It’s bad enough the seniors on Maryland’s men’s basketball team played with so little heart the Terrapins missed the past two NCAA Tournaments. Now they’ve bolted the moment their eligibility ended to risk further damaging the program.
Nik Caner-Medley, Travis Garrison, Chris McCray and Sterling Ledbetter recently withdrew from Maryland without even finishing the semester. That’s like spitting on Testudo on the way out the door. The group’s legacy has now officially gone from underachievers to fools.
Anyone pretending major Division I basketball players care about education is nuts. The only ones really there for a degree are the two percent smart enough to know they’re not good enough for the NBA and trading the cost of a degree for checking their ego and being a practice player. Mike Grinnon did a terrific job of it when grabbing his degree last year at Maryland.
The catch-22 is wanting players good enough headed for the NBA, not MBAs. Less-skilled players largely go to smaller programs where they have fun playing basketball while earning degrees. Nothing wrong with that, but if Maryland graduated everyone and never went to the NCAA Tournament, fans would demand a coaching change.
So this is not to blame coach Gary Williams for getting players with NBA aspirations. He kept three of his big four recruits of 2002 through their senior year, though John Gilchrist left lastseason and McCray flunked out in January. This is to blame players who have nearly ruined a great program through their own selfishness.
Leaving a month before classes end not only cost those players 12 credits towards a degree, but eight points in the complex Academic Progress Rate system the NCAA now imposes on all teams.
Maryland gets no credit for the foursome. The Terps are in serious danger of falling under the minimum 925 score, which is largely based on a 50 percent graduation rate over six years.
It gets worse. Next season’s seniors — D.J. Strawberry, Ekene Ibekwe, Will Bowers and Mike Jones — could cost the Terps scholarships if they follow their predecessors and leave next season before semester’s end. Given Strawberry and Ibekwe are already flirting with the NBA by saying they’ll go through the camps before withdrawing prior to the draft to return for one more season shows there’s little chance they’ll be sticking around next year to finish term papers. That the two will miss summer school and voluntary workouts also hinders the Terps’ chances for next season. Talk about pure selfishness while still on the university dole.
Certainly, players leaving early isn’t new. Chris Wilcox parked the moving van outside his dorm the night before the 2002 finale. The difference is Wilcox was a high first-round prospect. The current group might — and that’s a big maybe — see Caner-Medley drafted late in the second round. The rest will be learning a foreign language while playing overseas. At best.
If a player is a high first-rounder and can maybe move up with pro camps before the draft, then leaving early isn’t the worst thing. There are millions of dollars at stake. But for borderline prospects like this past foursome, the extra time means nothing. They are what they are after four years of college ball. Nothing will change that.
That none of the four was close to graduating is sad, too. Maryland also provides winter and summer sessions that permit players to take 141 credits over four years. They only need 120 to graduate so if none were reportedly even close to graduating, it means they basically earned three-fourths of available credits. How embarrassing.
Then again, they’ve embarrassed the program all too often. Garrison awaits trial for an alcohol-related incident at a college bar. Caner-Medley and McCray managed pre-trial settlements for their alcohol-related arrests.
It was good-bye and good luck to the crew when the team lost in the NIT’s first round last month. Now it’s also good riddance.
Rick Snider has covered local sports for 28 years. Contact him at [email protected].
