Turtledroppings.com – Maryland Football And Basketball Blog

On a night where Maryland had its 400 some odd game where they made at least one three pointer snapped (and one report I read claimed they didn’t make one shot outside of 10 feet), Jordan Williams and Sean Mosley scored inside the lane all night long to put away a short handed Georgia Tech team.  Playing without Brian Oliver, and 6’10″ center Nate Hicks, Jordan Williams had his way inside all night scoring 21 points and adding 15 rebounds.  Maryland was able to score 48 points in the paint and hit 75% (24-32) of their free throws on the night thanks to the aggressive inside attack they showed.

Of course the early part of this recap makes it sound like they sailed to victory, but that wasn’t the case.  Thanks, to the inability to his anything outside of the paint, and continually being forced to inbound the ball to the corner, Georgia Tech was able to scratch and claw back into the game thanks to 13 Terps turnovers.  It was almost as if though Dino Gregory had never inbounded against the press before.  I hate to single him out though, because Howard, Stoglin, and Bowie were forced to the corner time after time.

In the end, the Terps were able to score enough fast break points, and Sean Mosley (16 points) seemed to be out of his midseason funk.  He was in the passing lane all night, and was getting out on the break, and getting into the paint for some short jumpers.  It was the type of play Maryland is going to need from Mosley if they want to be playing Basketball on CBS in March instead of ESPN3.com.

The game was far from pretty, but I have come to expect that from this team.  Last year was fun to watch the way they played together.  This years team makes me want to pull my hair out.  If this team is going to be successful, it is going to be by winning games like last nights.  And after my heart rate falls back to normal I am ok with that.  A win is a win, right?

One last thought, Terrell Stoglin deserves a little credit for his play last night for his 13 points including 7 of 7 from the line.  However, if we are going to an upper echelon ACC team, his 1 assist to 5 turnover nights are not going to cut it.  It doesn’t have to be a 5:1 ratio, but maybe 2.5:1 would be nice.  I know I am being tough on a freshman, but if we are going to live with some of his wild (dare I say ill advised shots) he needs to tighten up his ball control a bit.

Overall, I am delighted.  There are plenty of negatives, and I will leave that to Gary Williams and his staff to address before Duke comes to town Wednesday.  I am going to enjoy the fact that Maryland has climbed to 4-3 in the conference, and has three road wins already.  Now if they can take down Duke this week, things will really be looking up.  Unfortunately Duke got their behinds paddled by St. Johns on Sunday.  That game was a 20 point game until the Devils finally got hot with about 2 minutes left.  I am sure Coach K. will remove their names from the lockers or something to get them fired up for this one.  On the other hand, this could be one of those games where no fans can get there, and we jam 15,00o students into the arena.  You know 15,000 students who didn’t have class, and had nothing better to do then to run to Town Hall Liquors around 10:00 am, and had been on the sauce for 10 hours come game time.  For more on the weather impact, check in tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 31st, 2011 at 6:26 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.