Guard Dez Wells grabs a rebound during the first half of the Terps’ exhibition win over San Francisco State.
The shots hurled through the air toward the Xfinity Center rim early in the Terrapins men’s basketball exhibition opener against San Francisco State on Saturday, and they did so often.
With the Gators settling into a zone defense, 13 of the Terps’ first 16 shots in the contest came from beyond the 3-point arc. Led by guards Melo Trimble, Dion Wiley and guard Richaud Pack, coach Mark Turgeon’s team finished the afternoon launching 27 total 3-pointers.
And as the trio of newcomers continued to take aim at the rim, the Terps rolled to a to an 86-52 win over the Division II Gators by making 14 of those threes.
“We’re not going to shoot 27 of our 44 shots from 3 [in most games],” Turgeon said. “But we are going to shoot threes, and we’re going to make a lot of them. We got a lot of good shooters.”
Trimble, a freshman, finished with a game-high 19 points and had five assists to two turnovers in his debut as the Terps’ starting point guard. Fellow freshman Wiley came off the bench to score 16 points on 3 of 4 shooting from three. And Pack, a fifth-year transfer, shot 3 of 5 from beyond the arc and scored 15 points.
Guard Dez Wells also had a notable performance despite taking only seven shots. The senior had eight points, six rebounds and five assists and served as the distributor on many of the Terps’ 3-pointers by catching the ball near the free-throw line and driving to collapse the defense.
“We put him in a position in the zone to be our facilitator,” Turgeon said, “and he did a great job of it.”
Another freshman guard, Jared Nickens contributed to the 3-point barrage. He shot 4 of 8 from three.
“It’ll give us some good depth offensively,” forward Jake Layman said of the team’s young sharpshooters. “If one guy isn’t shooting well we have five other guys that can come in and get us going.”
Wells, Trimble and Pack, forward Jake Layman and center Damonte Dodd filled out the Terps’ starting lineup. Dodd, though, struggled early and had just one rebound in the first half while forward Jon Graham came off the bench to total five rebounds in the period.
With Trimble leading the 3-pointer-centric offense, the Terps took a 39-18 lead over San Francisco State with 3:59 to play in the first half, and they appeared crisp in many facets of the game. But then the Terps had a few defensive lapses in the final four minutes of the first half that allowed the Gators to end the period on 13-4 run.
“We were a little disappointed with the way we finished the half defensively,” Turgeon said. We gave 13 points and all told they had 31. n the second half, we held them to 21 and played much better.”
During San Francisco State’s spurt of success, the team routinely knifed through a 1-2-1-1 press that the Terps employed after made baskets for much of the afternoon. To start the second half, the pressure defense worked better as 6-foot-9 Layman helped force a steal with his length at the top of the zone.
On offense, the Terps continued to let ball fly from deep. By the end of the game, the Terps had made 51.9 percent of their threes and took only 17 shots from 2-point range.
“It’s hard to draw too many conclusions, but regardless of who we’re playing, you see how many shooters we have,” Pack said.
Turgeon labeled the Terps’ 19 turnovers and slim rebounding margin as negatives with the regular-season opener looming Nov. 14, but overall, the fourth-year coach said he was pleased with the effort and performance of his team. And though Turgeon warns that the Terps will need to attack the basket more often in games, he was pleased with how they shot the ball Saturday afternoon, too.
“Playing against a zone we got wide-open threes every time,” Layman said, “and guys were knocking them down.”
