SPOKANE, WASHINGTON — Terrapins men’s basketball forward Robert Carter Jr. heard Stefan Jankovic liked to trash talk.
But Carter said there was no talking Sunday from the Hawaii forward, whose team-leading 15.7 points per game had helped the Rainbow Warriors reach the Round of 32.
He didn’t give him a reason to.
The redshirt junior and reserve forward Damonte Dodd teamed up to hold Hawaii’s most proficient scorer to 5-for-17 shooting in the No. 5-seed Terps’ 73-60 victory.
“I got under his skin early,” Carter said. “He thought he was going to be able to make some isolation moves on me and he traveled. He missed a couple early jumpers. So I got up under his skin so he couldn’t get to yapping.”
Jankovic, who shoots 55.7 percent from the floor, missed his first five shots. With the Terps offense starting 1-for-9, a few makes from Jankovic could have put coach Mark Turgeon’s squad in a double-digit hole.
Instead, Carter got him rattled. Jankovic’s first make didn’t come until the 5:58 mark of the first half, after the Terps had turned a seven-point deficit to a three-point lead.
When he finally made a basket more than 14 minutes into the contest, tying the game, it came on a long 3-pointer with Carter’s hand in his face.
“What we tried to do was just crowd him and just make him make tough shots,” Dodd said. “And the shots he made, I feel like were really tough shots.”
After that first make, Jankovic turned to the Terps bench and stared them down as he ran back on defense.
The 6-foot-11 junior drilled another deep long ball with less than two minutes left in the half and danced back while sticking his tongue out. But even if his body language looked like he was finding a rhythm, he never settled into a consistent stroke against Carter and the Terps defense.
“He’s their go-to guy. I feel like I did a pretty good job on him,” Carter said. “The first half, I got him kind of flustered because I was playing his shot.”
Dodd credited Carter’s success on Jankovic to the work he’s put in with strength and conditioning coach Kyle Tarp. Carter has been doing extra footwork and speed drills to improve his lateral quickness.
That helped him keep Jankovic in front of him even when Hawaii isolated him in the post.
“I was really proud of Rob,” Turgeon said. “He’s worked hard.”
But Carter said it was more than just his individual effort. He complemented the team’s ball-screen defense for allowing him to stay tight to Jankovic near the perimeter.
It was something Jankovic noticed, too. During Hawaii’s postgame news conference, Jankovic credited the Terps’ ability to play team defense for limiting his production.
“As soon as I tried to dribble, guys were around,” Jankovic said. “They had great help defense, great one-on-one individual defense down in the post.”
While Carter sat for stretches of the second half in foul trouble before fouling out with 1 minute and 54 seconds left, Jankovic stat line over the final 20 minutes wasn’t any better.
The Ontario, Canada, native went 2-for-9 after the break as Hawaii’s season came to an end.
“He didn’t say anything to me,” Carter said. “He couldn’t even get to talking.”
