Winning with freshmen in college basketball isn't as easy as Duke and Kentucky make it look. But Maryland and head coach Mark Turgeon had no other choice last season. Six of the Terps' 11 scholarship players in 2018-19 -- and five members of the eight-man rotation -- were rookies. They played 51.4 percent of Maryland's minutes and scored 47.1 percent of its points.
The results were promising. The Terps went 23-11, finished fifth in the Big Ten, advanced to the NCAA Tournament's Round of 32 and were a couple of bounces away from a Sweet 16 berth. And now those five freshmen return for their sophomore seasons, armed with experience and confidence.
"It's like, we were so young, and what the guys were able to do [was incredible]," Turgeon said at the Terps' media day Oct. 15. "Now those guys are really grown men to me now, as sophomores, and they'll help us."
