Before Maryland men’s basketball faced Marshall on Friday at the Xfinity Center, a video circulated through the Terps’ locker room.
Anthony Cowan thought Herd forward Jannson Williams said the Terps’ guards “aren’t very good.”
That appeared to stick in Cowan’s mind. In his postgame press conference, Cowan referred to Williams as “No. 3,” and said he didn’t know what he could have meant by his pregame proclamation that Marshall had a backcourt advantage.
“I don’t know why he said that,” Cowan said. “That was just a bad thing to say.”
Williams may be wondering the same, after Cowan and guard Eric Ayala combined for 46 points in a 104-67 beatdown. Cowan posted a season-high 26 points, continuously finishing at the rim. Forward Bruno Fernando hauled in 16 rebounds. Ayala nailed 5-of-6 3-pointers. Those contributions led to the most points scored in coach Mark Turgeon’s eight-year tenure in College Park.
For what had been a close game late into the first half — largely because of Williams’ 18 first-half points — the Terps pulled away. And as Turgeon stepped to the lectern shortly after the drubbing, he stated the obvious.
“This is the best we’ve played this year,” he said.
For an underclassmen-heavy squad, the performance came at the right time. The Terps welcome No. 4 Virginia on Wednesday, a team Turgeon said “he didn’t really know” how Maryland drew in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge, considering the Cavaliers still have four starters from last year’s No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
But before next week’s test, Maryland passed Friday’s over a squad that won a tournament game last year.
At first, the Herd’s frantic, three-point heavy strategy allowed them to hang with Maryland. Midway through the opening period, Williams’ 3-pointer put the Herd ahead by one. With five minutes to go, eight straight points from Williams pulled Marshall back within two points.
Cowan, though, took over the closing moments in the opening frame. At ease in a fast-paced game and finally facing a primarily man-to-man defense, Cowan reached a level he hasn’t yet shown — or needed to show — this season. He drove the lane time and again, beating his man on the first step and finishing at the rim. Behind Cowan, the lone upperclassman to see the floor in the first half, Maryland separated late and continued the pressure to continue an undefeated start.
“Anthony took it to another level,” Turgeon said. “He was terrific.”
The junior scored 11 points of the team’s 15-4 run to end the first half and finished with six assists in 30 minutes of play.
Fernando finished with 18 points, but he was contained in the first half and also missed some time after appearing to pick up a minor ankle injury.
With the half winding down, Cowan picked up the slack. He stole the ball, sprinted down the floor and finished an up-and-under layup as part of seven points scored in the final minute of the first half. To open the second half, the Terps stormed out with a 13-0 run, capped with a Cowan 3-pointer.
“[Cowan] was great,” Marshall coach Dan D’Antoni said. “He kept pushing through our stuff.”
Ayala, meanwhile, needed a little time to warm up. When he was substituted out with 14 minutes left in the opening period, a point when the game was still tight, Ayala asked Turgeon if the coach trusted him to make plays.
“You’re in the game, right?” Turgeon responded.
Ayala returned to the floor and finished with 20 points. He nailed three triples in a three-minute span late in the first half to widen the gap before intermission.
Turgeon was most pleased with his squad’s defense, holding a Marshall side that averaged 94 points per game to 34 percent shooting. While Williams led the Herd with 24 points, Maryland held volume shooters C.J. Burks and Jon Elmore to 10 and six points, respectively, containing Marshall’s key pieces.
And with the Terps’ strength of schedule ratcheting up, beginning with Virginia on Wednesday, Friday’s all-around performance was a welcome sign for Turgeon.
“The next two weeks we’ll find out how good we really are,” Turgeon said. “But we’re getting better, and that’s what I can really see.”
