LINCOLN, NEBRASKA — When Diamond Stone missed a free throw with 33 seconds left Wednesday and the Terrapins men’s basketball team up three, he decided to make a play.
The freshman center felt he had just let his teammates down, so he sprinted back on defense, jumped into the air and blocked a shot from Nebraska forward Shavon Shields.
“Didn’t look like he was going to get the block,” coach Mark Turgeon said. “Doesn’t even look like he’s jumping sometimes, and he gets the block.”
While the Cornhuskers recovered the loose ball, they missed a potential game-tying 3-pointer. Seconds later, Terps guard Melo Trimble made two game-clinching free throws.
Stone’s eighth and final block, the most for a Terp since 2006 and tied for seventh in school history, capped a night of stellar interior team defense that helped lift the No. 4 Terps to a 70-65 win over Nebraska at Pinnacle Bank Arena. Stone and forward Damonte Dodd led a defense that finished with a season-high 13 blocks and limited the Cornhuskers to a season-low 31.8 shooting percentage from the field. Those defensive numbers helped the Terps overcome 18 turnovers.
“Coach Turgeon, he’s been begging his bigs to rebound and block shots,” Stone said. “I just took it to myself. I would just go out of my comfort zone and make it happen.”
While Stone arrived at this university as a five-star recruit out of Wisconsin, he lost his starting job in early December due to inconsistent defense. Early in the season, Stone’s head would go down whenever he committed a foul, Turgeon said. But Stone has grown as a defender in the last few weeks, and Turgeon rewarded him with a start against Iowa on Jan. 28. Two days later, Turgeon confirmed Stone was the starting center moving forward.
Stone’s teammates have noticed the freshman’s improvement on the defensive end as well.
“Diamond is a great defender,” Trimble said. “It’s slowly coming. From this game, he’ll gain confidence. Next game, he’ll have a tremendous game on defense.”
In the beginning of the season, Stone said he got tired quicker. The 6-foot-11 center conceded he would try to do too much. He would try to block every shot and get every rebound, and that overaggressive mentality led to tired legs and foul trouble.
On Wednesday, forward Robert Carter Jr. was the one in foul trouble. The redshirt junior finished with four fouls and played 16 minutes, which forced Stone into a larger role. He played 34 minutes, third on the team, and was second on the team in points (16) and first in rebounds (10), finishing two blocks shy of a triple-double.
But it wasn’t a one-man show on defense. Dodd, a junior who started over Stone at center for much of the season, had three blocks and six rebounds off the bench in 16 minutes. Plus, reserve forward Michal Cekovsky contributed two rebounds in seven minutes.
“That’s what our team brings: the depth of our big guys,” Trimble said. “They’re all athletic. Damonte’s a very, very good defender, and I think Diamond feeds off him. So does [Cekovsky] and Rob. All our big men can do all types of things on offense and defense.”
The Terps’ lock-down defense extended to the Cornhuskers’ fast breaks. While the Terps coughed the ball up 18 times, Nebraska had just nine points off those turnovers and two fast-break points. The Terps contested numerous shots at the rim in transition, and Stone’s final block came with Nebraska rushing down the floor.
Though Stone was pleased with his performance, even laughing at one point during the postgame interview, he’s still not satisfied.
The rookie has already made impressive strides this season, so he knows how much better he can become.
“I have a lot of work to do,” Stone said. “I have to get better on my ball-screen defense. I have to improve on my post defense, so it’s a lot of room for improvement.”
