Advertisement

Offense wakes up at right time for Maryland men’s basketball in comeback win over Michigan | TAKEAWAYS

edward lee, baltimore sun
·7 min read

Maryland men’s basketball’s 64-57 victory over visiting Michigan on Thursday night was the program’s first after trailing by double figures at halftime in nearly four years and largely relied on a furious second half highlighted by the play of Donta Scott.

So surely coach Kevin Willard must have delivered a scathing, butt-kicking, paint-off-the-locker-room-walls message at halftime that ignited the Terps’ comeback from a 33-21 hole at the break, right?

Not so, according to Willard.

“We watch film at halftime,” he said of the team’s usual routine at the break. “So we just watched our offense — what was open, where we were open. We missed eight open shots in the first half. So sometimes you just have to show them, ‘Hey, you guys are getting good shots, and we’re going to make shots. Just keep doing things.’

We watched how they guarded [junior power forward Julian Reese]’s post-ups and how they were defending [fifth-year senior point guard Jahmir Young]’s pick and rolls. Sometimes you’ve got to show them what’s open and what’s going on. That’s all we do at halftime. We just make adjustments off film.”

Here are three observations from Thursday night’s win.

Donta Scott continues to thrive off of slights

When he compiled 15 points and seven rebounds in a 73-67 victory over Nicholls State on Dec. 19, Scott revealed afterward that he was inspired by some on-court trash talking. A similar back-and-forth sparked the fifth-year senior small forward Thursday night.

Matched up against Michigan redshirt sophomore small forward Will Tschetter, Scott tried to draw a charging call, but Tschetter powered his way to a layup with 15:53 left in the second half and affixed Scott with a glare.

Related Articles

“The staredown is what got me,” Scott said. “After the staredown, I knew he couldn’t stop me.”

From that point, Scott scored 20 of his game-high 22 points in the final 15:35. He connected on 5 of 6 shots, including all four attempts from 3-point range, and made all six free throws to fuel a 43-23 second half for Maryland (10-6, 2-3 Big Ten).

With the four 3-pointers, Scott passed former point guard Steve Blake (182 3-pointers from 1999 to 2003) to rank ninth in school history in that category with 184. After missing three long-range shots in the first half with two barely scraping the rim, he acknowledged that rediscovering his accuracy in the second half was a morale booster.

“It gave me a little bit of confidence because I already knew I could make shots,” he said. “It was just a matter of time if I did. Once I made them, I already knew that I could make some more once I got them up.”

After a slow start, Scott has re-emerged recently. He has averaged 14.7 points and drained 15 of 31 3-pointers in his last six starts, but his latest performance doesn’t surprise Willard.

“Donta’s been playing like that in practice all year,” he said. “He’s been playing really good over the last four games. He had some good looks in the first half. We struggled in the first half. I think he was upset with himself at halftime, and then he came out, and he was very, very animated in the huddle before we went out. He just did what a senior does.”

An offense that slumbered through the first half woke up at the right time

Maryland’s first half was another exercise in offensive futility. The players shot only 33.3% (8 of 24) from the field, 9.1% (1 of 11) from behind the 3-point arc and 44.4% (4 of 9) from the free throw line. At one point, some of the announced 12,007 in attendance began booing.

The second half provided a wildly different story. The Terps connected on 48% (12 of 25) of their attempts, shot 60% (6 of 10) from 3-point range, and drained 92.9% (13 of 14) of their free throws.

Scott’s 3-pointer with 14:58 remaining was the offense’s first bucket outside of the lane, and he speculated that the long-distance bomb lifted everyone’s spirits.

“I feel like once we saw the ball go in, it gave us a new outlook,” he said. “It just really helped us see that light. Even though we didn’t make shots early on, there’s a lot of game going on, and we were just going to have to keep shooting, and they’ve got to fall because we do this at practice. We take a lot of shots at practice, and we see a lot of them go in. Once we got to the game, we knew they were eventually going to go in. So just seeing those first couple go in gave everybody confidence.”

According to Willard, the team’s improved shooting in second half is a familiar sight for him in practice. Why something gets lost in the transition from practice to games puzzles him, but he plans to continue imploring the players to remain confident and keep shooting the ball.

“I’m like, ‘You guys have got to reward yourselves eventually,’” he said. “The fans aren’t going to cheer because you keep getting defensive stops. That’s just not the way fans work. They want to see the ball go in the hoop. We held them to seven points [in the game’s first five minutes], but we had six at home. It’s kind of mind-boggling. So eventually, they relaxed, and seeing the ball go in really helped.”

Julian Reese’s blocks and a full-court press spurred a strong defensive effort

Of his game-high five blocks, Reese saved two for when Maryland needed them the most.

With the team clinging to a 60-57 lead, the Randallstown native and St. Frances graduate swatted away graduate student shooting guard Nimari Burnett’s jumper with 36 seconds left in the second half. On the ensuing possession, Reese blocked Burnett’s layup attempt, grabbed the defensive rebound, drew a foul and sank two free throws for a 62-57 lead with 23 seconds remaining.

Reese, who also registered a game-best three steals, said he was pleased with his showing after fouling out in Sunday’s 65-62 loss at Minnesota.

“It’s definitely a great feeling,” he said. “Especially coming off a game with a lot of foul trouble, just playing defense and getting stops in clutch moments is a good feeling for me and a good confidence boost.”

Reese’s defense followed the reintroduction of a full-court press that produced key steals and turnovers and contributed to the Terps outscoring Michigan (6-10, 1-4), 8-0, in fastbreak points. There was Scott’s steal-and-dunk that posterized graduate student point guard Jaelin Llewellyn, Young’s steal-and-layup that preceded a charging foul on Llewellyn that led to a layup by freshman shooting guard DeShawn Harris-Smith, and Reese’s steal-and-layup.

At times, the Wolverines exploited the press into offensive chances, and Willard admitted that Harris-Smith and fellow freshman small forward Jamie Kaiser Jr. are continuing to grasp the strategy’s nuances. But he said the frenetic style of the press and its potential for creating opportunities for an inconsistent offense are aspects Maryland might have to embrace.

“With having Jamie out there, with having Donta in a new position, with having DeShawn out there, we just haven’t been as effective as we were with the same press [from last season],” he said. “So we’re trying to press. We also haven’t scored enough. You can practice it all you want, but until you go into a game and make game mistakes and game adjustments, it’s real easy to sit there in practice and go, ‘OK, this is what they’re going to run, and this is what they’re going to do.’ But when you miss seven shots in a row and then you have to press, it’s a little bit different.”

Maryland at No. 10 Illinois

Sunday, 2 p.m.

TV: Big Ten Network

Radio: 105.7 FM