For all the hype, all the angst and all of the rancor over the Maryland Terrapins and their 2015-16 season, the team got a very welcome piece of news during Sunday’s travesty of a selection show when CBS, I mean the NCAA, sent them 2,500 miles away to play in a NCAA subregional in Spokane, Washington.
(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)
I totally get that it’s a complete deal-breaker for so many Terps fans that wanted to travel to the first round. The first price I saw on United’s website for a ticket on Sunday for Thursday to Spokane was $1,644. For Coach. No peanuts. That’s ridiculous. Beyond prohibitive.
What happened for this group at this point might be just what the doctor ordered. It’s a team that looked inward this past weekend in Indianapolis and played some their best minutes in months. More importantly, they played with an edge against Michigan State we haven’t seen this entire year. So now they take a page out of the Horace Greeley playbook (Go West, young man) and head to a place where there’s pretty much nothing else to do but look inward.
So here’s what needs to happen in Spokane…
Lost in all of the hand wringing about Melo Trimble shooting 2-15 against Michigan State is a pretty remarkable stat that he was very much responsible for. He played 36 minutes and did not have a single turnover. The team only had six. That’s huge, and a big reason why they were right there in the end. Turnovers have really hurt this team and to think they could handle the ball that well against one of the country’s finest defensive teams in the Spartans is encouraging. It’s unrealistic to think they’ll hold that number down as low as six in any game moving forward but if they kept it in the 10-12 range it would be huge.
Diamond Stone should have a big advantage offensively in round one against South Dakota State. They don’t have a good matchup for him at all. But the Jackrabbits will make Diamond have to play defense on the perimeter. Their five out motion can be tough on big men to deal with. It may well be that Mark Turgeon decides to go with a smaller group in this game and rotate Robert Carter and Stone inside. Either that or use Damonte Dodd as the five man for defensive purposes. But he would only do that if there is offense consistently coming from other sources.
We saw two different teams play defense this year in a Maryland uniform. Think about the Ohio State game at home or the last five minutes of the Iowa or Purdue games. Or the entire second half of the Michigan State game this past weekend. Those kinds of performances are differentiating. They’ll set you apart from the rest of the field, if sustained. Not only that, they set the bar for this team. Anything less should be unacceptable to them. Their jumpers may come and go this weekend. It’s the defense that travels and it’s the defense that wins tournament games.
We had a chance to catch South Dakota State in Cancun in November. If I had known the Terps would see them in the tournament I probably would’ve had more tequila to drink They’re damn good. Creative. My memory is giving me Michigan as a comparable. Very good three point shooting with mobile big men who can play outside and out. One of the things that struck me then was that they were playing at an insanely high level for a team that early in the year. That only happens with a team that not only has veterans but veterans who have played together for a long time and there is continuity in the program. They won’t be rattled. They’ll play for 40 (minutes). Needless to say, Maryland must do the same.
I could be wrong but it seems to me that Carter and Jake Layman may well be the X factors for this team moving forward. I really believe Melo will shoot better in the tournament. MSU was an aberration. You know Rasheed Sulaimon will be a pit bull and be all over the floor. I can’t say enough for the all-around contributions of Layman this year. He rebounds and he’s rounded into a hell of a defender. The new offensively aggressive Layman may be a complete game changer for this team in a tournament. In fact, he was aggressive everywhere. When he squared off with MSU’s Eron Harris in the first half on Saturday and picked up a technical it was a great sign for him and the team (made less so by with the second foul he picked up shortly thereafter).
Robert Carter can be a nightmare. Phenomenal footwork offensively, great jump hook with either hand and a guy who can finish tough hoops around the basket. The Jackrabbits are going to struggle with that. Hell, everybody does but, occasionally he’ll drift out to the perimeter. He nailed some important threes against the Spartans. South Dakota State would love to see him shoot threes. In fact, they’ll give him as many as he wants. Resist the temptation. It’s fool’s gold.
That ties into the last point. This team has to play inside out. They scored 97 points on Nebraska last week in Indy. Sure they hit a bunch of threes but most of them were there because the post was fed and Terps shooters were open on the kick out. They had Michigan State in trouble in the second half last weekend. They were in the double bonus in the second half and simply settled for jumpers the last ten minutes of the game. Stone was forgotten about until the last 90 seconds of the game. If that happens again, against any team, then the season might be over shortly thereafter.
Expect the best. Play for 40. Go inside. You’ll be fine.
Terps Analyst
A fixture in the Washington sports scene since his days as a player and a coach, Chris Knoche has accumulated a diverse resume as a media presence in town for more than two decades. That resume has earned him opportunities on both national and local stages and made him a Washington DC staple on radio, television and in digital media.