When the Big Ten voted to add two games and expand to a 20-game schedule for the 2018-19 men’s basketball season, Maryland coach Mark Turgeon immediately pulled the Terps from this week’s CBE Hall of Fame Classic in Kansas City.
Instead of playing Missouri State and either Texas Tech or Southern California, the Terps wound up playing four exempt games at home against North Carolina A&T, Hofstra, Mount Saint Mary’s and Marshall, which faces Maryland (5-0) on Friday night at Xfinity Center.
The reasoning? Though Turgeon’s 2014-15 team won the Kansas City tournament that served as freshman point guard Melo Trimble’s coming out party, he wasn’t quite sure what the makeup and maturity level of his current team would be this early in the season.