he’s had success in the Big 12 and I would expect the same thing at Maryland. It just means he’s a lackluster hire, and because he was a dubious choice, he’s going to have less leeway in the eyes of Terps fans, through no fault of his own.
It’s been a wild week for Maryland basketball - Jordan Williams (unsurprisingly) left for the NBA, Gary Williams (shockingly) retired, Miller ended up staying at Arizona and Kevin Anderson somehow came up with Turgeon. Anderson better have his fingers crossed that Turgeon’s coaching abilities flourish in College Park.
In his first year as Terps’ AD, Anderson has had the opportunity to put a huge stamp on two of the school’s most visible athletics programs, football and basketball. So far, his picks have been pretty vanilla - safe, adequate, consistent. Time will tell if they’re the right choices, but neither one was the flashy hire fans craved. They’ll have to win, preferably early and often, to get Maryland fans’ attention - and if they don’t, there might be a good chance Anderson won’t be the one making the next hires.
