Debbie, please don't waste my money to fire Ralph!

With all the uncertainty surrounding Terps football coach Ralph Friedgen heading into today's Boston College finale, I want our Athletic Director Debbie Yow to know that I am one booster strongly in favor of not firing the coach. It has been estimated that the total cost to replace Coach Friedgen now would run close to $10 million and it simply isn't worth it.

The main problem right now is not Ralph Friedgen. The main problem for the University of Maryland is its weak fan base and an overall lack of financial support from alumni and boosters. To be an elite college football (or basketball) program, a school must have enough loyal fans and boosters willing to contribute generously to help the school keep up in the ever-escalating resource "arms race". The funds are needed to build or improve facilities and to buy the best equipment in order to attract and keep recruits. The sad truth is that the University of Maryland never has and never will be competitive in this.

I'm realistic--Maryland is and will always be a second-tier FBS football program. It is simply not realistic or cost-effective for us to try to be an elite FBS program like Florida, Texas, or Virginia Tech as just a few examples. I am grateful for the BCS and five other bowl appearances that Ralph has led us to over the past nine years. Can we do better? Certainly. Could we do worse? Certainly. Overall, I believe that Coach Friedgen's results have been about what we should expect. Personally, I would've preferred to spread the winning around a little more versus 31 wins in his first three seasons, but I'm okay in the end.

The bottom line is that, regardless of who coaches at Maryland, our program cannot, and will not ever, win consistently against the best programs in college football. Coach Friedgen deserves much of the blame for this season's woeful results, but inexperience, injuries and just bad luck were equally responsible for the horrible season. Ralph is otherwise a very good coach who has a good track record of winning and developing young men. Paying $4 million to buy him out after this season just to give Franklin or anyone else an earlier shot is really a huge waste of money. I'm one Terp fan willing to give Coach Friedgen another season because the only question that should be asked is: "Will an expensive coaching change really make a difference?"

Anyone miss Dave Neal yet?

The Terrapin men's basketball team failed its first early season test this week. In losing to two middle-of-their-conference teams, Cincinnati and Wisconsin, the Terps were beaten decisively. While they played adequate defensive, their inability to score created numerous transition opportunities for Cincinnati. Against Wisconsin, they were forced to play Badger ball and again shot the ball poorly. And in both games, they couldn't do the most basic of basketball tasks--make free throws. While it's way too early to worry to sound any alarms and there is still plenty of time to improve, a few questions stood out in my mind.

While the two freshmen bigs, Williams and Padget, clearly improve our interior post play, who will make-up for oft-maligned and now-departed Dave Neal's scoring? While we lacked front-court depth last season, Neal gave opponents a unique match-up problem in his ability to consistently shoot the mid and long-range jumper. Heading into the season, most of us thought surely that, with more practice and another year of development, the rest of the team would easily make up for Neal's scoring with improved team play and pure shooting.

From this week's Maui results, it's clear that the Terps' offense struggled to score against their first significant opposition this season. Sean Mosley's shot has clearly improved, and he is in my opinion, the most improved player. And he hasn't lost any of that hussle! Eric Hayes remains a steady and reliable shooter but opponents know to keep a body on him so he needs to be more aggressive on the dribble or be a better catch and shoot player. Landon Milbourne still has his good mid range jumper and can be aggressive on both ends of the floor, but I don't see that he is better this season.

Other players however have been a clear disappointment so far. Vasquez's productivity has declined markedly as defenses have figured out his game. His shooting is so far off the mark I wonder if he's actually been working on his shots. How can he play in the NBA if he consistently shoots below 30%? You can give any Division I player 20+ shots a game and they will be 20 point per game player. And Adrian Bowie and Cliff Tucker have thus far not shown that they can play consistently or put the ball in the basket.

Of course, Dino Gregory's return sometime next month hopefully should shake things up by taking some of the pressure off of our two frosh players. It will also free up Landon to play more "3". Maybe Dino's return will help get the Terps' mojo back in time for ACC competition in January.

Maryland men's and women's basketball

Yesterday's disappointing loss by the Maryland women's basketball team in the regional finals only further reinforces the polar opposite approaches used by our Brenda Frese and Gary Williams. I had already previously (jokingly) suggested that Brenda Frese should do all the recruiting, and that Gary Williams should do all the pre-game and in-game coaching, for both teams. While Gary has been criticized for his poor recruiting results, Brenda refuses to teach team defense and clearly lacks the ability to make important in-game tactical adjustments. Next season, when the Lady Terps are in need of points, Brenda will not be able to simply hand the ball to Kristi Tolliver or Marissa Coleman and say "go make a play" to save them from their defensive inadequacies.

Can you imagine Gary and Brenda on the sideline together? Imagine Gary drawing up a momentum-changing play to get the Lady Terps a key bucket, or using a profanity-laced tirade to get the women to actually move their feet and to play harder on defense. Meanwhile, Brenda can prowl the sidelines with passionate clapping and encouraging, confidence-restoring words to the men on the bench after Gary has finished berating them!

Marissa Coleman and the Lady Terps

Lost amongst all the effusive praise and accolades surrounding Marissa Coleman’s “heirloom game” in yesterday’s NCAA women’s basketball regional semi-final was the fact that Coleman’s very average defensive performance led directly to dozens of quality Vanderbilt opportunities and scores. While playing 40 minutes will certainly take its toll toward the end of a game, this does not explain why the worst of the Coleman’s and the rest of the Terps’ defense play was at the beginning of each half. If Coach Frese, Marissa Coleman and the rest of the Terps don’t take their defense more seriously, they will not win another national championship. Maryland can probably beat less talented teams by relying on their stars to come up with clutch performances to compensate for an inferior defensive effort, but this probably won’t work against Stanford or UConn.

Maryland Basketball and Gary Williams

Although I'm a lifelong Terps fan, I've remained mostly quiet on our mens basketball team's recent struggles and in regards to Gary Williams himself. For whatever it's worth, I think Gary had taken recruiting for granted but I also think he's been working hard most recently to improve in this area. Certainly, the recent turnover on his staff didn't help things on the recruiting front. Coach Williams has done a commendably good job with the hand that he and his staff have dealt him. Considering they play in the tough ACC, they've gotten average to above-average performance from mostly average players over the past 7 years. Of course, that's not good enough for most of us.

The irony with these recent struggles and with the growing criticism of Gary Williams is that, as long-time Maryland fans will recall, Lefty Driesell spent many years with top recruits but was often criticized as a mediocre coach. Lefty's situation (remember the now-famous "I can coach" quote?) stands in direct contrast to Gary William's. I expect Gary any day now to scream "I can recruit!"