How Greivis Vasquez Rebuilt and Destroyed the Maryland Terrapins' Season

You could think that comments from the mouthy Maryland Terrapins guard Greivis Vasquez shouldn't have made any difference in the second-round of NCAA Basketball Tournament game between the Terrapins and the Memphis Tigers.

You could say that Memphis would have shot well and Maryland would have played poorly, even if Vasquez’s ego hadn't been driven by providing bulletin board material.

But, in this season, Vasquez’s mouth is 0-2 prior to big games.  

Despite all of the work he put in to save the Terrapins’ season, he seemed hell-bent on destroying it, as exemplified in yesterday’s 89-70 rout against the Tigers—an appropriate finish to the Maryland Terrapins’ postseason hopes.

“If [Memphis] played in the [Atlantic Coast Conference], they’d have a losing record in the league...[t]hey’d probably win all of their games outside the league and have a losing record in the league. The ACC is too tough," said Vasquez.

Right. This is the reigning national runner-up he’s talking about. Maybe his intent was genuinely harmless. Maybe it was a way of getting himself riled up before a big game. Maybe he was trying to get more out of his teammates.

But knowing how much coverage he received in cursing out his own fans, and the attention that is paid to the less-inflammatory-yet-equally-idiotic things that he says, there’s good money on the fact that he should have known better.

Or, at least, Gary Williams should have instructed him to know better.

We all know that the Terrapins aren't built to respond to manufactured challenges from within the team, like those created by General Greivis. It didn’t work against Duke, and it was doomed to fail against the Memphis Tigers—a team that had been slighted all season, playing in a disguised mid-major conference.

As a result, the almost-Cinderella Story Terrapins were burned into cinders, during yesterday's game; Vasquez's comments drew intense focus from the Memphis squad whose mottoes, seemingly handpicked from a bag of revenge clichés, are “unfinished business” or “us against the world.”

Vasquez’s play didn’t match the intensity of his mouth. In a game where Vasquez woulld have had to have scored nearly 40 points in order for the Terrapins to compete, he only managed to score 20. The Terrapins’ perimeter defense allowed 10 three-pointers, and they couldn’t get into the lane against the bigger, stronger Tiger front line.

And what does Vasquez get because of this? He will get to go to the NBA as a late-first round, early second-round draft pick.  Leaving the drama behind him, he’ll get a chance to tell the world that he has matured and how he’s grown since leaving College Park. In just a few months, the deluge and inappropriateness of his mouthy comments will be behind him.

However, the bitter taste of underachievement will remain fresh in the mouths of the Terrapins’ faithful fans.  They will remember for years to come how Vasquez's comments sabotaged the University of Maryland squad. They won’t speak ill of him because he gave all of himself on the floor more times than not.

When it counted most, the mouth that always ran never became the mouth that took a bite out of the big moments.

Therefore, in the end, Greivis Vasquez will be known as the one who bit Maryland Terrapins Basketball one too many times.