Terps Typical Tourney Trip-up - Day 2

Special thanks go out to Natural Light for propelling the Terps to victory last night. I'll have to pick up some for the game this evening.

Here are the afternoon headlines...

• Terps Win! And on a serious note, Eric Hayes was motivated by a unexpected death of a family friend. Not sure how that affects his play again tonite, but I'm sure he's under some intense strain.
• Bubble Teams Vtech and Minnesota failed to grab big wins today over UNC and Michigan State, respectively. Helps.
• Lunardi has the Terps as the 5th team out in Bracketology right now. Bottomline, we need this game or we're hosting a couple NIT games at the cable box. Really can't see both San Diego State and New Mexico (who lost to the Wyoming Cowboys last night) sneaking in the backdoor though...
• Couple teams we're pulling for before tip-off: Mississippi State (vs. South Carolina), Illinois (vs. Michigan), and Xavier (vs. Temple).

Mid-Afternoon Gut Feeling - Terps are getting 6 points, and that feels pretty reasonable. We had our chances last week against this team, but they are just too fast and too athletic. Once we got up 5 against NCST you felt fine because they don't play well coming from behind. Wake, on the other hand can score in bunches, as I saw first hand. So yea, I don't feel good about having to play this team with our season on the line.

I think we will come to play though since Gary has been getting them fired up. The "Win Two" philosophy he's been pushing is interesting too. Another thing we have going for us is that Wake is still a young team. For half their starters this is only their second ACC Tourney game after an early exit last year.

All of that being said, I don't think it will be enough. My head tells me something in the ballpark of 77-70 Wake. It will be tight most of the game, but the 1-3-1 zone and Wake's depth will wear us down. Prove me wrong kids.

I'll have some more thoughts over the course of the day, and will be back to blog LIVE during the game.

Go Terps!

Like Caucasians to Chipotle

Dear Debbie Yow,

Do us all a favor and just call the season right now. Let's be honest, we just got our standard shocker win over a top ten team, we managed to get back to .500, Greivis dropped a triple double, everybody is loving us... let's just ride off into the sunset satisfied with how things have gone, and just end it.

No matter what happens the rest of the way, beating UNC will 100% be the peak, and in all likelihood we're already setting ourselves up for a typical miserable collapse. So let's just save us all a lot of misery and hang it up.

Your Friend,

Juan

PS. I blame you for making us have to stick with these horrible yellow jerseys. I hope you're happy with yourself.

At the very least, Vasquez should hire an agent today because his NBA draft stock is never going to be higher. I also suggest that Cliff Tucker make a quality DVD of his performance during the UNC game to show to his kids and focus on his degree because it's all downhill from here, bud.

The only players that should want to keep playing are Dave Neal and Landon Milbourne. Neal for the obvious reasons, he's been playing with house money since this season started. There's really every reason for him to let it ride at this point. Milbourne, after fouling out with a weak 6 points and 4 boards, is that guy at the blackjack table that ends up down while all his buddies are getting up from the table with $300 in their pockets. "Come on guys... just one more shoe... come on!"

Even as Maryland fans we should probably just keep the tv off from here on out, and everybody knows it, but we'll all submit ourselves to the inevitable heartbreak anyways. It's like all non-latinos and chipotle. We remember that it was very tasty, but we choose to forget the horrific aftermath on the toilet.

Being a Maryland fan is all about the one or two huge wins we steal a year, and choosing to forget how awful the rest of the season was. Although I know this to be true, I still managed to convince myself that it would be worth it to get a ticket to the Duke game Wednesday night even though I know it isn't going to turn out well.

Let's look at the upcoming schedule.

Duke at home. Duke is coming off a dominating win at home over #9 Wake that broke them out of their rut. We'll spot them 40 points early.

At NC State. They've won 4 of their last 5 at home and we've won one game on the road against the worst team in the league. Really feel good about this one.

Wake Forest at home. Although Wake has struggled on the road, their starting 5 looks like 6'2" 6'4" 6'9" 6'9" 7'0". We've got a shot here. No... no we don't.

At UVA to close out the year. Is there any place that we inexplicably drop more games than Charlottesville? Probably not.

I just don't like our chances. I think we all know that when we look at back the 2008-2009 season that the only thing we're going to remember is the unreal comeback win against UNC and Vasquez's triple double. Both great, but probably too little too late.

So put the Chipotle down white folks, you probably don't have enough pepto or toilet paper at home to survive this one.