The Maryland men’s basketball team finished the regular season 20-11 overall and 11-9 in the Big Ten and now will prepare for the Big Ten tournament after back-to-back road losses. The Terps are the No. 6 seed heading into the Big Ten tournament.
Even after losing, 73-62, at Ohio State on March 1 when they only led at 2-0, Maryland had a chance to clinch a top-four seed and a double bye in the conference tournament.
However, the Terps lost that chance with one second remaining against Penn State and will now play on Wednesday, March 9 at approximately 9 p.m. against the winner of Minnesota and Nebraska from a day prior.
“You can’t be up 10 or 11 on the road, which we have done a couple of times now, and just let teams get easy buckets,” head coach Kevin Willard said following the 65-64 loss to Penn State. “We guard for 20 seconds then we just fall asleep. This is disappointing because we lost the double bye, but I like this team and I like where we’re at.”
Maryland went into halftime up, 35-22, thanks to a 24-5 run that spanned a little more than half of the first 20 minutes of play, but the Nittany Lions repaid the favor at the end of the game.
Maryland seemed primed to be able to keep Penn State at bay, as the Nittany Lions could only chip away the lead. Maryland maintained a double-digit lead for the first 10 minutes of the second half.
That was until Penn State went on a 15-3 run to grab a 63-62 lead with 42 seconds remaining, the Nittany Lions’ first lead since they were up 15-14 with 12 minutes remaining in the first half. Maryland grabbed a late lead with a layup by sophomore big man Julian Reese but ultimately lost thanks to an offensive rebound and putback.
“At the end of the game we go and slap the ball instead of grabbing it,” Willard said. “We had two guys just slap at it. They actually knocked it out of our own guy’s hands and there he is. At the end of the game you have to grab the basketball.”
Maryland road struggles are no secret (2-9 in true road games). That has been the Terps’ biggest flaw for the season, as everything has seemed to fall apart away from Xfinity Center where they went 16-1 (10-0 in the conference). Willard believes his team loses composure too often.
“We’ve struggled on the road where we’ve lost our composure a little bit,” Willard said. “… I thought our guys played with great effort and played physical but times where we’ve struggled offensively is on the road where we’ve struggled defensively and teams have taken advantage of it.”
But there will not be a home-court advantage for any team during the Big Ten tournament in Chicago. It will be an equal playing field for each team looking to be crowned Big Ten champions.
Maryland went 2-1 this season in neutral-site games with wins against Miami (Fla.) and Saint Louis in Connecticut and a narrow loss to Tennessee at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The Terps will hope to have similar neutral-site luck to lift the Big Ten championship trophy.
“I think we’ve shown great strides on the road,” Willard said. “We’ve played well neutral. This time of the year, it’s single elimination every game. The biggest thing we’ll take away from this is … the possessions that got them back in the game. It wasn’t the offensive rebound that lost us the game. It was the four possessions before that.”
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