This is Mark Turgeon’s first season in the Big Ten, but he’s been a head coach in power conferences since 2007. So the Terrapins men’s basketball team’s leader felt confident in his declaration Tuesday that conference road games would be tough, regardless of how the home squad’s roster appeared.
If experience was not enough to provide credibility to Turgeon’s claim, perhaps the Terps’ result at Illinois on Wednesday night did the trick.
With their leading scorer, guard Rayvonte Rice, sidelined with a broken hand, the Illini steamrolled the No. 11 Terps in the second half and claimed a 64-57 upset win at the State Farm Center in Champaign, Illinois.
The loss to Illinois (11-5, 1-2 Big Ten) holds the Terps (14-2, 2-1) one win short of their best 16-game start in program history and plants the first significant blemish on their resume. Entering the matchup, Turgeon’s team had only lost to then-No. 7 Virginia, and its 4-0 mark in games outside of College Park included several impressive outings.
But the Terps, for the first time all season, fell flat Wednesday. After sneaking into halftime with a two-point lead, the Terps crumpled in the opening minutes of the second half, in which the Illini went on a 20-3 run and blew the game open.
Guard Malcolm Hill picked up the slack with Rice sidelined and finished with 28 points on the night. The Terps failed to slow Hill or contain center Nnanna Egwu, who had 11 points and nine rebounds.
On offense, meanwhile, the Terps struggled all night and shot just 36.5 percent from the field.
Trimble scored nine of his team-high 17 points in the first half on 4 of 7 shooting from the field. But other than that, the Terps struggled to generate offensive momentum on Illinois’ home floor.
The Illini switched defenses several times in the first half, mixing in zone, half-court man-to-man defense and a full-court press to keep the Terps off-balance. Trimble was the only Terp to make more than one field goal in the first half.
Though he scored his team’s first points, forward Jake Layman sat for the final 18:08 of the first half with foul trouble, and senior leader Dez Wells was limited to a lone 3-pointer in the opening 20 minutes.
The Terps held Illinois to 29 percent shooting in the first half, however, and that helped the team enter the locker room with a slim lead. It wouldn’t last long.
The Illini played more zone in the second half, and the Terps offense looked lost. Trimble and Wells, the Terps too most explosive threats, struggled to penetrate, and the team shot poorly from the field and the 3-point line.
And they couldn’t stop Hill on the other end. The 6-foot-6 wing man scored ten points — he hit two 2-threes and two mid-range shots — in the first seven minutes of the second half. In the same span, the Terps only points came on a corner three from Layman.
Behind Hill’s play, Illinois took a 15-point lead midway through the second half, and the Terps offense never mustered enough to fully recover.
A trio of 3-pointers cut the Illini lead to six with 34 seconds left, but the Terps’ run came too late and brought an end to their seven-game winning streak.
They’ll be in another unfamiliar gym Saturday when they play at Purdue in a game that, according to Turgeon’s logic and Wednesday’s experience, won’t be easy.
