A tough first week for Mark Turgeon

(Ed. Note: Due to technical maintenance to Blogger's user interface, we have been unable to publish any posts for the last 24 hours. This post should have been published on Thursday afternoon. Thank you for your patience)

When the news broke that Mark Turgeon was going to be Gary Williams' replacement at Maryland, the consensus was that in order for Turgeon to be successful in College Park, he was going to have to start landing some of the blue-chippers coming out of the DC and Baltimore area.

Four days into his tenure, and things probably could not have gone worse for Turgeon.

First, he lost Wally Judge -- a Kansas State transfer and former McDonald's all-american who was reportedly very close to committing to the Terps before Williams' retirement -- to Rutgers. And now, all three of the recruits that had signed Letters of Intent to Maryland have asked for releases. According to Jeff Borzello of CBSSports.com, guards Sterling Gibbs (Ashton's brother and a borderline top 100 recruit) and Nick Faust (a top 50 player nationally out of Baltimore) have both been granted their release. Martin Breunig, a 6'9" German recruit that would provide valuable depth on the thin Maryland front line, is reportedly planning on reopening his recruitment as well.

There are two ways to look at this.

From Maryland's perspective, losing all three will be a loss, but not necessarily a major loss. The Terps do have some talent returning on their perimeter -- Terrel Stoglin, Pe'Shon Howard, and to a lesser extent Haukur Palsson all had promising rookie campaigns while Sean Mosley is a veteran and a leader -- and while the depth would be beneficial, its a loss that can probably be absorbed. Breunig would be a valuable addition to Maryland's front court for the simple fact that he is another body, but there are no guarantees that he will be able to fill the void left by Jordan Williams' departure.

From the recruit's point of view, life just got hectic. The end of the spring signing period is May 18th, or next Wednesday -- that deadline is not as firm as it seems, as you can still receive a scholarship if you don't sign, but nothing is guaranteed (not that it is with a Letter of Intent anyway) -- which means that this weekend, Gibbs and Faust will both likely be flooded with phone calls from coaches trying to land a last-minute infusion of talent. Faust, in particular, is a name to watch, as he is a big-time scorer that is all of a sudden one of the top three most talented players in the class of 2011 without a school to go to.

I understand that players pick a school based on the head coach. I also understand that Williams and Turgeon have very different styles of coaching -- Williams likes to run to offense and press in the full court while Turgeon prefers a grind-it-out, defensive style of play. But there had to be something University of Maryland that piqued the interest of these young men other than the just person that coached the basketball team.

Faust and Gibbs have less than a week to decide where they want to go to school.

After having their minds made up about Maryland for so long, is it worth making a rushed decision due to just a coaching change?

They have until Wednesday to figure that out.