Maryland men’s basketball earned its first home win of the season with an 84-64 victory against Alcorn State on Nov. 11.
Four Terps starters scored in double figures, with senior big man Pharrel Payne leading the way. Payne dominated the first half with 14 points and finished the night with a game-high 22 points and seven rebounds. Graduate guard Diggy Coit made his first start of the season, replacing freshman Guillermo Del Pino in the starting lineup.
Senior forward Elijah Saunders, redshirt freshman guard Andre Mills and freshman guard Darius Adams joined Payne and Coit in the starting lineup.
“We’re trying to find five guys that will play incredibly hard, and then try to find the next right guy that can sub in for the first of the five that needs a break,” head coach Buzz Williams said. “We haven’t figured out, ‘Oh, he’s this, he’s that.’ We really would like to get to where we could have seven and a half, eight and a half tough, smart, dependable guys that are all pulling in the same direction, regardless of position.”
Notably absent from the active roster was redshirt junior guard Myles Rice, who had returned from an ankle injury to score a team-high 19 points against Georgetown on Nov. 7. However, Rice was seen in a walking boot during pregame warmups and did not play.
Maryland struggled from the field in its 70-60 loss to Georgetown but took a step in the right direction against Alcorn State.
The Terps attacked the paint early, scoring 11 of their first 14 points from inside and at the free-throw line. They closed the first half with 18 points in the paint and went 9 of 15 from the line, shooting 39 percent from the field — an improvement from their 22 percent first-half shooting against Georgetown.
A 15-2 run midway through the first half gave Maryland a 22-7 lead, but Alcorn State responded with a 10-0 run to cut the deficit to 29-20. The Braves continued to chip away, narrowing the gap to 33-27 by halftime.
The Terps came out strong in the second half, opening with another 15-2 run to extend their lead to 48-29.
Unlike the first half, Alcorn State couldn’t close the gap, and Maryland eventually built a 24-point lead before cruising to victory.
“I think that we probably played 25 minutes the way we want to play,” Williams said. “I thought the first 10 minutes, a lot of what we want to accomplish was happening on both ends of the floor. And then it really drastically changed from an execution standpoint and stamina standpoint. And then in the second half, I thought a lot of what happened in the first 10 minutes was very similar.”
Maryland will look to build on this momentum when it travels to Milwaukee to face Marquette on Nov. 15 at 2 p.m. EST, with the game streaming on Peacock.
Williams was the head coach at Marquette from 2008-2014. He is looking forward to the reunion.
“I haven’t played Marquette in any sort of way, so I’ve been praying about it for a long time since [I heard] we were playing them,” Williams said. “We’ll handle it the right way. And after what we’re doing on a daily basis here, my energy and emotion will be consumed with, ‘Can we figure out how to do the things that are important here?'”
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