Maybe we need to come up with a new award for Mark Turgeon.
He won't win ACC Coach of the Year honors, not with Maryland in seventh place now. Maybe Leonard Hamilton of Florida State gets Coach of the Year. Or maybe they give it to one of the usual suspects: the man with the perpetual tan, Roy Williams from North Carolina or Saint Krzyzewski from Duke.
But Turgeon sure deserves something for the coaching job he's done this year. Call it the Over-Achiever of the Year award. Or the Smoke-and-Mirrors award. Because what coach in the league has done more with less this season than Turgeon?
Watch the Terps play night after night and tell me how Turgeon has gotten 16 wins out of this bunch.
Tell me how he's gotten six conference wins out of them, too, including that gritty 75-70 one over a good Miami team Tuesday at Comcast Center.
Because ladies and gentlemen, I confess: I don't know how he's done it.
Not with all the holes in this lineup. Not with a couple of the, um, mercurial personalities on this team. Not with all the adversity the Terps have had to overcome.
Let's see, where to begin?
OK, here's the Cliffs Notes version of what Turgeon's had to deal with this season:
• The loss of 6-7 sophomore swingman Haukur Palsson (opted to play pro ball in Europe) and prized recruits Sterling Gibbs (now at Texas) and Martin Breunig (now at Washington) right before the season started.
• A foot injury to sophomore starting point guard Pe'Shon Howard that sidelined him for nine games early and an ACL tear that has him out for the season now.
• A 10-game suspension of 7-foot-1 freshman big man Alex Len due to NCAA amateurism guidelines.
• A talented freshman swingman, Nick Faust, who's been forced to play point guard – with varying degrees of success -- due to Howard's horrible bad luck.
• A team with exactly one scorer, one outside shooter and one player who can create off the dribble. Unfortunately, all three are named Terrell Stoglin, a terrific sophomore guard who at times has been moody, pouty and — how to put this? — less than judicious when it comes to shot selection.
• A front-court (various combinations of Len, James Padgett, Ashton Pankey and Berend Weijs) that would be lucky to start for a mid-major team.
Are you starting to get the picture here?
Every day when he goes to work, Turgeon probably wonders if an asteroid is going to slam into his car. Or if the roof in his office is going to collapse.
Yet somehow this team is 16-11 and 6-7 in the ACC, with a chance to steal another win or two in the regular season and the ACC Tournament.
That's why I think Turgeon did some of his best coaching of the season following that awful 71-44 beat-down the Terps took at Virginia last week.
This was the kind of loss that could shatter a team. It was a total, team-wide collapse in the second half during which the Terps jacked up wild shots, turned the ball over and seemed to play with no focus and no heart.
And when Turgeon met the press after the game, he seemed shaken by how badly his team had played, how much it had regressed.
In the best of times, Turgeon has the mournful countenance of a man who has just watched his house burn down. But at that presser, he confessed to wondering if his team would ever win another game.
Somehow, though, he was able to get the Terps to put that mess behind them, to have a great practice and focus on Miami, a team they had nearly beaten earlier this month before losing 90-80 in double-overtime.
Somehow he sucked it up and got the Terps to suck it up, too. The Miami game was a gut-check. And the Terps were heartened by how they — and their coach — responded.
"I definitely see us growing each and every day," said senior guard Sean Mosely after the Miami win. "Like Coach said when he came into the locker room: 'We won the game yesterday in practice.' Because throughout the whole practice, we had three turnovers and ran one play wrong.
"(We) were dialed in, focused and only thinking about executing each play and valuing every possession. [Tuesday] I think we came out and did the same thing."
In Turgeon's words, the win over Miami was a "hugger," everyone in the locker room hugging and celebrating afterward.
"It was good to see all the smiles," he said after the game, shaking his head. "They continue to over-achieve."
So does he.
Should get some credit for it, too.
Listen to Kevin Cowherd at 7:20 a.m. Tuesdays on 105.7 The Fan's "The Norris and Davis Show."
