

From left to right, Maryland men's basketball assistant coaches Bino Ranson, Dustin Clark and Cliff Warren. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

The best start to a season in Maryland men’s basketball history had its beginnings with summer workouts for a team that had just lost four starters and was breaking in seven newcomers. In those formative few weeks, the head coach was on another continent.

Mark Turgeon didn’t hesitate to leave the young Terrapins to his three assistant coaches while he was in Chile as an assistant coach for Team USA in the FIBA Americas U18 Championship. Perhaps now the team wouldn’t be creating such a stir with its chemistry had Cliff Warren, Dustin Clark and Bino Ranson not demonstrated their own during those quiet days in June and July. Perhaps Turgeon would not be a candidate for Big Ten coach of the year had his assistants not set aside their different backgrounds and coaching styles to become an extension of their leader.

In a college basketball landscape that is often shaped by player and coaching turnover, Maryland’s coaching staff has found a level of continuity in its third season together, a cohesive unit that splits coaching, recruiting and scouting duties evenly and finds common purpose in taking responsibilities off Turgeon’s overfilled plate.

Maybe it’s Warren covering Turgeon’s radio-show duties on a night when the head coach wants to go see his son play high school ball at Gonzaga in the District. Maybe it’s Clark handling a call from a coach who has a prospect for Turgeon to look at. Maybe it’s Ranson spending extra time in the film room with a struggling player when the head coach is game-planning for the entire team.

“They’re all completely different, and they all bring different things to the table. With that said, chemistry is huge for us,” Turgeon said. “Every day there’s a fire that doesn’t make it to my desk.”

[Why Maryland isn’t higher than a No. 6 seed in NCAA bracket. At least not yet.]



Cliff Warren, shown studying film last season with Terrapins guard Melo Trimble. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)

‘You have to have a balance’

Cliff Warren delivered his most recent scouting report to Turgeon’s desk a few days before Maryland hosted Rutgers in late January. Less than 36 hours after that win, and two days before a game at Minnesota, Warren hit the road alone to recruit.

He rose out of bed before dawn Jan. 26 and began his customary preparation for a trip to Orlando, where he would sit in a small gym for nearly eight hours to scout a prep tournament. He put on a polo shirt emblazoned with the Maryland logo, so that recruits would recognize him. He wore his hippest black-and-white sneakers, because maybe that would earn him style points with the teenagers. He didn’t wear a belt with his gray pants, because that way he could move more quickly through security at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport.

Anything to gain a few more seconds at home. Warren wanted his wife, Jennifer, to sleep a few more minutes as he got ready. The couple is expecting their second child in May, which, aside from making this one of the most hectic years in his 25 seasons coaching college basketball, has also driven Warren to help out more with their 7-year old son, J.C., especially in the mornings.

“I’ve been so pleasantly surprised at him as a father, because he knows his time is limited with J.C., so he really makes the most of that time,” Jennifer said.

After he got J.C. ready for school, Warren walked his son to the bus stop near the family’s home in Silver Spring. Most mornings they avoid talking basketball, rather bonding over Eggo waffles and Spanish lessons. But Thursday, with Warren being thrust back into the ruthless world of college basketball recruiting while also thinking ahead to Minnesota, he explained his schedule to J.C. He tried to Google a map locating the University of Minnesota to show to his son, and they laughed when the search yielded a photo of the Gophers’ mascot.

Then Warren said goodbye. “It’s getting tougher and tougher,” he reflected as he drove through Beltway traffic in his Hyundai SUV. “You have to have a balance of all of it. You have to have a balance of recruiting, scouting — oh and coaching, too, by the way,” Warren said. “But home life is the same thing.”

If anyone can relate to the pressure that Turgeon faces on a daily basis, it’s Warren. The 48-year-old spent nine years as the head coach at Jacksonville, where he experienced the profession’s highs (two Atlantic Sun Conference titles) and lows (he was fired in 2014). When he was hired by Maryland that spring, he vowed to use his head coaching experience to lighten the load for Turgeon and to cultivate lifelong relationships with players, which is why he started coaching in the first place.

Between games in Orlando, Warren texted a few Terrapins players to see how practice went back in College Park. Before he went back to the hotel to FaceTime with his wife and son, Warren texted the other assistants about what he was seeing on the road as he evaluated players for the program’s future. One 2018 prospect was an improved three-point shooter from over the summer. Another 2019 player was long and athletic with good skill, Warren wrote.



Dustin Clark working the scout team after a recent practice. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)

‘I was unbelievably fortunate’

The texts reached Dustin Clark’s phone back in College Park, another piece of information to process. Clark, 34, has built a reputation as a gifted recruiter — he helped bring in Anthony Cowan Jr., Kevin Huerter and Jaylen Brantley, and he has also become the point man in the school’s international recruiting efforts.

But this week he was handling scouting reports for both Minnesota and for Maryland’s following game, three days later at Ohio State. Each report requires about 25 hours of work, much of it done closely with the team’s video coordinator, Mark Bialkoski. On top of that, Clark must teach the opponent’s tendencies for Maryland’s scout team to mimic in practices and present film study the day before the game.

Unlike the other members of the coaching staff, Clark is single and didn’t play basketball in college. He grew up on a farm in Waxahachie, Tex., and became obsessed with the sport as a guard at his high school, which had a graduating class of 15 students.

Clark graduated with a degree in agricultural leadership from Texas A&M, where, as a senior, he was a student assistant under Coach Billy Gillispie. He flirted with going to law school but couldn’t let go of his coaching dream. Gillispie left for Kentucky and was replaced by Turgeon in April 2007, and Clark introduced himself following Turgeon’s introductory news conference.

Desperate for a chance, Clark wrote Turgeon a letter a few days later and delivered it in person. At the end of the note, he listed two vows: that no coach would ever outwork him and that he would always remain loyal. After mulling it over for a weekend, Turgeon hired him as a full-time athletic assistant. Clark has never had another boss.

“Everybody says, in this business, your first job is often the hardest one to get. So I knew, to work for a guy like him, at a place like Texas A&M, I was unbelievably fortunate,” Clark said.

As the years have gone on, his understanding of the game has improved and, as a result, so have the scouting reports. The letter to Turgeon, which Clark keeps a copy of and still refers to, always helps him dig a little deeper. One such time came Sunday, a day after Maryland had pulled out an emotional win over Minnesota, when Clark quickly had to begin preparing the game plan for Ohio State.

On Monday, he delivered a forceful breakdown of the Buckeyes’ personnel and tendencies. At one point during the film study, he harped on his team to rebound. “Box out, rebound and toughness!” Clark bellowed as he read off his keys to the game. “As Coach Bino says, boxing out is a mind-set.”



Bino Ranson, right, with Clark at a recent practice. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)

‘All about finding your niche’

Clark was referring to Bino Ranson, who quietly observed the film study next to Turgeon in the back row of the room. He still thinks of himself as a point guard, the position he played for Division II Southern New Hampshire in the mid-1990s.

“A good assistant really assists the head coach and tries to do what he wants,” Ranson said. “It’s all about finding your niche for the staff that you’re on.”

Part of Ranson’s niche is as a fixture in the recruiting scene of his native Baltimore, where he started by founding a powerful AAU program nearly two decades ago and from which he recently netted a major Charm City recruit in Darryl Morsell. Another is his work with the team’s big men.

After one practice late last week, Ranson did an individual jump-hook drill with senior center Damonte Dodd, a player Ranson has championed since Dodd arrived as a raw project in 2013. Ranson helped Dodd adjust to College Park socially and academically early in his career while pushing him on the court, and Dodd has since gradually grown into the starting center for the Terrapins, a two-way player who is no longer known exclusively as a rim protector.

“We’ve always had a good relationship, ever since I was in high school,” Dodd said of Ranson. “He’s always just trying to make me get better, and I really appreciate that.”

Ranson, 42, is something of a bridge between eras at Maryland — he served as an assistant for one season under Gary Williams and stayed on when Turgeon arrived in 2011. Like Williams, Turgeon gives his assistants an equal voice in all phases: recruiting, scouting and even game management. That eased the transition for Ranson, who has had to learn to juggle work with life off the court.

Ranson, too, has learned how to manage an unforgiving job with a young family. His wife, Shannon, has been his rock. He releases pressure by taking his young sons, 8-year-old B.J. and 6-year-old Bradshaw, to school and basketball practice. They called him earlier this week to ask about his schedule.

“They know my [game] schedule, almost better than me,” Ranson said. “They said, ‘Oh, you’re playing Ohio State this week.’ ”

Warren, Clark and Ranson all looked exhausted after Maryland prevailed against the Buckeyes in Columbus on Tuesday, the team’s fifth road test in seven games. Nonetheless, the 17th-ranked Terrapins won all seven games in that stretch, improving their record to 20-2 overall and 8-1 in the Big Ten, tied for first place in conference play.

But it was just the beginning of another week. Warren was set to recruit in New Jersey on Tuesday, while Clark was assigned to check out prospects in West Virginia. Ranson was to stay back and put the finishing touches on his scouting report for Saturday’s game against No. 23 Purdue. By Friday, they would all meet as a staff again, hoping to find more chemistry before the most important game of the season.

“They feed off each other,” Turgeon said. “They balance each other out.”