Editorial After the Loss of Chris McCray
By Bob W.
Well the bad luck
continues for the University of Maryland. After hearing rumors for the past
couple of days it appears John’s sources were correct (way to scoop the local
press!) and Chris McCray’s career at Maryland is, for all intensive purposes,
over. It’s just another in a long line of disappointments in the class of
2006. Though we knew this year’s squad wasn’t going to challenge for the
national championship, I thought for sure we would be able to rid the University
of the dreaded “D-7” curse. But it is starting to look like, with all these
weird things happening, the curse will make it through the 2005-06 school year
in perfect shape.
But curse or no curse there are two ways the team can respond to this, they can circle the wagons and hope for a few more win’s and limp into some sort of post season tournament, or they can dig deep and find something within themselves to take their play to the next level. I know back when I played soccer we had a game in a summer league, we were totally outmatched and our best player got red carded shortly into the game. We had no subs, were a man down, and it was about 96°F that day. The perfect receipt for a roll over, but after losing our captain (and our most talented player) everyone took it among themselves to step it up a notch, to play to the best of their ability, to pick each other up. I would like to tell you all that we went to win that game but we didn’t, in fact we lost 1-0 on an own goal by yours truly with about 15 minutes left. But damn we left the field feeling good about ourselves. We weren’t a supporting cast to our one star, we were a team.
If Gary has any ounce of Hall of Fame talent in his body now is the time to show it, after all this is his mess. He needs to get each player to step up to the plate and be the talented basketball star that was recruited to play for a National Championship Program. He needs to show he didn’t just catch lighting in a bottle with Juan Dixon and that he is indeed a great basketball coach. I certainly hope he can. That maybe a bit optimistic on my part, but seems right now optimism is the only thing that we have, well besides a star shooting guard with a sub 2.0 GPA.