Guards Dez Wells (32) and Nick Faust (5) and Charles Mitchell (0) react during the Terps’ 75-63 loss to North Carolina on Feb. 4, 2013 in Chapel Hill, N.C.
The stinging pain was familiar, but after the Terrapins men’s basketball team’s 75-63 loss at North Carolina on Tuesday night, coach Mark Turgeon’s sense of progress was relatively new.
“We’re getting better,” Turgeon said. “I know you’re never happy with a loss, but we’ve come a long way in the last two weeks.”
Turgeon didn’t express such positivity after losses at Florida State and N.C. State in mid-January. But the Terps had won consecutive games entering the bout with the Tar Heels. And despite the result, Turgeon noticed his players were more attentive and executed better than they had for much of the season.
So when the Terps host Florida State tomorrow afternoon in hopes of avenging an 85-61 loss in Tallahassee, Fla., on Jan. 12, they’ll look to transfer the positives from Tuesday night’s performance at the Dean E. Smith Center back home to College Park.
The Terps (13-10, 5-5 ACC), desperate to add a win before their NCAA tournament aspirations completely evaporate, appear to have confidence they can produce a more favorable result than the last time they met the Seminoles (14-8, 5-5).
Arguably the most notable reason for optimism among the Terps lies in the team’s improved maturity.
The Terps fell behind the Seminoles by 20 points last month and never recovered, but they quickly bounced back Tuesday night to cut an early Tar Heels lead from 16 to three in an eight-minute span.
Turgeon hinted that his team might not have clawed back from such a deficit earlier in the season.
“No one likes to lose, obviously,” forward Evan Smotrycz said Tuesday. “But we felt like we were there the whole game. We played hard.”
The Terps’ newfound maturity was especially evident in the second half as they traded blows with the Tar Heels. Guard Dez Wells scored 13 points in the final 20 minutes to lead a Terps offense that shot 50 percent from the field in the half, keeping the game competitive in a difficult road environment.
That efficiency served as quite the contrast after a first half in which the team connected on 28.6 percent of its field goal attempts and committed 12 turnovers.
“The way we came out in the second half — shooting 50 percent from the field and only having four turnovers — you could tell that we listened better,” forward Charles Mitchell said. “We just focused in on what Coach was telling us and trying to execute.”
The Terps defense has also stiffened since the matchup in Tallahassee, when they allowed the Seminoles to shoot 50 percent from the field and 66.7 percent on 3-pointers.
Though the typically potent Tar Heels still found success against the Terps, shooting 49 percent from the field and 40 percent from three, Turgeon said he’s seen strides in the team’s defensive play.
Still, Turgeon seemed most impressed with the Terps’ resiliency in a game in which they fell behind early and never led. The Terps maintained composure and settled in on both sides of the ball after a frantic start, pulling to within six points midway through the second half.
The Terps weren’t able to polish off the victory. But unlike with most of the team’s other losses, Turgeon left the gym feeling as if the Terps had something to build on entering tomorrow’s tilt with the Seminoles.
“We competed, we executed, we took care of the ball and we shot it better in the second half,” Turgeon said. “That’s the first time in a hostile environment on the road that we’ve really competed until the end.”
