It’s demoralizing enough for the Terrapins to lose to Virginia Commonwealth on the heels of their best game of the season, last week’s win against Illinois.

But what head coach Gary Williams and his players expressed after the game was even worse.

“We have to get up for every game,” guard Eric Hayes said. “After the win against Illinois, we kind of got complacent a little bit, and we didn’t prepare as well as we should have for VCU.”

The Terps’ self-proclaimed lack of preparation was evident from the get-go during the team’s latest setback in a tumultuous first part of the season. VCU’s committed full-court press forced the Terps into ugly turnovers, including 13 in the first half alone, and took the team out of its rhythm early.

An unhappy Williams stressed his team’s failure to come out of the gates with energy, even after proving its capabilities in the win over Illinois on Wednesday.

“Hopefully, we learned that you can’t relax nowadays in college basketball,” Williams said. “The one thing about experience is that you understand that in any situation, you have to be ready to play. They played harder than we did, especially in the first half.”

VCU’s guards, Eric Maynor and Jamal Shuler, had a field day with the Terps’ defense, especially Hayes and fellow guard Greivis Vasquez. They finished with a combined 55 points on 18-35 shooting. Vasquez said he personally had a terrible week in practice and took the blame for a great deal of his team’s shortcomings last night.

As a writer, it’s frustrating to see the team take a giant step back after appearing to have things in order just four days ago. As a fan, it must be excruciating. For Vasquez, it’s even more extreme.

“I’m really hurt,” Vasquez said. “It’s like I lost a family member.”

That seems like a bit much, but at least he gets the point across. Vasquez continued his emotional speech and came down even harder on himself.

“They did whatever they wanted on us,” he said. “I take responsibility personally. We have to start winning. I’m pretty embarrassed. It’s hurting me a lot. I’m not blaming anybody on the team or blaming the coaches. It’s about myself, and hopefully everybody on the team feels this way.”

Maybe Vasquez’s pain can get the message across to his teammates. As much as this loss certainly won’t end up being more than a ripple in the flood of ups and downs this year, it still proves a troubling point. This Terps team is young at heart, and may not be completely ready to fight out of the middle of the pack in the ACC.

Last year, the Terps didn’t pick up their third loss until Jan. 10, in the 17th game of the season. Now, it’s game eight, and the team is still having issues getting up for games.

“There are some things we have to learn on the move this year,” Williams said. “Hopefully you don’t have to learn them in two games; you just learn them from one game. We’ve got a lot of things to learn from tonight’s game.”

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