WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana — Purdue point guard Braden Smith was giving Maryland men’s basketball terrors for the entire second half. A few minutes after capping off a 10-0 run with a transition 3-pointer, Smith looked poised to rise up for the dagger from beyond the arc.
Instead of going for another, he opted to shimmy his way inside and spin a layup off the glass. It gave the Boilermakers a double-digit lead with two minutes left, sending Mackey Arena into a frenzy and effectively ending Maryland’s chances.
Maryland led for longer than No. 8 Purdue on Sunday and didn’t trail by more than two possessions for the first 37 minutes. But Smith’s second-half heroics were too much for the Terps to overcome in an 83-78 road loss.
Smith and fellow junior Trey Kaufman-Renn each had 15 points in the second as Maryland had no answer for the lethal pick-and-roll duo. Smith finished with 24 points and 10 assists and made all-but one shot after halftime.
“We just had some breakdowns on pick-and-roll coverage late. You gotta give a lot of credit to Braden Smith,” coach Kevin Willard said. “… When [Julian Reese] is out, our coverage… we tried to make an adjustment but we didn’t do very well.”
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Reese, who scored just five points, fouled out with 6:25 left and only played eight minutes in the second half. It forced center Derik Queen to play 35 minutes, and he was admittedly and understandably tired. The freshman finished with a game-high 26 points and 12 rebounds.
Purdue still outscored Maryland (8-2, 1-1 Big Ten) in the paint by 10 points — despite the Terps holding a major size advantage.
With the Boilermakers (8-2, 1-1 Big Ten) losing back-to-back national player of the year Zach Edey to the NBA, it had a 7-foot-4, 300-pound void in the paint.
Freshman Daniel Jacobsen, who is the same height as Edey, started at center in the first two games before suffering a season-ending injury. Purdue’s lack of rim protection didn’t seem to be an issue early, and certainly wasn’t once Reese exited.
“We just become a real perimeter team,” Willard said. “We lost the ability to kind of pound it inside, where they were able to pound it inside to Kaufman-Renn.”
Sunday marked the Terps’ first true road game of the season. They beat Villanova in a neutral site game in Newark, New Jersey on Nov. 24, but had a noticeably larger crowd. There wasn’t much red in Mackey Arena, though.
It was also the first time Queen and junior guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie, a Belmont transfer, played in such a hostile road environment. The pairing ended up being the Terps’ best performers.
It was a one-score game for nearly the entire first half.
The Terps entered the break leading 36-31, aided by a plus-nine rebound differential. Maryland scored on the opening possession of the second half to expand its lead to seven, but the Boilermakers went on to outscore the Terps by 10 in a less than two-minute span from there.
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Queen was Maryland’s main source of offense. He scored eight points in less than four minutes as the teams were tied at 53 at the under-12 media timeout.
The Terps rattled off eight straight a few minutes later. Queen drilled 3-pointers on consecutive possessions, his first two makes after missing 11 to start the year. He missed his next two — Willard felt he should’ve been more aggressive attacking the basket instead.
“Just finally hit one,” Queen said. “[But] I should have probably not shot the other two threes. … . I should have just went to the basket and got fouled.”
Purdue’s 10-0 run followed shortly. Right after Maryland cut its deficit to two points with under four minutes left, Smith sank another triple to expand the Boilermaker lead to five points.
That lead grew to as much as 10 in the game’s closing minutes — Purdue’s largest of the game. Maryland was unable to crawl back despite shooting 55 percent in the second half.
“It was crazy, just a great environment to play in,” Gillespie said. “We just didn’t do enough to get it done.”