When the 21st ranked 20-3 Maryland Terrapins take the court, Anthony Cowan is not someone who immediately commands the attention of observers. The 6-foot, 170 pound freshman guard is often overlooked by fans — but he’s made huge contributions to the Terps’ recent success.
Coming into the season, all eyes were on junior guard Melo Trimble as he looked to lead Maryland to its third straight NCAA Tournament appearance.
That’s been the script as the Terrapins raced to 20-2, the best start in school history, and it’ll be the story for Tuesday night’s matchup with Penn State. the team’s first since a heartbreaking 73-72 home loss Saturday to Purdue.
Trimble is the focus of Maryland’s offense — and rightfully so. But the attack starts with Cowan, the Bowie, Maryland, product who is running the show.
Cowan is averaging a team high 3.7 assists per game this season, and looks very comfortable running coach Mark Turgeon’s offense. Cowan has confidence in his teammates, and isn’t afraid to find the open man.
“I’ve seen Justin [Jackson] and Kevin [Huerter] have gotten hot recently, and that makes things a lot easier for me,” Cowan said.
Cowan has certainly improved as the season has progressed, and that has coincided with an increase in playing time. After averaging 27 minutes per game through the first 11 games, Cowan has seen his playing time spike to 32 minutes per game over the last 12 games.
Turgeon, in his sixth season at Maryland, certainly sees something in Cowan, and is quick to praise his young point guard.
“Anthony’s been tremendous. He’s our best perimeter defender and the last four games he’s had something like 15 assists and only one turnover. He’s also been consistent, we’ve played 23 games and he’s been good in 20 of them,” said Turgeon.
Cowan has had problems with turnovers, including a season-high of eight against Iowa. He’s averaging 2.3 per game. Knowing he needed to improve, Cowan got to work studying film to see exactly what was going wrong.
“I took a lot from that [Iowa] game, I looked over a lot of film to see where I was turning the ball over. Now I just try to make better plays and set my teammates up,” said Cowan.
All that film study clearly paid off. Cowan has turned the ball over just twice in the past four games while also notching 15 assists in that span.
In addition to setting up his teammates on the offensive end, Cowan is quickly becoming known as a lockdown defender, and while his defensive efforts don’t always show up in the box score, Cowan knows how important they are.
“Coach Turgeon made it completely clear at the beginning of the year, if you don’t defend you aren’t going to play, so everyone tries to lock up on defense,” Cowan said.
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