Cinderella runs don’t come from low-effort teams. No. 17-seed Maryland men’s basketball clearly knows that.
Taking on No. 16-seed Oregon in the first game of the Big Ten Tournament, the Terps played like a team with something to prove. Every rebound turned into trench warfare, with bodies sprawling repeatedly in efforts to secure possession. Maryland often won those battles. And in transition, the Ducks were held without a single fastbreak basket for the first 37 minutes.
After 30 minutes of pedal-to-the-metal basketball, the Terps slowed the pace, and the Ducks took advantage. But their late push wasn’t enough.
Maryland punched a ticket to the second round with a 70-60 win in Chicago. They’ve got a night to rest before moving onto No. 9-seed Iowa, who they play at noon ET on Wednesday.
Tuesday’s game was never particularly close. Oregon simply didn’t meet the moment out of the gate — the Terps were relentless in defensive rotation and repeatedly forced the Ducks into eating up the shot clock. When they did find open looks, they didn’t go in.
Standout center Nate Bittle was 3-of-7 in the first half. All three makes were touch-in layups right at the rim. Around him, the Ducks combined to shoot 0-of-15 — and 0-of-9 from 3-point range — in the first half.
Maryland had 33 points by halftime. Oregon had 12 — the program’s lowest-scoring first half in three decades.
Diggy Coit earned a second straight start after coming off the bench for the nine games prior to Senior Day. The graduate student is usually the de facto point guard when he’s on the court — but that role was much more split than usual between him and Andre Mills.
As a score-first point guard, Coit has put together some ugly, low-efficiency nights in the closing months of the regular season. With Mills taking on facilitator duties — which he did well — Coit could pick his spots better. And he took advantage of that.
Coit still led the Terps with 17 attempts, but excluding a few shot-clock beaters, they didn’t feel forced. He led the team with 17 points — his most in over a month — and added four rebounds.
Maryland’s guard duo put together a 9-0 run to open the game. Meanwhile, the Ducks weren’t capable of anything besides occasional free throws.
Oregon’s first six points were from the free throw line. As a team, it had zero made field goals until there was 8:46 left in the first half. By then, the Ducks trailed, 19-8, and were lucky the deficit wasn’t larger.
Maryland got off a lot of attempts but wasn’t efficient with them, starting the first half 6-of-20 from the field. It lived outside the arc and in the midrange —12 of its first 20 shots were 3-pointers, and just four of its first 19 points were in the paint.
With a 19-point deficit at halftime, Oregon head coach Dana Altman clearly fired up his team in the locker room. Right out of the break, Bittle finally drilled his team’s first 3-pointer of the game. Then, aggressive full-court pressure forced Maryland into a 10-second violation.
The Ducks were considerably less disjointed to open the second half — they notched an early 7-0 run and matched their entire first-half output in the first four minutes of the second.
A well-rounded Maryland offense shot 42.3% in the second half, led by a beyond-the-arc explosion by Elijah Saunders.
The senior didn’t go outside his role, and excelled within it. All six of Saunders shots were 3-pointers, and he made five of them, finishing with 15 points.
Oregon wasn’t completely done, though. Urgency set in down the stretch, and Oregon mounted a 18-3 run to cut Maryland’s lead all the way down to nine points.
But the Ducks were virtually out of time. The free throw game began with over two minutes to go, and Maryland didn’t flinch.
Three things to know
1. Team dominance on the boards. Solomon Washington and Collin Metcalf have brought in an uneven share of Maryland’s boards in Big Ten play. But on Tuesday, the entire rotation contributed to winning the rebounding battle, 38-28. Seven players notched at least three rebounds.
2. George Turkson Jr. had something to prove. Every Terp was flying around the court Tuesday. But in the first half, Turkson’s effort still stood out.
If a ball was loose within Turkson’s general vicinity, odds are the redshirt freshman was all-out sprawling to grab it. He didn’t take a shot, but finished with six rebounds in the first half — a career-high despite only playing two minutes after halftime.
3. Quick turnaround. Maryland’s next game happens less than 17 hours after Tuesday’s final buzzer. There’s not much time to recover, but it’s not uncharted territory — they played three games in three days during the Players Era Festival in November.
And Iowa is one of the four Big Ten teams the Terps defeated in the regular season.