COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- It was a tale of two halves for No. 24 Maryland (19-6, 10-4 Big Ten) and freshman forward Jalen “Stix” Smith at Xfinity Center Feb. 12, as the Terps and Smith overcame slow starts to surge in the second half and remain unbeaten at home in the Big Ten with a 70-56 win over No. 12 Purdue (17-7, 10-3).
“Obviously I’m really proud of our team,” Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon said. “We had a really good Purdue team that’s extremely well-coached and has really kind of owned us for the last two years. I don’t know if we were a little bit sluggish or a little bit nervous but we weren’t very good in the first half. At halftime, I really just tried to change the body language. It really wasn’t about Xs and Os. It was just changing our body language and believing we could win and playing well. We did change some things offensively--bringing guys off baselines, played through the post--and I think because we scored early in the second half it gave us confidence. Then our defense was terrific.”
Trailing by eight at halftime, the Terps made adjustments and came out clicking in the second half. Maryland went on a 10-2 run coming out of the locker room to tie the game at 40 after back-to-back buckets by Smith, who scored 14 of his team-high 16 points in the game’s final 20 minutes. The Terps would take their first lead of the game, 50-48, about halfway through the second half after an alley-oop from Anthony Cowan Jr. to Smith that charged up the crowd in College Park and helped Maryland never trail the rest of the way.
“I tell Stix everyday that you’re a key part of what we do,” Terps freshman guard Eric Ayala said. “In the second half, he played tremendous and whenever he’s playing well we’re just at a different level. He just brings us a different dynamic from the inside and outside. I appreciate Stix and what he does.”
The win not only avenged Maryland’s two-point loss to Purdue in West Lafayette back in December, it also snapped the Boilermakers’ eight-game win streak and helped the Terps match their win total from last season.
Behind Smith’s strong second half, Ayala’s 15 points, and Bruno Fernando’s 16th double-double of the season (seventh in a row), Maryland put itself in prime position Tuesday night to compete for a top-four seed in the Big Ten and subsequently a double bye in the conference tournament.
“It was a huge win for us,” Fernando said. “I think it helps us build on our confidence for sure. I think that’s a win that we can look back on and realize that we’re able to stay in the game with anybody in our conference. They’re a great team. They run their offense extremely well. They’re really well coached and they have a lot of great players. So for us to get this win means a lot. But we take it one game at a time and we have Michigan next so that’s what we’re thinking about now.”
Fernando finished with 12 points and 12 rebounds as he and Smith scored 23 of their combined 28 points in the second half. But besides stellar play from its frontcourt, Maryland pulled away after halftime because of its lockdown team defense.
The Terps held Purdue, which entered the game as the 4th-ranked team nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency, to just 18 points in the second half on 17 percent (6-for-36) shooting from the field.
“I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves but it’s pretty amazing what this young group is doing defensively,” Turgeon said. “They work at it. We work hard at it...It is pretty impressive. It really is. And I think we can get better defensively.”
Despite scoring just four points, Terps sophomore Darryl Morsell had a huge impact on the game for Maryland by guarding Boilermakers leading scorer and point guard, Carsen Edwards, who finished with a game-high 24 points but needed 27 field goal attempts to do so. Morsell, with some help from freshman Aaron Wiggins, held Edwards to 2-for-13 shooting after halftime.
“Darryl has to understand that what he’s doing for our team is just as important as Anthony scoring or Bruno scoring or Bruno’s rebounds,” Turgeon said. “And I think he has accepted that. And the thing I like the most is I think Darryl was having a lot of fun. He had a smile on his face and he was really enjoying all of it.”
The win not only gave Maryland its first victory over a top-15 opponent this season, it also helped show how far the Terps’ young team has come since its loss to Purdue in early December.
During Maryland’s run in the second half, the Terps received 21 straight points from freshmen Smith, Ayala, and Wiggins with the Boilermakers focusing on Cowan and Fernando on the bench with foul trouble.
If tonight was a sign of things to come, Maryland could be one of the Big Ten and college basketball’s most dangerous teams down the stretch.
“It was crazy,” Turgeon said. “I went back and watched that film today (of the loss to Purdue) and it made my stomach hurt because, man, we were young. We just played hard and gutted it out. We had no business in that game and we’ve come a long ways. They’re young guys, but they have a lot of experience now and they just keep getting better.”
