Maryland and head coach Mark Turgeon received some encouraging news over the weekend as it was reported by CSN Baltimore’s Daniel Martin that point guard Seth Allen has been cleared to play by doctors and has returned to practice on Friday and Saturday as the Terrapins prepare for a Sunday contest against Tulsa.
Allen had surgery last month to repair a broken bone in his left foot and was expected to miss anywhere between eight and ten weeks. As Martin noted in his story, Thursday marked eight weeks for Allen and now the Terrapins hope that the return of their sophomore floor general can help stabilize the position.
In Allen’s absence, Maryland has experimented at point guard with freshman Roddy Peters, as well as guys like Dez Wells and Nick Faust playing out of position to mixed results. Maryland is 218th in the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio as they’ve struggled to a 7-5 start.
“The whole thing is the doctor said, ‘It’s healed, he’s free to go,’” Turgeon said to the media on Saturday. “To me it’s either broke or it’s not broke. Well, it’s not broke anymore.”
“He’s favoring it a little bit, but didn’t have any pain, which is good. We’re just taking it one day at a time to see what we can get out of him … We’ll see how he reacts.”
Maryland will likely bring Allen along slowly, as he gets back into shape and adjusts to game speed.
“It’ll be a process,” Turgeon said. “I don’t think we can expect [Allen] to play a lot of minutes tomorrow night and be fantastic. If he’s not sore and everything goes good, we’ll try to give him a few minutes each half and then just go from there.”