With less than nine minutes remaining in the Maryland basketball team’s contest with Nebraska, guard Kevin Huerter came off a screen to nail a 3-pointer while getting fouled. He then stepped to the line and converted the four-point play, putting the Terps up 13 at Xfinity Center on Sunday afternoon.
Coach Mark Turgeon’s squad ended up giving that double-digit lead away, allowing the Cornhuskers to score the final 14 points and escape College Park with a 67-75 win. Its late-game collapse overshadowed the performance of Huerter, who finished with a career-high 26 points on 7 of 11 shooting from behind the arc. The freshman also had five rebounds, three assists and three steals, a promising outing in the midst of the Terps’ puzzling home defeat.
“He was outstanding,” guard Melo Trimble said. “Good shooting, he was hot. He kept making shots and hopefully he keeps playing like that.”
Huerter has started each of Maryland’s 15 games this season, but the Terps (13-2) haven’t relied on the Clifton Park, New York, native as a scorer. His previous career-high came when he scored 14 points against Saint Peter’s on Dec. 10.
Sunday, the first-year sharpshooter nearly matched that total in the first half.
After missing his first three shots from inside the arc, Huerter hit three of his first four 3-pointers to keep the Terps in the game in the opening period. The 6-foot-7 guard said seeing those shots fall through the net gave him confidence he carried throughout the contest.
Out of a timeout with less than 12 minutes to go before the break, Huerter nailed a trey off the inbound pass. He forced a steal about 20 seconds later before slamming home a dunk on the other end. As he streaked towards the basket, his teammates on the bench popped up and celebrated the rookie’s impressive sequence.
Maryland trailed, 34-30, at halftime, but the deficit would have been much greater if not for Huerter’s 13 points on 5 of 9 shooting. The rest of the team shot 6-for-24 from the field.
“He’s been practicing well, shooting the ball well,” coach Mark Turgeon said. “It’s good to see. He’s the one who really separated the game.”
Huerter didn’t slow down in the second half. He opened up scoring for the Terps with a triple and scored seven points during the squad’s 17-0 run later in the frame.
Overall, Huerter accounted for 40 percent of the Terps’ scoring.
But for the final six minutes, neither Huerter nor any of his teammates added to the squad’s scoring total. Initially, Nebraska coach Tim Miles said he struggled to find a defense to limit Trimble’s drives to the basket while sticking to outside shooters, such as Huerter. Then Miles went to a 1-3-1 zone, which he said limited Huerter’s impact late in the contest.
Maryland’s second defeat of the year dampened Huerter’s mood after the game. After all, the Terps allowed Nebraska to erase a double-digit deficit on their home floor. It marked the program’s second Big Ten loss at Xfinity Center since it joined the conference in 2014.
Still, Huerter relished his career day and the atmosphere it helped create in front of 15,067 fans at Xfinity Center to start 2017.
“[Sunday] was a great atmosphere,” Huerter said. “That was a cool moment, I hadn’t hit an and-1 three in a long time, so to see it go in after the foul was a really good moment. The crowd was behind us all game.”
