The Maryland men’s basketball team nearly matched its second-largest comeback in program history, but a furious rally from a 21-point deficit in the first half fell just short as No. 23 Wisconsin dodged the upset and left College Park with a 70-69 victory Sunday night.
Had the Terps completed the comeback, they would have equaled the second-largest rally, which came March 13, 2004, in the semifinals of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament when that squad — as the No. 6 seed — climbed out of a 21-point hole to edge No. 2 seed North Carolina State, 85-82, en route to the school’s third tournament championship. The record is a 22-point deficit, which the Terps rallied from to defeat North Carolina, 85-75, on Jan. 8, 1997.
From an emphasis on not buying into “moral victories” to lethargic starts exacerbated by defensive lapses to Xavier Green shining on both ends of the floor, here are three takeaways from Maryland’s loss before an announced 10,864 at the Xfinity Center.
Is frustration on the horizon?
As encouraging as the effort was after the Badgers sprinted to a 29-8 advantage with 8:
left in the first half, the Terps remain 8-7 overall and 0-4 in the Big Ten. This marks the first time they have dropped the first four games in the conference since joining the Big Ten for the 2014-15 season and the first time since the 1992-93 campaign when that squad opened 0-4 and finished 2-14 in the ACC.
Time will tell whether this year’s team stumbles into that kind of futility, but this group of players and coaches is unfamiliar with the latest series of missteps. Senior shooting guard Eric Ayala seemed to realize the opportunity Maryland let slip through its collective fingers while projecting confidence about the future.
“It’s about hitting the stride,” he said after scoring all 19 of his points in the second half and collecting five rebounds. “Tonight was a winnable game. No moral victories or anything like that, but we kind of walk away from this game excited for our next game because I think we’re right there on the line of getting a win. We could have one win and hit the ground running.”
Interim coach Danny Manning is not the type to put his players on blast publicly, and he certainly did not do that after Sunday night’s setback. In fact, he sounded just as encouraged about the team’s prospects as Ayala did.
“I don’t like it when we give up such an early lead like we did tonight,” Manning said. “But we’ve shown the wherewithal to continue to find a way to claw and fight and scratch to get back into the ball game. No moral victories, but to play the way we did after being down 21 to one of the better teams in the country, I feel like we’re close to turning the corner.”
Defensive woes have contributed to slow starts.
Mired in a three-game losing skid, the Terps’ troubles have begun early in each of those games.
In an 80-75 setback at Iowa on Jan. 3, they trailed the Hawkeyes, 24-12, with 11:46 left in the first half. In a 76-64 loss at Illinois on Thursday night, they were in a 21-7 hole to the Fighting Illini with 10:50 remaining in the first half.
Issues on offense and defense played significant roles in each of the last three starts, but against Wisconsin, the defense allowed the Badgers to shoot 68.8% (11-of-16), including 66.7% (4-of-6) from 3-point range.
Graduate student shooting guard Xavier Green, whose defensive skills proved crucial (more on that later), said Maryland could avoid lethargic beginnings by relying on the defense to kickstart the offense.
“It starts with defense,” he said. “The more stops we get, the more time we can spread out on offense and get fastbreak points, and that’s what want to do. We wanted to get stops, and we have to worry about getting stops.”
Junior power forward Tyler Wahl led all scorers with 21 points, sophomore shooting guard Johnny Davis added 19 and senior shooting guard Brad Davison chipped in 11 for Wisconsin. Manning said the Terps were a bit too generous.
“We just had some lapses out there where we just weren’t locked in defensively, and we gave up some scouting-report buckets,” he said. “Not knowing who we’re closing out to on the perimeter, whether it’s someone we [identified] as a shooter to try to run them off the line or someone that’s a driver and we close out to them too close, and then they beat us on the drive.”
Xavier Green was a bright spot.
Ayala garnered much of the attention for his second-half eruption, and graduate student point guard Fatts Russell scored 11 of his 13 points in the final 20 minutes, but Green was a catalyst on both ends of the floor.
The Old Dominion transfer enjoyed his best game at Maryland, registering season highs in both points (10) and minutes (27). He also played a role in limiting Davis to eight points on 2-of-10 shooting, including 0-of-4 from behind the 3-point line, in the second half.
Green — who rotated with junior shooting guard Hakim Hart to shadow Davis, who entered the game averaging 22.6 points — said he was intent on disrupting Davis’ rhythm.
“I just knew to be a pest,” Green said. “Everywhere he’s at, I’m there. He comes up for a pull-up, I’m there. I feel like I’m a great defender coming off screens and stuff and being there and having the hands. I just wanted to be there to contest every shot. Some of them fell, and some of them didn’t. I generated offense from that. My teammates built confidence in me, giving those passes to me and me being ready to shoot. It just all translated. It felt good out there.”
Badgers coach Greg Gard said it was evident that the Terps paid a considerable amount of attention to Davis, who also took his foot off the accelerator.
“I thought he got a little passive at times, didn’t attack the basket,” Gard said. “They did a good job of plugging gaps and taking away some of his alleys and some of his lanes to the rim, and we didn’t get a whole lot in transition either. It’s a credit to Maryland and their game plan against him to try to make life a little harder and make somebody else other than him score.”
MARYLAND@NORTHWESTERN
Wednesday, 9 p.m.
TV: Big Ten Network
Radio: 105.7 FM
