With less than a minute left, Maryland men’s basketball was desperate for the crucial bucket he needed to get off the road against No. 12 Illinois.
As the seconds passed, the Terps turned to their oldest player and senior leader, Darryl Morsell. After receiving the ball from a canvas by Jairus Hamilton, Morsell punched and took Ayo Dosumnu to the hoop. Fighting contact in the air, Morsell placed the glass on top of the glass and put Maryland ahead 64-61 with 33 seconds remaining.
Maryland maintained Illinois’ high-powered attack with just two points in the final 4:08 of the game, making timely moves at either end of the court to pull the 66-63 turn on the road.
Despite a 2-5 start to the Big Ten game, coach Mark Turgeon’s team has now defeated two first-rate opponents, with then No. 6 Wisconsin as the other. And the team also avoided falling below 0.500 with the win.
“We really fought tonight,” said coach Mark Turgeon. “They are a great basketball team and I think a team that could be a Final Four. We just fought, and it looked like Maryland basketball outside. “
Although the Terps were double-digit underdogs entering Sunday night’s competition, they arrived even more with fewer players than expected. It was announced before the complaint that junior guard Eric Ayala would not be playing due to a groin injury suffered against Iowa on Thursday, leaving Maryland without its top scorer.
As a result, Turgeon chose to move junior guard Aaron Wiggins to the point guard, pairing him with sophomore Hakim Hart and Morsell on the backcourt.
“It’s just a matter of everyone taking on a different role,” said Wiggins. “When you lose someone like [Ayala], everyone has to advance to a certain degree, either by energy or by guys on the bench, whether that means scoring in the attack, rebounds or making plays ”.
On the other side, led by its two stars at Dosunmu and striker Kofi Cockburn, Illinois attacked Maryland at its weakest point: ink. Cockburn, 2.13 meters and 85 kilos, immediately started trying to establish his presence in the low block, with the Terps counterattacking with their largest presence inside striker Galin Smith, 1.80 m tall and 235 pounds.
Smith proved to be no match at first, with Cockburn routinely receiving the ball in deep postings and displaying an impressive touch around the edge, making it three of his first four attempts at goal in the first four minutes of play.
The next man tasked with making an impact within the painting was second-year striker Chol Marial. Marial appeared to have practically been removed from the team’s rotation, playing just a minute against Indiana on January 4 before he couldn’t see the ground against Iowa.
However, Turgeon turned to Marial at the start of the first half, bringing him to the ground to spark the Terps. At 1:51 pm, striker Illini Giorgi Bezhanishvili tried to retreat Marial on the low post, but the great Sudanese remained standing and forced the foul.
Descending on the other side, Marial prepared for a pick-and-pop with Jairus Hamilton, taking the pass beyond the hoop and knocking it down without any hesitation, reducing Maryland’s deficit to 16-14 with 13:36 remaining in half.
But the two Terps were defeated by Cockburn as the game continued, with center Illini making way for his spots and scoring the game’s biggest high, 16 points in the first half.
With Ayala’s absence diminishing a guard body that was already extremely lacking in ball handlers, Maryland had to rely on Marcus Dockery and Aquan Smart’s freshman guard tandem to compensate.
Forced to rely on two inexperienced and young players to face a top opponent in a hostile environment, Dockery and Smart did everything they could to keep their heads above water. Each was subject to occasional errors, whether he dodged the pitchers at the defensive end or committed spins with the other’s live ball.
Maryland cooled by a score drought of more than three minutes in the middle of the first half, but the defense stepped up to force some equally bad shots from Illinois before a Smart tray put the Terps back by just 23-20 with just over remaining eight minutes until the break.
Despite keeping Dosunmu under control for much of the period (7 points from 2 to 11 shots), Maryland’s first half looked like it would be scored by another goalless run, this time lasting almost three minutes.
But with 10 seconds remaining, sophomore striker Donta Scott stepped off the three-point line and quickly jumped in a tag jump as time passed. Scott buried the triple, scoring 11 points in his 18 minutes on the floor to put the Terps behind by just 34-32 in the break.
But the real test of Maryland’s determination to do that was sure to come in the second half. Illinois has been the stereotypical ‘second-half team’ this season, most recently beating Northwestern 53-13 in the last 20 minutes of their win on Thursday.
Early in the second half, however, Morsell decided it was time to start hunting for his kick on the offensive side. Morsell opened the scoring for Maryland in the second frame, rising from midfield and sinking to make Terps move fast.
Two minutes later, he took freshman guard Illini, Adam Miller, to the post, turning to the left for another shot that hit the back of the net. In the defensive possession that followed, Morsell kept pace with Dosumnu in a race to the edge and forced the mistake.
Bringing the ball the other way, Morsell plunged into a Galin Smith canvas and again pulled from the top of the key, sinking another shot to put the Terps ahead 43-41 with 16:42 remaining in the middle.
Morsell scored 11 points in the first six minutes of time, helping Maryland to start the second half by throwing 77.8% off the ground to keep pace and keep hope of a turnaround alive.
“It was a great game for him,” said Wiggins of Morsell’s performance. “He was scoring the ball, he was recovering for us, making plays, he was being a leader. So, when he’s like this, our team is at the peak of our game. “
But as the two teams remained side by side in the final stretch, Illinois turned to its two stars when it needed them most. Dosumnu started to warm up in the second half, losing only one of the first six pitches and went up to 19 points by the 7:00 mark. Cockburn continued to get everything he wanted down too, eclipsing 20 points with more than six minutes to play as well.
“My job today was just to make it as difficult as possible for him and just win,” said Morsell.
Maryland’s attack cooled again at an inopportune moment, this time almost four minutes without a bucket as the game approached the decisive moment. Still, the Illinois attack once again failed to take advantage of the cold spell, with Wiggins finally putting an end to a pull-up jump plus the foul to tie things up at 59-59 with 5:08 remaining.
Both teams continued their shooting fights along the straight, with the dispute still to take as the minutes passed. After going goalless for almost four minutes, a wrong shot by Morsell returned to the veteran’s hands, who quickly hit an open Hart outside the arc, who buried the triple to place Maryland 62-61 with just 1:18 left .
Along with a subsequent bucket from Morsell, the Terps defense took the team along the straight, keeping Fighting Illini goalless for four minutes before the final seconds.
“Coach Turgeon always talks about valuing possessions and how one or two possessions can change the game,” said Morsell. “And like the final game, you see, it’s a one-point game, a two-point game. So having that experience and having confidence in each other, knowing that we were there and things like that, is very important for sure. “
Three things to know
1 Maryland once again responds in style. With the season balanced, the Terps achieved another unlikely victory on the road against one of the top teams in the conference. Having disturbed Wisconsin in Madison less than a month ago, Maryland has shown that it can beat anyone on any given night. Taking away tonight’s victory without Ayala or less, how much Maryland can take advantage of the momentum of Sunday’s victory could turn the tide this season.
“It shows that they are not giving up,” said Turgeon of the players’ efforts. “Our boys are very proud. There are a lot of guys in that locker room who won a lot of games, and that passed on to the others tonight. “
The team has already defeated two of the top 15 teams in the same season for the first time since 2014-15, when they won 13th Iowa State and 5th Wisconsin.
two Maryland was dominated by glass. Despite having already given up some size inland for Sunday’s game, Maryland has compounded his problem by failing to box effectively on both ends. Illinois overcame Maryland by 40-33, with Cockburn leading with 10 rebounds, the game record. Illini also managed 13 offensive rebounds, contributing six second-chance points.
3 – The Terps made the most of the opportunities on the free throw line. Throughout this season, Maryland has struggled to force its opponents to miss the edge and generate trips for the foul. And even when Maryland made it to the charity track, he shot only 67.8% as a team. But that was not the case on Sunday night, as Terps scored 14-17 on the line, the biggest goal in five games.