No tuneups left as Maryland basketball prepares for brutal stretch of Big Ten opponents
From Friday’s game at Purdue (6-3, 1-1 Big Ten) onward, the Terps will face one conference opponent after another, all the way until the NCAA tournament, if they make it that far. The Big Ten touted its quality and depth last season, and the conference’s stature remains unchanged. But this time, Maryland (5-2, 0-1) looks up at its Big Ten peers from the bottom tier of most projections and rankings rather than navigating the weight of expectations that surrounded last season’s squad, which shared the conference title.
The Terps began their conference slate with a loss against No. 11 Rutgers on Dec. 14 before a week-long layoff. Against La Salle, the team got to work on its problem areas and enjoy a win following a two-game losing streak. Now Maryland plunges into the Big Ten, which leads the nation with seven teams ranked in the AP poll, including four in the top 12.
Maryland will play Christmas Day for the first time since 1984, and the road trip to Purdue marks the first of six challenging games in a span of just over two weeks. After the Boilermakers, the Terps face No. 9 Wisconsin (a team that returns nearly its entire rotation from last season’s crew that won a share of the Big Ten regular season title), No. 19 Michigan (which boasts the top freshman class in the conference) and Indiana (led by sophomore forward Trayce Jackson-Davis, who is averaging 21.1 points per game). Maryland’s opponents after that? The No. 4 Iowa Hawkeyes and star center Luka Garza, an early candidate for national player of the year, then No. 18 Illinois and Ayo Dosunmu, another one of the country’s best players.
That stretch will be daunting, exhausting and revealing. By Jan. 10, when the Terps head home from their game in Champaign, Ill., they will have a much better sense of how well they can compete in the conference and whether they can generate the performances needed to float around the middle of the Big Ten standings.
“I think we learned a lot about ourselves,” senior guard Darryl Morsell said after the 74-60 loss against Rutgers. “One of the biggest takeaways is every possession matters at this level. You take a bad shot one possession, you might end up losing by one or two [points], and that possession could have changed the game. … I think we all know and all see the Big Ten is tough.”
To compete in this league, Coach Mark Turgeon said his team must improve defensively. In Ken Pomeroy’s analytics-based ratings, Maryland finished with a top-25 defense in each of the past two seasons. Through seven games this season, the Terps’ defense is ranked 81st. La Salle hit 14 three-pointers on 29 attempts against Maryland. Both Rutgers and Clemson, the two teams that beat the Terps, shot at least 45 percent from beyond the arc.
“Our defense hasn’t been up to par at all in the last couple games,” said Wiggins, referring to the two losses before the win over La Salle. “Even if shots aren’t falling for us, defense really wins games. And if our defense is at its best, we still have a chance to win every game we play.”
Turgeon thought the defensive effort against La Salle showed progress. He said the final five minutes of the first half were the best he has seen his team play on that end of the floor this season. But Big Ten play will be a “different animal,” Turgeon said, because most of those opponents will have a dominant center who will test Maryland in the paint.
Purdue leans on 7-foot-4 freshman Zach Edey, who’s scoring 10.3 points per game, and 6-10 junior Trevion Williams (13.8 points). Maryland remains in search of rim protection, a weakness that can be exploited by the conference’s top big men, including Garza, Kofi Cockburn of Illinois and Michigan’s Hunter Dickinson. Maryland sophomore Chol Marial, a 7-2 center returning from a lengthy injury layoff, still lacks the game experience needed to compete with players of that caliber. This upcoming stretch in conference play should unmask the extent to which these frontcourt questions may hurt the Terps this season.
Maryland’s roster has talent and seasoned players, but the team’s start to the season provided a mix of concerning weaknesses and promising signs. The Terps have limited turnovers lately, but they’re still struggling from three-point range. The team’s athletic guards have countered the recent shooting slump by driving to the rim, though that will be a tougher task in conference play. Wiggins (elbow) and Morsell (shoulder) won’t blame their injuries, but both have dealt with nagging issues that affected their shooting.
The coaches, Turgeon said, can’t work to solve every problem at once, so they will take it one piece at a time. And now every few days a new conference opponent will stand ready to measure Maryland’s progress.
“If you’ve ever coached or ever dealt with young people, you just try to do it a little bit at a time and get better,” Turgeon said. “Unfortunately, we have quite a bit to get better at. But we have some veteran guys that have done it before. We’re in a better place than we were. We feel like we’re getting better. Now whether it will show up in the results, we’ll see.”
