Late in the first half, the Maryland men’s basketball team started to dictate the pace of their first round NCAA Tournament game against Houston.
Gone was Maryland trying to match Houston three pointer for three pointer, in was slashing to the hoop with drives and getting Jordan Williams involved on the inside. After trying to run with Houston for much of the first half, Maryland settled down and played a much more disciplined brand of basketball, in which Williams was the key cog. After not being involved much early in the game, Williams had a double-double by halftime, with 10 points and 10 rebounds.
Despite Houston making a run at the end of the first half to cut what was an eight-point Maryland lead down to two, the game had already been changed. No longer was it run-and-gun — it was a half-court game.
Maryland will take a half-court game against Houston over a run-and-gun game any day of the week.
Williams continued to make his presence felt in the second half, as he was the main force on the interior for either team. As CBS color commentator Mike Gminski put it, Houston had “no answer” for Williams, who finished with 21 points and 17 rebounds, and led a Maryland effort on the interior that out-rebounded Houston, 47-27, for the game.
The second half evolved into a slow paced, foul shooting contest between the two teams.
Against Houston, Maryland will take that. There was no need for Maryland to try to run with Houston. Maryland tried to early in the game, and it just didn’t work. Houston controlled the pace of play for the first 10 minutes or so of the game, building a 22-17 lead at the 10:10 mark of the first half. After that, Maryland played the type of game that got it a 13-3 regular season record in the ACC: a disciplined, flex offense with a fast break when the situation called for it.
Houston was 20 of 32 from the free throw line (including a lot of misses late in the game that would seem to indicate fatigue on Houston’s part), while Maryland was 21 of 25 from the line.
Maryland got to the line a lot in the second half by dominating the paint, which helped Maryland slow the game down to their liking. Greivis Vasquez and Landon Milbourne combined to go 13 of 13 from the charity stripe for the game, with much of that coming in the second half.
Speaking of Vasquez, I thought he played a mature game. He didn’t try to match Houston’s three-point shooting and he didn’t try to match the nation’s leading scorer, Aubrey Coleman. Vasquez dished it out to the tune six assists and grabbed seven boards. And although Vasquez went 0-for-5 from three-point land, he got some easy baskets for himself and got to the line. Vasquez wasn’t spectacular, but didn’t have to be when Williams is going for 21 points and 17 boards.
Vasquez’s “counterpart” for the game, Houston’s Coleman, scored 26 points. Coleman, the nation’s leading scorer, bombed away on three, he drove, and he got to the line. Coleman ended up going 9-for-21 from the field and 7-for-13 from the line. I’m guessing this was a fairly typical performance by Coleman.
Overall, it was a fairly business-like victory for Maryland. Tom Izzo and Michigan State await. Tip-off is set for Sunday at 2:40 ET, which means Maryland Michigan State will be tipping off at 11:40 a.m. local time. The start time is to accomodate television (obviously), but the games in Spokane, Washington shouldn’t be started in the morning for television purposes on the east coast. Play the Spokane games later and the eastern time zone games early in the afternoon.
Too logical, I suppose.
Some other tidbits on the game…
-With the way the game started out for each team – back and forth, run-and-gun — the main cameraman probably got pretty dizzy shifting his camera around. No team was consistently knocking down any shots, either, prompting Gminski to say that the game to that point resembled “a summer league game.” I couldn’t have agreed more.
-Yes, this Houston team does indeed like to shoot threes. As I look at the stat sheet, I’m actually surprised they “only” attempted 21 three pointers.
-Vasquez was guarding Coleman for much of the game. Personally, I wanted Maryland’s best defender, Sean Mosley, defending Coleman. And I want Mosley guarding Michigan State’s Kalin Lucas from start to finish on Sunday.
-Come to think of it, Gary Williams knows more about this than I do.
-What in the world is going on with Tom Penders’ hair?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
GO TERPS! Glad your earlier prediction was confirmed.
AMAZING JOB WILLIAMS….GO TERPS!!!!!!!!!!