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I really don’t believe it.  I had this one chalked up as a loss in the second half.  Even with 9 minutes left in the game, Maryland was down 10.  The first half was as bad of basketball as I have watched in quite some time.  MD shot 10 for 40 in the half.  Dave Neal attempted 5 or 6 three pointers.  It was just bad.  On a positive note, Maryland did force Tech into 18 first half turnovers.  It was poorly played by both teams.

Early in the second half, Tech went inside and started using it size advantage.  Aminu and Lawal combined for 28 points and 27 rebounds.  I will give Dave Neal some credit.  He made Gani Lawal work very hard to get position on the inside.  Maryland made a couple of runs to get it down to 4 a couple of times.  But Tech always had answer.  That was until they were down 8 and about 8 minutes left, Eric Hayes took over.  He made a couple of threes, and a basket in the lane.  By 7:12 Hayes gave Maryland the lead with a 3.  The final 8 minutes was fueled by hot shooting and aggressive defense.  Bowie and Mosley made some good defensive plays and led to some fast break baskets.  It was a great comeback, quite honestly one they had to have at home. 

One thing I did notice is Vasquez mouthing off to the fans.  I think he was upset with the booing after he missed one of 6 missed threes.  Every time he did something he was looking in the same direction.  After makes, at the free throw line, mouthing into the same direction.  Just play the game.  He is better than that.  This teams effort has been a pleasure to watch, but I don’t care for that. 

Eric Hayes finished with 17 points, most of them late in the game during the big run.  Vasquez added 16 points but was only 5-18 shooting.  Some of those shots were forced and a couple of long threes that were very early in the shot clock.  He did not have the best shot selection today.  Sean Mosley is starting to show more and more each game.  Today I would say it was with his defense and rebounding.  Then you look at the box score and he had 10 points.  He did have a couple of turnovers, but he is a freshman and those things will get tightened up as he gets more playing time.  Landon Milbourne sat with a little foul trouble, but still had 9 rebounds.  Melbourne’s foul trouble opened the door for Jin Soo Kim to get some minutes.  He didn’t make either of his shots, but did give some nice energy in the press and half court defense.  Adrian Bowie added 11 points and 6 boards.  It is going to be very important to get rebounding from everyone on the floor, when you are playing with out any true bigs.  I felt the rebounding advantage was definitely in Tech’s favor, but I was surprised to see it was 45 to 33.  And to think how bad it was.  Maryland did come up with some huge rebounds late in the game.

This game kind of showed us a lot.  One, it showed not to count these guys out, and you will never to know what you are going to get half to half, let alone game to game.  We saw what can happen if a team wants to take it inside at the Terps.  Teams are going to be able to score very easily.  I think they showed us the defensive intensity is going to be there game in and game out, but the shooting is going to be very streaky.  That scares me.  We may allow some teams to totally put us away when we go into those shooting droughts. 

To think that the Terps are 1-0 in the ACC after the first 30 minutes, is a bit unbelievable.  The win was far from pretty, but it is a win.  A win they needed to have.  Now lets hope we can get that Coral Gables monkey off our back on Wednesday Night.  Go Terps!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 10th, 2009 at 3:08 pm and is filed under Maryland Terps Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.