Maryland men’s basketball’s second-half surge falls short in 69-65 loss to Rutgers
The month of March isn’t known for boring hoops.
In one of Maryland men’s basketball’s worst seasons in decade, its first half Sunday against Rutgers was a new low. The Terps trailed by 19 points at the break, at home, against a team with four Big Ten wins.
Then, inexplicably, everything changed. Maryland’s shots started falling. Rutgers’ offense became a shell of itself. In the blink of an eye, a 20-2 run gave the Terps a miraculous one-point lead.
But it wasn’t enough. The final 10 minutes were an absolute slugfest, and Rutgers landed the last blow. Maryland lost, 69-65, in a game that was as chaotic as they get.
Whatever the Terps did at halftime took a while. The Terps didn’t take the court until there were 90 seconds left before the second-half tipoff. Rutgers had already been shooting around for minutes.
“The players led most of [halftime]. Everything they were saying was spot on,” head coach Buzz Williams said. “There’s been great growth and great maturity. Everything that they were saying, I let them say, [and] we changed tactically what we were doing.”
It worked. Mills and Elijah Saunders drained quick 3-pointers to start the half, and an Xfinity Center crowd that booed Maryland as it returned from the locker room started to buzz.
A Solomon Washington and-one gave the Terps their first lead of the game with 11:26 to go. They held that lead for just over three minutes. Even with Andre Mills and Diggy Coit coming alive, the Scarlet Knights clawed their way back in front — and never let up.
Much like Nebraska on Wednesday, the Scarlet Knights decided Andre Mills was not going to beat them. Early on, couldn’t take more than a step without help defenders coming to block his lane. Two of Mills’ first three shots were missed 3-pointers, and the other was swatted into the stands by Emmanuel Ogbole.
Around him, no one else could buy a basket. Maryland started 1-of-8, and the only make was an uncontested Solomon Washington dunk. Darius Adams earned four free-throw attempts but made only one of them.
“I was caught off guard in the first half,” Williams said. There’s always three parts with good programs, good teams: you have to play really hard, you have to prepare the right way, and then you have to execute. And we didn’t do all three of those things, particularly in the first half.”
All the Scarlet Knights had to do to build into a comfortable six-point lead was operate like a functional basketball team. Their plays looked like plays — Maryland opted to hope for one-on-one excellence.
Finally, after eight minutes of struggle, Washington and Diggy Coit drained well-contested jumpers from the block. Things looked to be improving for Maryland.
They did not. In fact, they got much worse.
Rutgers embarked on a 19-4 run almost entirely enabled by its opponent’s mistakes. While the Scarlet Knights soared into a big lead, Maryland shot 2-of-9 and turned the ball over nine times.
The Terps ended the half with 14 giveaways. Rutgers had one.
And the turnovers weren’t pretty ones. Wildly errant passes and dropped dribbles gifted the Scarlet Knights possessions at a rate that bordered on charitable.
But the Salvation Army closed at halftime. Maryland didn’t record a single turnover across the 20-2 run, and with offensive sets finally executing as intended, open looks started to pop up. Six made free throws didn’t hurt, either.
“Not giving them the ball gives you opportunities to push and score,” Saunders said.
When Rutgers did get back in the lead, it was because the Terps got sloppy again — in the form of back-to-back turnovers.
With 1:18 left, Coit brought Maryland within two points with a jumper in the paint. Rutgers didn’t score on the ensuing possession. Washington got the rebound. Coit brought the ball up the court slowly, with the crowd noise crescendoing around him.
His go-ahead 3-point attempt clanked off the rim. Fouls and free throws made up most of the final 30 seconds, and Rutgers sealed its second win over Maryland in two weeks.
Three things to know
1. Maryland’s rebounding domination kept the game alive. Maryland obliterated the first-half rebounding battle, 27-10. Whether that makes the 19-point deficit better or worse is in the eye of the beholder. But that domination on the boards was a big reason the Terps were able to mount a comeback.
“Those numbers are good enough to win,” Williams said. “We just didn’t get to the rim enough, and when we did get there in the second half, we didn’t finish at the rate that we had to.”
Mills and Saunders each finished with double-doubles.
2. Another Mills’ second-half revival. For a second straight game, it looked like the redshirt freshman had come back down to earth. He entered halftime with two points on 1-of-8 shooting.
Two 3-pointers in the opening minutes of the second half unlocked his game. Mills finished with 15 points and 10 rebounds — his first career double-double — with only one turnover.
3. Tournament scheduling sealed. Maryland is one of just three Big Ten teams with four or fewer conference wins. Two have five conference wins — those teams are Rutgers and Northwestern, who have head-to-head tiebreakers over the Terps.
That means Maryland will be one of four teams playing in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament, which starts March 10.
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