Maryland Loses to Purdue
Maryland lost another game last night. This time to Big Ten rival, Purdue, 80-75. This is the Terps third loss in the last four games. The Terrapins lost to St. Bonaventure by 2, Syracuse by 2, and now Purdue by 5. The Terps drop to 6-3 and 0-1 in Big Ten play through the first 9 games. It is still NOT time to panic.
Anthony Cowan Jr. led the Terps in scoring again, this time with 20. He showed a Tracy McGrady like finish to the game, hitting tough buckets including a 4 point play, but Maryland couldn’t close out the Boilermakers down the stretch. Kevin Huerter added in 19 points and hit big shots when the Terrapins needed them. Again. Justin Jackson remained in his slump, getting his first field goal of the game late in the second half and took some questionable shots.
Maryland was destroyed by Dakota Mathias and Isaac Haas in the first period. Mathias had 18 at the break and couldn’t miss anything going 7-7 from the field. Haas added in 12 on 6-7 shooting as none of Maryland’s bigs could stop him in the paint. Purdue got out to a 14 point lead before a 10-3 run by Maryland to make it 43-37 at half. Maryland went on a 7-0 run out of the break to give them their first lead at 43-44. Then a Turgeon T for going insane on the refs, who were making some bad calls, terrible Terrapin defense, and bad Terrapin shot selection allowed Purdue to go on another big run.
Maryland is young, very young. With an exception of Dion Wiley, Jared Nickens, Ivan Bender, and Michal Cekovsky, Maryland has no upperclassmen that play consistent minutes. Even those guys go through spurts of sitting on the bench for a while and letting the young guns take over. Bruno and Morsell are just freshman. JJ, Huerter, and Cowan Jr. are still just sophomores. Everyone is still learning and growing with a lot of time left before the season ends.
Maryland will try to get back to .500 in the Big Ten, as they will take on Illinois on the road on Sunday at 8pm.
