Maryland falls flat in road finale, losing to Penn State, 78-61
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- In its worst showing of the season, No. 17 Maryland (21-8, 12-6 Big Ten) got outplayed in all facets of the game Feb. 27, losing to Penn State (12-16, 5-12) 78-61 at the Bryce Jordan Center.
The Terps went into halftime Wednesday down 22 to the Nittany Lions and matters did not improve much in the second half, trailing by as many as 29. Maryland shot 2-for-19 from beyond the arc and finished with 17 turnovers in a game in which they never led and trailed for all but 24 seconds.
“We weren’t very good tonight,” Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon said. “From the beginning to the end. I’m going to take all the blame for that. I don’t know what I did different, but we weren’t very good and Penn State was terrific. We never really responded. We let our offense affect our defense throughout the game and I had buttons I tried to push but it just didn’t seem to work tonight. We fumbled a lot of rebounds, we fumbled a lot of balls. We missed a lot of wide-open shots. But in the end Penn State was clearly better than we were. [Lamar] Stevens was terrific, really, really good. We’ve started poorly a lot, so I thought we’d respond, but we never really responded. At about the 10-minute mark we knew we weren’t us tonight and there was no fight in us, and that was the disappointing part.”
Nittany Lions leading scorer Lamar Stevens finished with a game-high 24 points to add to his five rebounds, two steals and one block in a dominating performance against the Terps.
“He’s just really good,” Turgeon said. “I can’t explain it. How he gets his shot off--he made a lot of really tough shots...We just weren’t aggressive defensively early and we let our offense affect our defense. Lamar is good. He’s really good in this building.”
Stevens was joined by Penn State guard Myles Dread, who started hot and posted 17 points, three rebounds and three assists.
Things got so bad that Turgeon subbed out his entire starting five with 15:31 left in the second half and the Terps trailing 49-24. Freshmen Aaron Wiggins, Serrel Smith Jr., and Ricky Lindo Jr., as well as sophomores Joshua Tomaic and Reese Mona entered the game, but it made no difference.
“I was just searching, but there was no flow in the second half,” Turgeon said. “We started in a zone (defense), which I didn’t want to do. I was just trying to find somebody that was going to play hard, that would play with a little energy in the game.”
Terps leading rebounder and double-double machine Bruno Fernando couldn’t get anything going Wednesday night and could only compile nine points and eight rebounds with a team-high five turnovers.
Maryland’s other leader, point guard Anthony Cowan Jr., didn’t fare much better in the turnover department with five of his own and no assists, but the 6-foot floor general did finish with a team-high 15 points.
And inability to take care of the ball and not crashing the boards aggressively enough severely hurt the Terps Wednesday night and helped lead to their blowout loss. In a rare occurrence this season, Maryland was beat on the boards by the Nittany Lions 34-33.
“It’s disappointing because that’s all we do is try to rebound,” Turgeon said.
Maryland will hope to right the ship in their next outing as they get set to host No. 9 Michigan in College Park. The Terps lost to the Wolverines by 13 in Ann Arbor Feb. 16 and will have to pull a complete 180 from the way they played against the Nittany Lions to avoid back-to-back defeats.
“Tonight I don’t know what it was,” Turgeon said. “We’ve been pretty consistent. We just weren’t very good. Even if we played our best game, we’d have been lucky to win. I mean, they’re good. They’re good in this building right now. Hopefully this wakes us up a little bit. I love my team. We just stunk tonight and I stunk. We just weren’t there tonight. I can’t explain it but hopefully we bounce back.”