In the first three minutes of Wednesday night’s game against Rutgers, the Maryland men’s basketball team missed a layup, a dunk and three jump shots. The 14th-ranked Terrapins turned the ball over twice. They looked sloppy, sluggish and generally unprepared.
“We just kind of played lackadaisically,” freshman Melo Trimble admitted. “It started in warmups. We weren’t ready to play.”
The first three minutes were ugly, and the beginning of the second half wasn’t much better. But in between, and afterwards, Maryland stayed afloat. When the shots stopped falling, the Terrapins relied on their defense. And when the shots started falling, they began to pull away, eventually securing a 73-65 victory over the Scarlet Knights in College Park.
Senior Dez Wells paced Maryland with 17 points and eight rebounds, including six offensive boards, while Jake Layman (12 points), Jared Nickens (12) and Trimble (11) all finished in double figures. With the win, the Terrapins improved to 16-2 and 4-1 in the Big Ten — though getting there wasn’t pretty.
“We definitely didn’t play our best offensively,” Layman said. “But I think we made enough shots and enough guys scored for us tonight to get the win. I think we did get a lot of open shots as well. We just need to start knocking them down.”
Maryland shot just 34 percent in the game and a woeful 24 percent in the second half. While Rutgers returned from halftime on an 11-0 run, the Terrapins made only eight second-half field goals, relying on a few threes and a steady stream of free throws late in the game.
“For us to shoot 8 for 33 in the second half, and for them to play as well as they did in the first 10-12 minutes of the half, and for us to figure out a way to win is a real credit to our guys,” Maryland coach Mark Turgeon said. “It’s league play. It is what it is. People are coming after us. We’ve got to be more mentally ready to play, and we weren’t.”
The Terrapins have leaned on free-throw shooting for much of this season, getting to the line more frequently than all but three Division I teams and making more of their attempts than any besides BYU.
On Wednesday, however, their effectiveness from behind the three-point line proved pivotal. Maryland made 11 of its 28 three-point attempts, including many at critical junctures midway through the fourth quarter. Six different players hit at least one three.
“They spread you out,” said Rutgers coach Eddie Jordan, who returned to a familiar area Wednesday after coaching the Washington Wizards for six seasons. “They’ve got a good rotation, a good chemistry. They’ll spread you out with three-point shooters, from every position it seems like. And then they spread you out and go to the offensive glass.”
At the crux of that strategy is Trimble, a stellar freshman point guard who was one of 25 players named to the Wooden Award midseason watch list earlier Wednesday. The Scarlet Knights occasionally used a double-team to guard him, or shaded extra players in his direction at times, limiting him to 11 points on nine shots.
Nickens said it was important that Wells, Layman and others also helped facilitate the offense.
“It helps us a lot that we have multiple people that can create shots for others,” Nickens said. “Like I said, we just spread the floor. Melo recognized everything. Dez did as well. And we just got open shots.”
Maryland’s 4-1 record in the Big Ten is its best start to conference play since 2009-10, though several of the schedule’s toughest tests remain. It starts Saturday against Michigan State, the second game between the two teams in the past three weeks. The Terrapins won the first meeting in double-overtime Dec. 30, yet another conference game in which they persevered despite offensive struggles.
“I think every league game we haven’t shot well so far. It just shows how well our defense has been doing,” Layman said. “Hopefully the shots will start falling and we’ll start playing much better.”
• Tom Schad can be reached at tschad@washingtontimes.com.
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