The Maryland men’s basketball team will begin its March Madness run on March 16 when it faces West Virginia at 12:15 p.m. EST in Birmingham, Ala.
If Maryland manages to win its first-round matchup, it will face either No. 1 overall seed Alabama or Texas A&M Corpus Christi in the following round.
Maryland is 14-24 against West Virginia all time and 1-1 in the NCAA Tournament. The two teams have not matched up since March 22, 2015, when the Mountaineers defeated the Terps, 69-59, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Kevin Willard has led the Terps to a 21-12 overall mark and an NCAA Tournament bid in his first season at the helm. Willard will try to continue to pile up the “firsts” and lead the Terps beyond the second round for the first time since 2016.
But before the Terps’ Thursday 12:15 p.m. tipoff, here are three things to look for in their first-round matchup:
1. Can Maryland stay out of foul trouble?
In the Terps’ 70-60 loss to Indiana in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten tournament, the team’s big men could not stay out of foul trouble. Sophomore Julian Reese finished with four fouls and graduate student Patrick Emilien had five.
Reese has finished with four fouls in each of his last two games. West Virginia, which attempts 22.8 free throws per game, will try to take advantage of the foul trouble the sophomore tends to find himself in.
Maryland, on the other hand, only attempts 18.7 free throws per game but getting to the paint is a big part of opening up all aspects of their offense. But for Maryland to dominate the paint, Reese has to be on the floor and not in early foul trouble.
2. Can Maryland knock down threes?
Scoring early buckets in the paint will open up Maryland’s offense, but if the Terps cannot convert on their 3-point attempts it may not make much of a difference. Maryland has not been a great 3-point shooting team this season (33 percent), but when the Terps are hot the entire team feeds off of it.
Junior guard Ian Martinez, who typically does not take a lot of threes, shot 8-for-11 from 3-point range in Maryland’s final three games of the regular season. Graduate guard Don Carey has also been finding his groove of late. Carey shot 6-for-13 from 3-point range during the Big Ten tournament.
On Senior Day, a 75-59 win against Northwestern on Feb. 26, the Terps knocked down a season-high 14 threes.
“Going for 14-for-22 in a conference game, good things are going to happen,” Willard said.
Knocking down 14 threes in a game does not happen every day, and it might not take 14 threes to defeat the Mountaineers. However, it’ll help the Terps’ chances to make at least half of that.
3. Can Maryland do the little things right?
Anything can happen in March, and that is the beauty of it. Single-elimination, win-or-go-home basketball can at times be defined by a single play.
With that being said, Maryland has to do the little things right against West Virginia, such as diving for loose balls, boxing out for rebounds and getting back in transition. These are simple yet important factors in every basketball game that become even more magnified during the NCAA Tournament.
Willard believes the Terps must clean up their mistakes from the Indiana loss.
“We’re definitely going to have to rebound the ball at a high level and we need to fix our transition offense and our transition defense,” Willard said. “We lost against Indiana just because I thought transition offense, we settled for too many threes and then our transition defense. … We just have to get back to being a little bit more fundamental in our transition defense.”
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