CHICAGO — On Sunday, Feb. 8, the Terrapins men’s basketball team traveled to Iowa City, Iowa and suffered its third straight double-digit road loss in a pitiful performance against Iowa.
After surrendering 80 points in back-to-back away contests at Indiana and Ohio State, the Terps lacked energy in the matchup with the Hawkeyes. They trailed 22-3 at the 8:30 mark in the first half and stumbled to a demoralizing 71-55 defeat at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
That’s when Mark Turgeon decided he’d had enough.
So for the next week, the fourth year coach put his players through what guard Richaud Pack could only call “boot camp practices.”
The sessions had one focus: defense. And, quite simply, the approach worked.
The Terps have yet to lose a game since that contest at Iowa, a streak the squad extended to a season-high eight wins Friday night with a 75-69 victory over Indiana in the Big Ten quarterfinals at United Center.
“It was brutal,” Pack said of the practices. “But it got us back in shape. It got our heads back into defense.”
In their past eight games, including Friday night, the Terps have surrendered more than 70 points just once and held three teams to less than 60 points. But perhaps more importantly, the Terps have limited their opponents to 37 percent shooting from the floor during the winning streak.
The success continued against the Hoosiers, who torched the Terps for 89 points in the teams’ first meeting in Bloomington, Indiana in late January. On Friday night, Indiana shot 35.5 percent from the floor and connected on less than 30 percent of its three-point attempts.
Pack was key in the effort, as he spent most of the game guarding Hoosiers guard James Blackmon before switching to Yogi Ferrell for the final 10 minutes of regulation. Down the stretch, guard Dez Wells matched up with Blackmon, who finished with six points on 2 of 12 shooting after dropping 25 points in a tournament win over Northwestern on Thursday night.
“You guard and you defend. You take on the challenge. That’s what we’re all about,” Wells said. “Whatever challenge anybody puts in front of us, we accept it and we’re going to meet it head on. It’s all about competing with us. That’s all we want to do. That’s really the only thing you have in this game is your competitive edge and your work ethic.”
According to Pack, that tenacious mindset developed during the grueling practices in the aftermath of the loss to Iowa.
“It’s what we needed,” forward Jon Graham said.
The next time the Terps took the floor they held the Hoosiers to 66 points in a two-point win at home. It served as redemption for their ugly loss at Assembly Hall.
But it also served a greater purpose.
“The defensive improvement, it was visible,” Pack said. “We realized that if we defended, we could win.”
That realization has translated into the Terps’ longest winning streak of the season.
And as the victories have amounted for Turgeon’s squad, the boot camp practices have become a thing of the past.
“He got to us quick,” Pack said. “Win-after-win, he lightened it up for us.”
That’s not to say the Terps have stopped stressing solid defense, though. Pack said it’s still a priority at every practice. The defensive intensity has never wavered.
But now the Terps are their own motivators.
Winning is an addiction. And since the Terps learned what kind of an impact defense can make, they’ve committed to that end of the floor on every possession.
The newfound dedication has keyed this impressive streak. And if they maintain the mindset, there’s no telling if it will end.
