Maryland coach Mark Turgeon is taking heat for the final play he drew up in the 79-76 loss to North Carolina in the ACC Tournament Saturday. The shot by Logan Aronhalt was indeed a horrible one but the play actually was a good idea.

Aronhalt hits an extremely high 44 percent of his three pointers so the choice of player to take the shot was a good one. It seemed like the shot was a quick one as the Terps had 10 seconds to play with but Aronhalt took the shot immediately. That was actually the right call because UNC coach Roy Williams instructed his players to foul once it got to five seconds.

If the player wasn’t in the motion to shoot, he would only have received two foul shots. Behind by three, that would do the Terps no good. Even if Carolina had fouled in the act of shooting the player would have the pressure of hitting three straight foul shots.

I’m sure that would have been preferable to what happened. And what happened was that Aronhalt, perhaps due to Carolina overplaying in the three-point zone, took a wider angle to get to the ball and had to shoot from further out than Turgeon wanted. Plus, Aronhalt, rushing to get it up as instructed, didn’t square himself to the basket and missed everything.

In retrospect, surely Aronhalt wished he had taken a tad more time and made a move closer to the basket. Of course, he may have been fouled before getting the shot up and Carolina would have won anyway.

Plus, had either Marcus Paige or PJ Hairston, both good foul shooters, hit both of their free throws in the last 32 seconds, instead of 1 of 2, the game would have been out of reach.