BLOOMINGTON, Indiana — Down by two points with 18 seconds left on Sunday, Maryland point guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie looked to do what worked in similar situations before: get downhill.
The junior made a pair of game-tying layups in the late stages at Northwestern 10 days earlier.
Coach Kevin Willard didn’t draw up the play for Gillespie, but he saw space to attack before Indiana guard Trey Galloway met him. A stumbling Gillespie flipped the ball to Julian Reese, who took a dribble and handed it off to Rodney Rice.
“Galloway jumped it really well,” Willard said. “I think Ja’Kobi thought he had a layup. And then the biggest thing was I had a senior center that didn’t panic. He just took it, dribble hand off and got Rodney a wide-open shot. So it didn’t work as designed, but it worked.”
Rice, who already drilled four 3-pointers, curled around Reese and sank the go-ahead triple with 7.5 seconds to go. The Terps, who looked bound to lose another close road game minutes earlier, followed Rice’s make with a stop — giving it a 79-78 win over Indiana at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
Maryland’s winning chances looked grim inside the final minute.
The Terps (16-5, 6-4 Big Ten) led for 26 straight minutes, including by 10 points inside the final 10 minutes. But that changed with four minutes to go, and Indiana led by five shortly after.
Maryland cut its deficit to one before an Anthony Leal and-one gave the Hoosiers (14-7, 5-5) a four-point lead with 38 seconds to go. Gillespie made a basket shortly after and Galloway missed the front-end of a one-and-one after being fouled, which gave the Terps the ball for Rice’s go-ahead basket.
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“Whenever you have a new team and you play road games in this league, you’re gonna lose games, and we lost them by three, at the buzzer, four,” Willard said. “When we got down five, I was like ‘Everyone just relax. We’ve been in this situation before. Let’s run our play, let’s score, let’s get back into, get a stop.’”
Willard added that not everything will go a team’s way when playing on the road. The Terps started the year 0-4 in true road games, falling by an average of 4.25 points. They’ve since won two straight in a four-day span and picked up a pair of quad one wins in the process.
Their wins against Indiana on Sunday and No. 17 Illinois came in nearly opposite manners. Maryland’s starting frontcourt, Reese and Derik Queen, combined for a season-best 52 points on Thursday. The Terps’ starting backcourt — Gillespie, Rice and Selton Miguel — had 56 against the Hoosiers for their most this season.
“It could be anybody’s night in the whole starting five,” Gillespie said. “We all can go get 20, 30 [points]. We’re really unselfish and just like to see each other hoop.”
The guards’ success against Indiana was by design.
Willard wanted to beat them from the 3-point line. The Terps went 12-for-24 from behind the arc for their most makes and highest percentage in more than a month.
“They helped a lot. They were in the paint help side, and there was easy shots from the corners and the wings when they do that,” Rice said. “We took advantage of that.”
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The Hoosiers’ offense started as expected, with their first four and eight of their first nine baskets coming in the paint. Their third second-chance bucket prompted a Willard timeout with 11:33 left in the half, and things changed from there.
Indiana shot 9-for-16 before that timeout and 5-for-15 after. The Terps, who were down by three, grabbed the lead a minute later and didn’t give it away until there were four minutes left in the second half.
Maryland led at halftime, 38-37. Rice, Gillespie and Reese had 10 points apiece, and finished with 23, 18 and 14 respectively. Reese notched his sixth double-double, Gillespie added nine assists and Rice was 5-for-7 from distance.
While the Terps led at half, it was never by much — two quick baskets to open the second half gave them a five-point lead, tied for their then-largest of the game. Maryland reached that point twice in the first, and like those times, couldn’t expand the advantage.
The Terps finally did a few minutes later. But the Hoosiers responded, primarily behind sophomore guard Myles Rice.
Less than two minutes after the Terps led by 10, Rice hit a pair of triples and cut the lead to three to prompt a Maryland timeout. He hit another 3-pointer to finally give the Hoosiers the lead with four minutes to go. The Indiana guard didn’t score after that and missed the potential buzzer-beater.
The Terps have been on the wrong end of several close games this season — but they prevailed on Thursday to cap off a season-altering road trip.
