Terps know they must take care of the ball better with Ohio up next

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- With nearly a month until their next Big Ten game, the Terps’ matchup in College Park Dec. 7 with Ohio (4-3) will begin a stretch of five straight non-conference home games in the month of December for Maryland (7-3, 1-1 Big Ten), which will be looking to find some consistency before resuming league play.

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“We just have to fine-tune some things,” Terps head coach Mark Turgeon said Dec. 6. “We have to get better in our halfcourt offense; we have to get better at our halfcourt defense. Just little things. We have to get certain guys playing better. The good thing is it’s [Dec. 6] and we don’t play a conference game again until [Jan. 2], so we have some time to get better.”

Maryland’s most glaring deficiency in most of its games this season has been its turnover rate. The Terps are averaging 17 turnovers per game so far this season and have a turnover percentage on offense of 24.4, which ranks 338th out of 351 Division 1 college basketball programs.

Despite losing their conference opener at home to Purdue, Maryland showed the ability to take care of the ball in that game against a man defense by only committing seven turnovers. But playing against zone defenses has been the Terps’ kryptonite this season, and it showed with 25 turnovers their next outing at Illinois.

While Turgeon admits his team’s play against the zone has been subpar so far, he believes the Terps will improve in that area moving forward because of how the early season schedule has prepared them.

“I think [the Illinois] game was a lot to do with the environment and who we were playing,” Turgeon said. “I thought we were better against Purdue. So we’ll just try to keeping getting better with it and I think that we’ll have games where we’re terrific like with seven [turnovers] against Purdue and some other games on the road that puts the team in a tough environment where we’re not as good. But we’re trying to get better.

“I really believe that we’ve played so many crazy defenses that we really haven’t been able to settle into anything. Purdue played straight man on a night where we only had seven turnovers, and if you look at our schedule moving forward most of our teams will play straight man on us. And I think as the season goes on we’ll just get better and better with it.”

Maryland’s turnover woes highlight another issue the Terps are facing at the moment. A lack of a reliable backup ball handler to spell starting point guard Anthony Cowan has cost Maryland games this season, and with freshman Darryl Morsell not necessarily working out in that role so far, Turgeon could look elsewhere for some help.

“We need someone to help there in that situation,” Turgeon said. “We’ve practiced Darryl [Morsell] there the most and maybe we’ll try Kevin [Huerter] there some too. Darryl was hurting in the New Mexico game and we put Kevin at the point some. We’re playing Anthony a lot of minutes and he’s playing great, but we’ve got to get his minutes down as we head into league play just to make sure he stays fresh moving forward.”

Next on the docket for the Terps as they try to make the right corrections are the Bobcats, who hope to replicate the result from when these two programs met a decade ago. The all-time series between Maryland and Ohio is currently tied 1-1, but the Bobcats picked up the win at Xfinity Center in their last meeting on Dec. 12, 2007.

Unlike Maryland, Ohio is a team that takes care of the ball with just a 15.5 turnover percentage on offense, which ranks 21st nationally. The Bobcats defense ranks in the top 40 in offensive rebound percentage (23.7) and free throw-to-field goal ratio (26.0).

Ohio’s 6-foot-3 freshman point guard Teyvion Kirk is scoring at a high pace with 14.4 points per game, while also adding 5.1 rebounds and 3.7 assists per contests. He teams up with Bobcats senior forward Mike Laster, who is coming off of four straight games with 18 points or more.

While Ohio is not another Big Ten opponent, the Bobcats are no pushover and Turgeon knows they can’t be taken lightly.

“We have a heck of a tough game tomorrow night,” Turgeon said. “These guys are good--another St. Bonaventure; another Bucknell; really well-coached. So it’s a tough matchup for us. It’s not like we can just sit here and just work on us. We’ve got to get really prepared for a tough game tomorrow night.”

Tip-off at Xfinity Center between Maryland and Ohio is set for 7 p.m. EST. The game will be televised on Big Ten Network.