How strong is this year’s Terps basketball class? In “Tracking the Terps”, Jeff Barker offered a good synopsis of how the incoming talent ranks both nationally and in conference. Gary Williams and the Terps have never been die hard pursuers of McDonald’s All-Americans and blue chippers, so a recruiting class ranked #21 nationally seems pretty strong for Maryland. Barker gave us this neat, easy to read list of incoming Maryland recruits, which we will reproduce for your benefit:
- Pe’Shon Howard SG 6-3 200 Oak Hill Academy Wytheville, Va.
- Haukur Palsson SF 6-6 215 Montverde Academy Montverde, Fla.
- Ashton Pankey PF 6-9 220 St. Anthony’s Bronx, N.Y.
- Mycahl Parker SG 6-6 195 The Miller School Washington, N.C.
- Terrell Stoglin PG 6-1 160 Santa Rita HS Santa Rita, Tucson, Ariz.
It was a bit disappointing to see that metro area stars Tyler Thornton (Duke) and Kendall Marshall (UNC) got away to conference rivals. Another scary trend is that Florida State, ranked #12 nationally, is doing a great job of mining talent from the southeast and their home state. While it’s likely that they’ll continue to mismanage that talent once it arrives, the Seminoles may be moving toward being a powerhouse program and yet another tall hurdle that the Terps have to jump a few times per year.
Seven ACC teams were listed in the Top 25, and Maryland was listed as the sixth strongest in conference. While these rankings mean nothing and are generally not a good indicator of how the talent will fare within the respective programs, they are a good indicator of the overall strength of the conference, which remains very high this year. In fact, the ACC had more Top 25 ranked recruiting classes than any other conference. The implications are that the ACC is only getting tougher, and the defending conference champion Terrapins will have to grow up quick if they’re going to make a run at it again next year.
