Maryland outlasts Indiana for another hard-fought win in Big Ten
(AP) This time, Maryland put the proper finish on a tight game at home.
Freshman Kevin Huerter hit a clutch 3-pointer with 1:46 left, and the Terrapins got 18 points from Melo Trimble in a 75-72 victory over Indiana on Tuesday night.
A back-and-forth Big Ten duel came down to one final shot, a 3-point try by Indiana’s Robert Johnson that clanged off the rim as time expired.
Anthony Cowan scored 15 points and Huerter had 11 for the Terrapins (15-2, 3-1), who have won two straight since blowing a 12-point lead in the final six minutes at home against Nebraska on Jan. 1.
“We’re getting tougher,” coach Mark Turgeon said. “The slap in the face, the Nebraska game, kind of woke us up and showed we need to be a lot tougher.”
Damonte Dodd had six of Maryland’s nine blocked shots, and the Terrapins snagged only three fewer rebounds than the Hoosiers, who came with a conference-best plus-12.7 rebounding margin.
James Blackmon Jr. led Indiana (11-6, 1-3) with 22 points and Johnson added 13. The Hoosiers have dropped four of five, but coach Tom Crean had no complaints – especially after watching Maryland go 18 for 22 at the foul line compared to Indiana’s 8 for 9.
“To come out and compete like that, play through mistakes, and have the difference at the foul line and still be able to have a shot to win it at the end? We just got to learn from it, get better and move on,” he said.
Indiana trailed 66-63 before Blackmon made a layup and a 3-pointer. Dodd answered with a put-back of a Trimble miss, but two free throws by Juwan Morgan put the Hooisers back in front.
That’s when Huerter took over. After drilling a 3-pointer from deep on the left side, he snagged a rebound on the other end and whisked an outlet pass to Cowan, who made a layup for a 73-70 lead.
“That was big time,” Turgeon said. “Kevin hit the 3, and then the rebound and the pass. It was nice to get an easy one in a game like that.”
Huerter said: “I always tell Anthony in practice to just take off when I get a rebound and I’ll find you because he’s the fastest guy on the court. I got the rebound, there was no one around and I just threw it up and let him run after it.”
OG Anunoby followed with a dunk, and Trimble made both ends of a 1-and-1 with 8.2 seconds to go before Johnson’s miss.
“We were unbelievable on defense down the stretch,” Turgeon said.
After his jumper from the left side bounced away, Johnson slumped to the floor in agony.
“We ran a play to perfection,” Crean said. “The one minus is that it didn’t go in.”
Trimble’s 18 points came on 5-for-16 shooting, but he was 8 for 10 at the line. He passed Dez Wells and moved into 20th on the Maryland career list with 1,400 points.
Blackmon sandwiched a pair of 3-pointers around a Maryland layup to give the Hoosiers a 55-50 lead with 12:09 remaining.
Trimble responded with a twisting drive that faked Morgan off his feet. But every time the Terrapins got close, Indiana had an answer.
A 3-pointer by Johnson made it 60-55, and Anunoby tacked on a three-point play for a 63-59 advantage.
The Terrapins finally closed the gap, using layups by Cowan and Trimble to pull even with 7 minutes to go.
BIG PICTURE
Indiana: The Hoosiers have fallen from the Top 25 and don’t appear heading back anytime soon.
Maryland: This comeback win keeps the Terps in the thick of the Big Ten race, but they need a few more high-profile wins to get into the Top 25.
FAB FRESHMEN
The Terrapins’ three starting freshmen – Justin Jackson, Cowan and Huerter – combined for 37 points and 16 rebounds.
UP NEXT
Indiana: Hosts Rutgers on Sunday afternoon. The Hoosiers are 4-0 against the Scarlet Knights.
Maryland: At Illinois on Saturday in a rematch of Dec. 27 matchup that the Terrapins won 84-59.
- See more at: http://btn.com/2017/01/10/maryland-holds-off-struggling-indiana-75-72-to-move-to-3-1/#sthash.dEc4kEVD.dpuf
The most emphatic sequence of Kevin Huerter’s college career began with no conscience on the left perimeter, with the thin, 18-year-old Marylandfreshman forward nailing a clinical three-pointer to give his team a one-point lead with just under two minutes remaining against Indiana on Tuesday night. He didn’t hold his hand in the air, refusing to commit the rookie mistake of dwelling on that pivotal shot. Instead he looked to his bench and held out his arms, imploring for the defensive play-call as the run-and-gun Hoosiers came barreling up the court. He simply couldn’t hear as a crowd of 17,213 wailed about his shot.
So much has been made about Huerter’s beyond-his-years maturity, and a few seconds later, he showed why. As he received his defensive assignment and rushed to get into position, he found himself coming up with a rebound off an Indiana miss, and he promptly turned to throw a pass the length of the court to fellow freshman Anthony Cowan Jr., who finished an easy layup to cap the decisive sequence of Maryland’s 75-72 win in College Park.
“I always tell Anthony in practice just take off when I get a rebound, and I’ll find you,” said Huerter, who finished with 11 points and seven rebounds and made a string of crucial defensive plays down the stretch.
That layup by Cowan, which made it 73-70 with 1:12 remaining, didn’t exactly seal the win. That only occurred after Indiana guard Robert Johnson Jr. missed a potential game-tying three-pointer at the buzzer. Maryland picked up its second vital Big Ten win in four days, using 18 points from junior Melo Trimble and six blocks from senior Damonte Dodd. But the three freshman starters also stepped up, as Huerter, Cowan and Justin Jackson combined for 37 points and 16 rebounds to help vault Maryland (15-2, 3-1 Big Ten) into a five-way tie for first place in the Big Ten.
Indiana (11-6, 1-3) also played with an air of desperation all evening, the kind of urgency that can only be brought on by losing three of its past four and falling out of the national polls earlier this week.
“An extremely hard-fought game, no question about that. It came down to one or two more plays by them,” Indiana Coach Tom Crean said.
A top objective for Maryland was limiting Indiana’s transition offense, which Terrapins Coach Mark Turgeon had calculated as accounting for 35 percent of the Hoosiers’ scoring production entering the night. Maryland’s energy neutralized those opportunities for run-outs early, as Indiana scored just two fast-break points within the first 20 minutes and resorted to scoring almost exclusively in half-court sets. Indiana committed seven turnovers in the first eight minutes of the first half alone.
“We got some stops that were big in the game. And we were able to get out in transition and get easy layups, or find an open man,” said Cowan, who finished with 15 points.
Eventually, Indiana found a way to adapt. It stopped turning the ball over — Indiana committed just one over the final 12 minutes of the first half — and it was steadied by timely outside shooting from Curtis Jones, Robert Johnson and James Blackmon, who had pulled the team within two with a three-pointer with 2:43 left before half.
After Indiana center Thomas Bryant had given his team a one-point lead with a putback with seven seconds left before halftime, Turgeon used a quick timeout to draw up a play for Trimble, who split a screen and went coast-to-coast to beat the buzzer with a layup. Still, it seemed that Maryland’s 39-38 lead at the break should have been larger given how it had defended earlier in the game.
While Indiana finished with just five fast-break points, it did plenty of damage behind 10-for-23 three-point shooting, including four threes from Blackmon (22 points). But even as the Hoosiers made their pushes in the second half, Maryland stayed close by cutting down its turnovers — it had just three in the final 20 minutes and finished with eight — and it rebounded better. After giving up 13 offensive boards to the Hoosiers in the first half, Maryland allowed just two in the second half.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire