Maryland basketball: 5 questions the Terps must answer in 2020-2021

No. 2 How will Mark Turgeon fix Maryland basketball’s depth issues?

Mark Turgeon is lacking the required amount of frontcourt players to feel good about his team’s prospects down the stretch in the upcoming season. On the current roster, Chol Marial, Scott, Galin Smith and Jairus Hamilton are the only big men they have available. Three if Hamilton has to sit out due to not receiving an eligibility waiver. In previous years, the team has been successful with five or six forwards on the team.

This leads me to believe that the Terps may have to use the small ball strategy at certain points throughout the year to make up for the lack of size. A starting lineup of Ayala, Morsell, Wiggins, Scott, and Marial, for example, isn’t necessarily a small ball lineup per se. To keep those guys fresh, Turgeon is going to have to improvise and put smaller, faster, defenders on opposing big men.

If they play solid defense as a unit, then that provides more opportunities for their offense to flourish. What a small ball lineup loses in size, they gain in speed. This means off of a turnover, fast-break opportunities can happen more often, and the chances of success are much higher. In the half-court set, a guard or wing player will beat a big man one-on-one nine times out of 10 in a man-to-man situation. The Terps would be able to capitalize on that unless the big man is a superior defender with excellent footwork.

Small ball may be the way to go for the Terps this season until they are able to get more size in the post positions by way of transfer or the normal recruiting cycle. The important thing to note for the Terps in a situation like they are in is that staying healthy is paramount. A team can’t afford to lack depth in a key area and then the injury bug takes a big bite out of its roster. That’s the worst possible position to be in.