Roster for next season has a lot of questions
Terps must find some players to improve outside shooting
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — For its second consecutive NCAA Tournament, the Maryland men’s basketball team was shown the door by Alabama in the second round. On Saturday night, the Terps were bounced via a 73-51 loss in a South Region game before an announced 15,198 at Legacy Arena.
Like the 96-77 setback March 22, 2021, the game Saturday night got away from Maryland in the second half as the Crimson Tide used a 12-7 start to open the second half to build a 10-point advantage and maintain that double-digit lead for the remainder of the game.
Here are five takeaways from Saturday’s outcome:
Maryland was playing with house money
The 2021-22 season ended with the team limping to the finish line with a 15-17 record, question marks surrounding the roster, and instability affecting the head coaching position. And even when the university successfully brought in Kevin Willard from Seton Hall, there was some doubt about how quickly he could revive the program.
Despite being voted to finish 10th in the Big Ten, the Terps (22-13) finished in a fourway tie for fifth in the conference with an 11-9 record, won a school-record 13 consecutive league games at Xfinity Center en route to a 16-1 mark at home, and earned a No. 8 seed in the South Region, where they edged No. 9 seed West Virginia, 67-65, in Thursday’s first round.
On Saturday, Willard pointed out to his players and media that he had been hired March 21 — just three days after the game against Alabama.
“I told them that these guys have really done an unbelievable job of coming together and getting it going in the right direction,” said Willard, who became the first coach
season-ending knee injury last month.
The Terps came into Sunday’s game with a haunted tournament history against Pac-12 visitors. In 2016, they fell to No. 7-seed Washington in the round of 32. In 2019, No. 6-seed UCLA ended their hopes at the same stage. But Maryland coach Brenda Frese had promised her team would be prepared for Arizona’s inside-outside scoring punch, and after a difficult second quarter in which the Terps squandered an 11-point lead, her words proved prophetic.
The Terps had used a ferocious press to jump to a 14-0 lead two days earlier against No. 15-seed Holy Cross, and they started fast again Sunday, forcing Arizona into turnovers and difficult attempts and going up 6-0 when Sellers found Miller with a sweet fullcourt pass to create a layup. The Wildcats coughed up the ball five times before they made their first field goal, a sign that Maryland’s defense set the terms of engagement.
But battle-hardened Arizona started two seniors and three fifth-year players and was not about to go down as easily as Holy Cross. The Wildcats kept the margin at six until a three-pointer by Brinae Alexander put Maryland up 17-8 at the end of the first quarter. The Terps made eight of 14 fieldgoal attempts in the period but undermined themselves with six turnovers.
Arizona took a four-point lead in the second quarter, exploiting Maryland’s relative lack of size by feeding 6-foot-2 forwards
Cate Reese and Esmery Martinez in the paint and converting turnovers into transition baskets. The Terps, meanwhile, went cold, making just five of 16 attempts from the field in the period. They did score the last three points of the half and went to the locker room down 33-32.
The Terps opened the third quarter with renewed vigor, scoring nine straight points to retake the lead.
Masonius gave her classmate, Miller, a chest bump after the All-America guard split two defenders and finished with her left hand to put Maryland up three. Seconds later, Miller hit from 3-point range to extend the margin to 39-33.3
The Terps continued to push the pace from there, shooting 79% from the field in the third quarter to build their lead to 61-42.