With less than a minute left, Maryland’s men’s basketball was desperate for the important bucket it needed to pull upset off the road at No. 12 in Illinois.
While the seconds are over, the Terps turn to his tallest player and senior leader in Darryl Morsell. After receiving the ball from Jairus Hamilton from a screen, he jumped and took Ayo Dosumnu to the edge. By fighting the contact in the air, Morsell knocked it in from the glass and put Maryland ahead 64-61 with 33 seconds left.
Maryland kept Illinois’ strong offense to just two points in the final 4:08 of the game, and it played in time on either side of the floor to pull 66-63 from the uproar.
Despite a 2-5 start to playing Big Ten, head coach Mark Turgeon has now upset two top opponents, with the then no. 6 Wisconsin than the others. And the team also avoided falling below .500 with the win.
“We really struggled tonight,” said head coach Mark Turgeon. ‘They are an excellent basketball team and I think a team that can be a Final Four team. We just fought, and it felt like Maryland’s basketball out there. ‘
Although the Terps were double-digit underdogs who penetrated Sunday night’s game, they played even more short than expected. It was announced before the knockout that junior guard Eric Ayala would not play due to a groin injury sustained against Iowa on Thursday, leaving Maryland without its leading scorer.
As a result, Turgeon chose to move junior guard Aaron Wiggins as oblique guard, putting him along with sophomores Hakim Hart and Morsell in the backfield.
“It’s just a matter of everyone stepping into a different role,” Wiggins said. ‘If you like someone [Ayala], everyone has to act to some degree, whether it’s energy, whether it’s guys on the bench, whether it means scoring, bouncing or making plays on the attack. ”
On the other hand, led by his two stars in Dosunmu and forward Kofi Cockburn, Illinois attack Maryland at its weakest point: the paint. The 7-foot, 285-pound Cockburn immediately tried to establish his presence on the low block, with the Terps countering their biggest domestic presence in senior 6-foot-9, 235-pound forward Galin Smith.
Smith did not appear to be a match early on, as Cockburn regularly got the ball in deep post positions and showed an impressive touch around the edge, converting three of his first four field goal attempts within the first four minutes of play.
The next man tasked with making an impact in the paint was second forward Chol Marial. Marial was apparently almost removed from the rotation of the team and played just one minute against Indiana on January 4 before not seeing the field against Iowa.
However, Turgeon turned to Marial early in the first half and brought him to the floor to give the Terps a spark. At 13:51, Illini forward Giorgi Bezhanishvili tried to fend off Marial in the low position, but the Sudanese big man stayed on his feet and forced the miss.
On the other hand, Marial acted for a pick-and-pop with Jairus Hamilton, who received the pass from the other side of the arc and knocked it down without any doubt, cutting Maryland’s deficit to 16-14 with 13:36 in the the half.
But both the Terps were unmanned by Cockburn as the game continued, with the Illini center bullying him to his places to record a game-high 16 points in the first half.
With the absence of Ayala, a guard corps that has been in dire need of ball handlers has disappeared, Maryland had to rely on the first-year guard tandem of Marcus Dockery and Aquan Smart to pick up the slack hole.
Dockery and Smart, who were forced to rely on two inexperienced, young players against a top opponent in a hostile environment, did everything in their power to stay afloat. Everyone tended to make a mistake, whether it was a foul on the defensive line or a foul on the other side.
Maryland got cold during the first half for a drought of more than three minutes, but the defense increased to force an equally weak shot from Illinois before Smart left the Terps 23-20 with a little more than eight minutes left. until rest time.
Despite keeping Dosunmu in check for much of the period (7 points on the 2-11 shooting), Maryland’s first half looked like it was going to be scored with another pointless run, which this time almost lasts three minutes.
But with another ten seconds left, second forward Donta Scott drifted off the three-point line and quickly descended from a catch-and-shoot jumper as time passed. Scott buried the triple and scored 11 points in his 18 minutes on the floor to leave the Terps 34-32 behind.
But the real test of Maryland’s intent on this would definitely come in the second half. Illinois were the stereotypical ‘second-half team’ this season, and Northwest retired 53-13 in the final 20 minutes of its win Thursday.
At the start of the second half, however, Morsell decided it was time to start hunting for his shot at the attacking end. Morsell opened the scoring for Maryland in the second frame, pulling away from midfield and sinking to get the Terps going quickly.
Two minutes later, he took first-year Illini guard Adam Miller into the post and turned left behind him for another jumper who found the bottom of the net. In the subsequent defensive possession, Morsell stayed step-by-step with Dosumnu on a ride to the edge and forced around the fog.
When he brought the ball down the other side, Morsell dived around a Galin Smith screen and pulled up again from the top of the key and sank another jump shot to put the Terps ahead 43:41 with 16: 42 in half.
Morsell scored 11 points in the first six minutes of the half, which helped Maryland shoot the second half off the floor with 77.8% to keep pace and keep hopes of a stir alive.
“It was just a great game for him,” Wiggins said of Morsell’s performance. ‘He was recording the ball, he was the setback for us, he made plays, and he was a leader. So if he is like that, our team is at the top of our game. ”
But as the two teams stayed neck-and-neck away from the piece, Illinois turned to its two stars when he needed them most. Dosumnu started warming up in the second half, and he missed just one of his first six shots off the field to rise to 19 points by 7 p.m. Cockburn also kept getting lower than he wanted to, conceding 20 points with more than six minutes of play.
“My job today was to make it as hard for him as possible and just win,” Morsell said.
Maryland’s offense got cold again at an inconvenient time, and this time it was almost four minutes without a bucket because the game was close. Yet Illinois’ offense could not take advantage of the cold use again. Wiggins eventually ended it with a pull-up jumper plus the offense to keep matters at 59-59 with 5:08 left.
Both teams have continued their shooting fights so far, and the game was still going on while the minutes ticked. After nearly four minutes without points, a missed shot from Morsell jumped into the senior’s hands again, which quickly swung it to a wide open heart outside the arc, burying the triple around Maryland with just 1: 18 with 62-61. left.
Along with a next bucket from Morsell, the Terps defense carried the team on the piece and kept the Fighting Illini pointless four minutes before the final seconds.
“Coach Turgeon always talks about valuing possessions and how one or two possessions can change the game,” Morsell said. ‘And as you can see, it’s a one-point, two-point game. So we have the experience and trust in each other because we know we have been there and such things are definitely very important. ”
Three things to know
1. Maryland responds again in a big way. With the season in the balance, the Terps achieved another unlikely victory on the road against one of the leading teams in the conference. After upsetting Wisconsin in Madison less than a month ago, Maryland has shown that it is capable of beating anyone on any given night. If you do not make tonight’s win without Ayala less, just how much Maryland can drive the momentum of Sunday’s win could turn the tide for its season.
“It shows you that they are not giving up,” Turgeon said of his players. “Our guys are very proud. There are a lot of guys in that locker room who have won a lot of contests, and it fired at the other guys tonight. ”
The team has now defeated two top-15 teams in the same season for the first time since 2014-’15, when they beat no. 13 Iowa and Wisconsin no.
2. Maryland was dominated on the glass. Despite the fact that Sunday had already given up some inside, Maryland exacerbated its problem by not boxing effectively on both sides. Illinois came out on top in Maryland 40-33, with Cockburn taking the lead with a game-high 10 rebounds. The Illini also pulled off 13 offensive setbacks, contributing up to six second chances.
3. The Terps took advantage of their chance on the free throw line. During this season, Maryland has struggled to force its opponents to trespass on the edge and to generate the offense. And even when Maryland reached the charity line, it shot just 67.8 percent as a team. But that was not the case Sunday night, as the Terps came off the line 14-17, the most scored there in five games.