Maryland men’s basketball’s 2025-2026 season has been a lost season.
The Terps have been eliminated from at-large bid to the NCAA tournament for weeks now. Barring an unlikely miracle run in the Big Ten tournament, the focus the rest of the season is on development and progress for next season.
Living up to the “Crab Five” Maryland team from the 2024-2025 season was never realistic for an entirely new regime. But being as bad as the Terps have been in their first season under head coach Buzz Williams has been concerning and exceeds the most pessimistic expectations for a rebuilding season.
The finger can be pointed to a completely overhauled roster and injuries to key players, but the team has underperformed — even to the low expectations coming in.
The Terps’ most recent 91-48 loss to No. 10 Michigan State — its worst loss since joining the Big Ten — encapsulated everything that has gone wrong this season. Michigan State was superior in every aspect of the game and Maryland (8-12, 1-8 Big Ten) suffered its eighth double digit-loss in conference play.
“I’m not going to keep a secret. We have millions of miles to go — in every possible way. On the floor, off the floor,” Williams said after the loss.
The Terps were out of sorts all game long. Basic inbounds plays turned into multiple five second violations, finding a shot on offense looked hard and the defense let the Spartans shoot 60.7% and score in any way they wanted.
Maryland’s attempts to address its on court problems have not worked. Despite experimenting with lineup changes and defensive schemes, the results have remained the same.
Williams’ words offer little optimism for the program searching for direction. Maryland has yet to show real improvement on the court, and by the sound of it, has made minimal progress off it as well.
Fans are growing frustrated with Williams’ regime in his first year, and it’s hard to deflect the blame anywhere else. Many of the players he brought in are underperforming and the team lacks chemistry on both sides of the ball. But Williams believes the blame should not just be on him.
“When you’re losing, it’s easy to point at Buzz, and Buzz should be pointed to,” Williams said after the win over Penn State on Jan. 18. “There’s so many elements that go into losing that I don’t think that it’s fair to the program just to identify only the things that are happening in between the lines.”
At most of his stops as a head coach, the first season has not been very successful for Williams’ team. Outside of an NCAA tournament appearance in his debut season at Marquette in 2009, his programs have typically taken multiple seasons to develop into consistent postseason fixtures.
The pressure is different at his now fifth head coaching job. Maryland is a storied program that hasn’t experienced many losing seasons. The Terps will almost certainly maintain a well below .500 record this season and might post the worst in school history.
For a coach that many viewed as a panic hire after Kevin Willard’s departure under associate athletic director Colleen Sorem, now at SMU, the pressure is mounting on Williams.
Much of the pressure comes from the extreme on-court struggles this season. Maryland has the worst defense in the Big Ten, allowing 79.0 points per game. Combined with one of the worst offenses in the conference at 72.9 points per game, the Terps can’t compete against the level of competition in the Big Ten.
A big reason for the lopsided scores has been the absence of the best player, Pharrel Payne. The senior suffered a knee injury against a top-5 ranked Michigan team on Dec. 13. During the first month of the season, he was keeping Maryland in games by himself averaging 17.5 points and giving the team much needed size. Without him, the Terps have fallen apart.
The 6-foot-7 Solomon Washington and 6-foot-8 Elijah Saunders have been playing out of position to make up for Payne’s loss, and have struggled heavily on defense to stop opposing bigs.
In the backcourt, Myles Rice and Isaish Watts have regressed heavily. Both guards’ scoring totals are well below last season and have been in and out of the starting lineup. Freshman Darius Adams was a consensus Top-25 recruit and five-star prospect, but hasn’t lived up to that status. He has averaged 12.3 points on just 34% shooting and only 1.6 assists per game.
Graduate Diggy Coit has been the lone positive surprise for Maryland. His 15.2 points along with four 30 plus point performances and team high 3 assists are the reason Maryland has a Big Ten win.
With 11 regular season Big Ten games to play, things don’t look promising for Maryland. The Terps only have two games with the chance of being betting favorites in — on the road against Rutgers and home against Washington. The reality has forced Williams focus more on the progress of the program’s rebuild
“We’ve got to continue to find ways to have improvement, in the film room, skill development, in the weight room, in recruiting,” Williams said. “We’ve got a long way to go, and that’s the truth.”
