After rising to the occasion game after game over the past six weeks, the Terrapins men’s basketball team looked flat for the first time all season in Wednesday night’s 64-57 loss at Illinois.
The Terps appeared poised for their third Big Ten win in as many tries, as the Illini entered the contest without Rayvonte Rice, their leading scorer, because of a broken wrist. But instead, coach Mark Turgeon’s squad committed backbreaking turnovers for 40 minutes, missed open shots and struggled to get to the foul line. And even when they got to the charity stripe, the Terps failed to connect consistently.
But it’s no reason to panic, of course. The Terps are still a tremendous basketball team.
They’re out to a blistering start. Point guard Melo Trimble, who finished with 17 points on 6 of 14 shooting in the loss, is only going to continue to get better. Their defense remained solid Wednesday night, as the Illini shot just 36.4 percent from the field. And, most importantly, a conference road loss in the Big Ten is not going to be a deal-breaker on their postseason resume, especially given some of their marquee wins thus far.
But the loss to the Illini was not pretty by any means, and it showed some significant weaknesses with this young team that need to be corrected moving forward.
Here are my takeaways.
– The Illini went on a 20-3 run to open the second half that ballooned their lead to 15 points and broke the game wide open. It was a punch to the gut, and the Terps, who shot 1 of 12 from the floor and committed three turnovers during the stretch, never recovered.
The question is: how can the Terps’ offense, with a number of scoring options and athleticism all over the court, go almost completely quiet for an extended stretch?
The answer: zone defense.
The Illini came out of the break playing almost entirely 2-3 zone on the defensive end. And, as they have done pretty much all season, the Terps struggled to find any rhythm. Trimble and guard Dez Wells had a tough time penetrating, and the Terps missed all but one jump shot over the 8-minute, 30-second span.
Turgeon instituted a new man-to-man motion offense at the beginning of the season that facilitates great ball movement and off-ball cutting. In terms of zone offense, though, the coach admittedly didn’t implement much during the offseason or early part of the campaign.
Now, it appears teams may be catching onto that limitation. And the Terps are going to have to improve their zone offense moving forward if they wish to continue having success deep into conference play.
– After a string of good games over the past three weeks, forward Damonte Dodd was no match Wednesday night for Illinois big man Nnanna Egwu, who finished with 11 points on 4 of 8 shooting, nine rebounds and four blocks in 38 minutes. Dodd, meanwhile, scored just two points and added five rebounds to go along with four turnovers in 20 minutes.
Egwu was a force inside on both ends of the court and even showed some finesse with some of his post moves. None of his plays were more impressive, though, than this clean block on Trimble, who’s developed into one of the shiftiest penetrators in all of college basketball.
Speaking of Egwu blocks…
– Evan Smotrycz had a rough game Wednesday night. There’s no way around that.
It started early, when Egwu did his best Dikembe Mutombo impression (I swear I spelled that correctly on my first try) and emphatically rejected two Smotrycz shots in just more than three minutes of action.
The all-around woes continued for Smotrycz over the remainder of the contest. He finished 0 of 6 from the floor and even had a hand in this inexplicable traveling violation with the game out of reach.
In Smotrycz’s defense, you don’t finish second on a team in rebounding without that kind of fighter’s mentality. MY BALL!
– Even more inexplicable than that travel was the Terps’ inability to get to the line. Trimble, who entered the contest tied for the most free throws made in the country, didn’t attempt a shot from the charity stripe until 25 seconds remained even though Terps reached the bonus with more than 10 minutes left in regulation. He finished with three attempts, all makes, marking just the fourth time all season the freshman has attempted fewer than four free throws in a game.
The onus doesn’t fall solely on Trimble, though. The Terps only made it to the line six times as a team in the first half and shot 10 of 18 (55.6 percent) in the game.
The Illini, meanwhile, hit 17 of 20 free throws, good enough for 85 percent.
And behind a 28-point performance from guard Malcolm Hill, Illinois handed the Terps their first-ever Big Ten loss.
