Terps don’t have time to wallow after loss

COLLEGE PARK – In the jampacked schedule of the Big Ten this season, teams don’t have much time to celebrate significant victories or ruminate over lopsided defeats.

Maryland had only a little more time to recover from its 30-point road loss at No. 1 Michigan State on Thursday than it did to enjoy its six-point win over Penn State on Tuesday.

It will be interesting to see if the Terps can forget what happened at the Breslin Center when they take the court today at Xfinity Center against Iowa, which has yet to win in the Big Ten this season.

“Every game’s hard for us, every game’s going to be a battle — whether it’s home, away, it doesn’t matter,” Maryland coach Mark Turgeon said after practice Saturday. “We’re just going to try to get better and do the best we can.”

Sophomore guard Kevin Huerter, who helped keep the game against the Spartans competitive for the first 15 minutes, said he believes the Terps (13-4, 2-2 Big Ten) have done a good job putting the 91-61 defeat behind them.

“It’s Big Ten season. We’re going to play games every two to three days,” Huerter said. “If we try to sulk on an away game, especially the way they played, we’re going to get beat again on Sunday and we can’t do that.”

Asked about the mood of the team since the loss, Huerter was blunt.

“In ways, I thought it was embarrassing, to be honest,” he said Saturday. ‘I think that was the first time for a couple of us that we lost that way in our life. I could count on one hand, maybe one finger, the times I’ve lost by 30 in my life.

“It was frustrating, but it was embarrassing at the same time. A lot of us are still coming to grips that the [injured] guys are not going to be joining us for the rest of the season. We’ve got to make do with what we have and there’s a lot of guys that we need to be more productive.”

As dominant as the Spartans have been for most of the season, Huerter said, “Going into that game, seeing the talent they have and the talent we have, that team isn’t 30 points better than us. We know we could have played better, but you have to give the credit to them, they made a lot of shots.”

Despite his team’s most lopsided loss since coming to Maryland seven years ago, Turgeon reiterated his postgame comment about thinking his team “got better” playing the Spartans.

Asked how he thought the Terps improved, Turgeon said, “We got much better in transition defense. That is a fast, really good team. They killed us in halfcourt defense.

“I thought physically, reboundingwise, we battled them. We had some small lineups out there. We just got tired late in the game. We’ve got to be a little bit deeper. They’re a deep basketball team with a lot of talent. I thought offensively in the first half, we executed really well against maybe the best defensive team in the country.”

Led by Huerter, Maryland made eight of its first 10 shots and five of 10 3-pointers in the first half. Still, the Terps trailed by 12 at halftime after Michigan State finished the half on a 15-3 run. The Spartans made 10 of 16 3-pointers in the half.

“We got better,” Turgeon said Saturday. “It’s hard to think that when you lose by the score [91-61], even though it kept getting worse and worse because their depth’s really good, I felt like we got better, especially the first half. We really played at a high level.”