Maryland and Michigan last met up New Year’s Eve in College Park, with the Wolverines beating the Terps by a decisive 84-73 score. Freshman center Hunter Dickinson led Michigan with 26 points and 7 boards while the Terps lost senior leader and defensive stopper Darryl Morsell for the second half with a facial fracture.
Fast forward to today and that game between the Terps and Wolverines to end 2020 seems like an eternity ago.
After missing the Terps’ game at Indiana on Jan. 4 to recover from surgery to repair a fractured bone in his face suffered versus Michigan, Morsell scored a career-high 19 points in Maryland’s upset win at Illinois Jan. 10.
After scoring in double figures for the Wolverines in each of their first 11 games, Dickinson was held to just 9 points in a 75-57 loss at Minnesota on Saturday, Michigan’s first loss of the season.
Now three weeks into the new year, the Terps will get another shot at No. 7 Michigan Tuesday night.
“We’ve got to be better, got to be better on the guards, got to be better in transition, a lot of things we have to be better at, post defense has to be better,” said Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon when asked of what it will take for his team to beat Michigan. “I think we’ve gotten better, we’ve kind of figured out our team since then but we’ve played a lot of good teams but they’re the best team we’ve played, and especially that night, I thought they were terrific. We’ll see, hopefully, we’ve gotten better and they don’t play quite as well and we can make it a game. We’re excited. The bad thing about this league is everybody is really good, the great thing about this league is you get a chance to beat someone really good every night. It’s tough as a head coach, you try to go one game at a time but the opportunity is there almost every night to play a really, really high-quality team and Michigan, to me, is the best team we’ve played all year.”
While senior guard Darryl Morsell is back healthy, playing some of the best basketball of his career since his injury versus Michigan, junior guard Eric Ayala has missed the previous two games with a groin injury.
The Terps’ leading scorer, averaging 14.0 points per game, Ayala is expected back Tuesday night at Michigan, although just how much of a role he will play is yet to be seen.
“Eric’s doing well, Eric is going to play tomorrow night,” Turgeon said. “He did a workout on Saturday on his own, practiced Sunday and Monday, looked really good Sunday, not as good today but he’s fine. I don’t think the injury is going to be a problem moving forward. Probably won’t start him, but he’ll play minutes and how much he plays depends on how well he plays and how he’s kind of adapted. A little worried about his conditioning because he’s been out a while but he’s going to play.”
As for the Wolverines, they were without senior starting guard Eli Brooks in their loss to Minnesota, but the Terps are expecting him to play according to Turgeon.
“He’s terrific isn’t he? He was so good in our building, controlled, defensively he was great,” Turgeon said of Brooks. “He looked fast, I don’t remember him being that fast here before, yeah, so we’ll see. I think from what I’m hearing--coach [DeAndre] Haynes used to coach there--that he’s going to play tomorrow night so yeah, they’re obviously a better team with him just like we’re a better team now that Darryl’s back and healthy and he’s kind of the same for them. He does all those little things that Darryl does for us.”
As both teams return to full strength, the difference this time around could be Maryland’s ability to slow down Dickinson. Minnesota laid out a blueprint for slowing down the freshman 7-footer over the weekend, but it could prove difficult for a Maryland team that lacks the same kind of personnel.
“I don’t know. Minnesota’s got great height, they’ve got a 7-footer, 7-foot-1 kid that’s in there guarding him, they doubled the post some. Hunter’s just been off the charts every game and some days it just doesn’t go your way. We’ve gotten better at what we do, we’re a different team playing differently than we did the first time against them. We’ve learned a lot about our teams so he’s a great player, he’s a tough matchup. We’ve got some things that we’re going to try but the thing that makes Michigan what they are is they’ve got a great low-post player in Dickinson, they’ve got four guys around him that can really play. Reminds me a lot of our team last year, we had just a terrific team, we were hard to guard at every position so we’ll lock-in, we’ll have a game plan, we’ve worked on it and hopefully, we play well.”
The Terps and Wolverines are set to tip-off in Ann Arbor at 7 p.m. ET. The game will be televised on FS1 and broadcast on the Maryland Sports Radio Network.
