And just like that...it was gone.

So here it is, the last play against Duke, ever.  Well, not the last last play, but the one that Coach Turgeon drew up out of the timeout.

The play starts with the ball in Dez Wells' hands - exactly what the Terps want.  What's interesting is that Duke leaves the inbounder open to double team...Seth Allen.  Dez gets the ball easily and then moves it into the frontcourt.

The first action of the set is a screen by Charles Mitchell.  It might not be a bad idea, but it's terribly executed.  Chuck does nothing to screen Thornton.  Instead, he brings a second defender over to clog Wells' path to the basket, and then on his roll action, Chuck doesn't look for a pass.  At this point Dez doesn't have many effective options.



Dez's move is to handoff to Seth Allen.  Layman and Smot are in the corner, and Chuck still hasn't gotten himself into scoring position.  Seth initially faces the same double team as Dez



But Seth sees something!  Amile Jefferson is still on the double.  Rodney Hood and Jabari Parker let Chuck get himself unmolested in prime scoring position.  They have to respect Layman and Smot as shooters, but neither Smot is out of the play and Layman is well behind the line.



Chuck catches and all he needs to do is finish...but he can't.  We all know how the game ends - that's not worth rehashing.  There it was a matter of a shot that couldn't have been much closer to two points before popping out.  On this penultimate play of the game, it's not that Mitchell can't convert - it's that he gives himself no chance to.  Another opportunity lost, but hopefully another step on the long road to improvement.

Out with the Old...

One of the more frequent criticisms that you'll see levied at Mark Turgeon is that his players simply haven't improved.  It makes sense intuitively.  The bulk of last year's team came back, every one of whom was a freshman or sophomore, so the team should be better.  Sprinkle in a few newcomers, and you've got a team that can contend.  I'm not one to rain on the parade of Turgeon carping, but the question is how true this narrative really is.

Offensively, MD has dropped from 92nd in adjusted offensive efficiency last year to 126th this season.  A breakdown first of the yearly performance of each of the returning players:

	2013-14
PLAYER	ORTG	POSS%	TOTAL ORTG
WELLS	105.8	25.10%	1.066
FAUST	102.3	20.60%
MITCHELL	101.3	23.50%
ALLEN	104.4	23.90%
LAYMAN	119.2	17.20%
CLEARE	101.3	13.70%

	2012-13
PLAYER	ORTG	POSS%	TOTAL ORTG
WELLS	105.2	24.80%	1.008
FAUST	99.7	21.90%
MITCHELL	93.8	22.30%
ALLEN	96.8	21.40%
LAYMAN	102.2	15.60%
CLEARE	107.7	15.40%

So there is some pretty clear improvement.  The group was barely above 1.00 ppp Mendoza Line, and now, using more total possessions, the efficiency has increased.  Certainly we have to take into account the nationwide increase in scoring prowess I mentioned early, but even then, just keeping pace with "inflation" would have put the returnees at about 1.04 ppp.

The careful reader can see where this is going by now.  If the team is worse, but the holdovers are better, the returnees must be worse than the guys they replaced, probably by quite a bit.  The conventional wisdom coming into the year was that the lost offensive productivity would be fairly easy to replace.  Len was good, but helped more defensively than offensively, Aronhalt was effective in limited situations as a catch and shoot guy off the bench but not close to a lead option, Padgett was subpar, and Pe'shon Howard, the teams supposed engine at PG was downright terrible for most of last year.  So let's see:

	2012-13
PLAYER	ORTG	POSS%	TOTAL ORTG
LEN	112.7	22.80%	1.054
PADGETT	94.1	17.80%
ARONHALT	112.8	18.10%
HOWARD	94.1	13.80%

	2013-14
PLAYER	ORTG	POSS%	TOTAL ORTG
GRAHAM	105.8	12.00%	0.96
DODD	67.8	12.60%
RAM	65.7	10.00%
PETERS	89	22.50%
SMOT	106	22.00%

While Smot has been good, and takes a lot of undeserved criticism (at least offensively), he didn't improve enough in his year off, nor does he really come close to replacing the allegedly inconsistent Alex Len.  More disturbingly, Roddy Peters, despite spectacular plays throughout the year, has been an even bigger anchor to the offense than was Howard.  There's no question that Peters has great potential, but he doesn't yet take great care of the ball and has made an absurd one 3PFG this season.

Defensively, the analysis is much more qualitative.  Here it's clear from watching the game that Alex Len's shot blocking, height, and quickness at the 5 are sorely missed.  The hope would have been that while no one could replace Len, the newcomers - particularly Damonte Dodd and John Graham - would have been a huge improvement over Padge to counterbalance that.  While that's been true, Smot getting the lion's share of minutes at the four and being an absolute traffic cone on defense everywhere on the phone has been terribly disappointing.  Last year's Maryland defense wasn't aggressive at all, but didn't allow opponents to make shots, this year's, while not terrible and certainly a bit more likely to force a turnover, has done a terrible job at preventing shots from going in.

In the end, while we'd have liked to have seen the old guys make The Leap a bit more, it's tough to pinpoint any one disappointment there.  My opinion is that Layman needs to be more involved in the offense behind streaky catch and shoot play, Nick Faust needs to play within himself as he has more often in recent weeks, and that Wells simply needs to improve a bit more given his skills.  It sounds simple - I know it's not, but here's hoping the team can work towards it the next few weeks.