With the 2011-12 basketball season tipping off today, the Mark Turgeon era officially gets underway in College Park. Testudo Times is previewing the 2011-12 Maryland Terrapins basketball team, grouped into guards, wings, and bigs. In this segment, we look at the swingmen. You can read the preview for the guards here and bigs here.
Let's face it: Maryland doesn't have a legacy of great swingmen. There's a laundry list of great guards that've come through College Park: Greivis Vasquez, Steve Blake, Juan Dixon, Steve Francis, John Lucas, and even Gene Shue (if you want get retro). Likewise, there's been no problem producing productive big men on a regular basis: Jordan Williams, Chris Wilcox, Lonny Baxter, Keith Booth, Joe Smith, Len Elmore, and Tom McMillen, for example.
For comparison, take a look at the swingmen Maryland's relied upon over, say, the past decade. Cliff Tucker. Chris McCray. Nik Caner-Medley. Mike Jones. It's a who's-who of disappointing figures in Maryland sports history. (Things don't get that much better if you back another decade.) Walt Williams might count, from back in '92, but even he ended playing point forward as much as being a traditional wing. He's the only elite wing from the Gary Era if you count him, and even after him you have to back to 1980 to find the next: Albert King. (This may be a point of contention, but I consider Len Bias and Terrence Morris to be 4s.)
Last year's Terrapins didn't do much to change that. Maryland's wings were serviceable, have no doubt, but they didn't win the Terrapins any games and might've actually been the weakest point of the team. Interestingly enough, Maryland is sort-of starting anew here. Cliff Tucker, the enigmatic figure who oscillated between promise and disappointment? He's gone, as are his 9 ppg and 16 starts. Haukur Palsson, the 6-6 Icelander who started three games as a true freshman? He's gone too, likely to be an admittedly awesome footnote in Maryland history. (Gone with him, sadly, is perhaps the best site meme we've ever had: RIP, Hawk Balls.)
What remains? A grizzled senior and two just about entirely unknown figures, one a sophomore who clocked 80 minutes in all of last year and the other a promising freshman who'll be forced to play out of position to start the season. The interior gets all the pub for being the least-predictable area for Maryland, but I have to say that there's a fair amount of wiggle room on the wings, too. Let's get to it: