When Maryland (4-2) takes the court at Xfinity Center Dec. 22 to play La Salle (3-4), the Terps not only will be looking to end a two-game losing streak, but they’re also in search of some toughness that has been lacking in their last two games.
“I thought we got better between Clemson and Rutgers. We just weren’t tough enough to win that (Rutgers) game,” head coach Mark Turgeon said Monday. “I think we’ve gotten better. We’ll see [Tuesday] night how we play and how guys react and all of that stuff. But we’ve had some really good practices. We’ve had a lot of chances to practice.
“But we have to be a lot tougher, too, than we were against Rutgers. We worked a lot on that. Just trying to be a tougher basketball team when we get tired and things get tough just to fight through it. So it’s just all part of the process with this team and we feel like we’ve made some headway here in the last two weeks even though we’ve only had one game.”
One Terp that knows a thing or two about toughness is senior Darryl Morsell.
The Baltimore native has been one of Maryland’s grittiest players in recent years. And as the Terps’ senior leader, Morsell has been emphasizing to his teammates the importance of toughness and explaining what toughness on the court actually looks like.
“Being tough is getting through ball screens,” Morsell said. “If you can get through ball screens and disrupt the play and let the guy turn down hill or whatever, it might go unnoticed but that’s one of those tough plays that can translate into great team defense. So I talked to them today about anticipating ball screens, getting through ball screens, and how that’s toughness. Fighting fatigue — that’s toughness.”
Maryland knows that it doesn’t have to worry about Morsell bringing his grit on Tuesday against the Explorers, but the Terps would like to see him turn in a more efficient offensive game than he has been having recently.
In Maryland’s back-to-back losses to Clemson and Rutgers, Morsell scored just 10 points while shooting a combined 5-for-23, including 0-for-6 from three. The senior knows the Terps need him to break out of his slump and become more consistent on offense in order for them to achieve their goals.
“I can get better shots for sure,” Morsell said. “I sat down and talked to coach Turgeon about it. And I told some of the guys on the team that I will be better and look to take better shots for the team. I’m just trying to get better everyday. When we got back from the loss, we just talked about being tougher and getting stops when we need to get stops.”
Toughness and communication are the two things Turgeon said he’d like to see the most improvement in from his team. Both factor in heavily to solid defense, which is how Turgeon believes the Terps will turn things around.
“I’m still trying to figure out the best way to coach this team,” Turgeon said. “I think we’re getting closer to that. But we have to get a lot better defensively than we’ve been to compete in this league, which is terrific. I think offensively our turnovers came way down against Rutgers. We had nine. We got a lot of open looks; we just didn’t make them. So I feel like we’re trending in the right way there. We’ve kind of tried to make it simple and just play harder. There are a lot of things we have to get better at, but you can’t get better at 10 things at once.”
Terps junior wing Aaron Wiggins echoed his coach’s sentiment and thinks if Maryland can get back to playing up to par defensively then the offensive struggles that have been perhaps more glaring should start to dissipate.
“Our defense hasn’t been good enough,” Wiggins said. “We haven’t guarded the ball well. We haven’t rebounded as well as we’re capable. And that’s what leads to the scoring in transition opportunities and that’s one thing we had to improve on and that’s what we’ve been working on the last week or so.”
Coming straight down I-95 from Philadelphia, head coach Ashley Howard’s La Salle squad features a balanced attack in which eight guys are averaging six or more points per game this season.
The Explorers are led by former Maryland recruit and Philly native David Beatty. The senior is averaging a team-high 10.4 points and 2.6 rebounds per game. La Salle’s 6-foot-8 sophomore forward Jack Clark and his team-leading 6.9 rebounds per game will handle most of the dirty work down low for the Explorers. Freshman point guard Jhmair Brickus has also proven to be a nice find for Howard. The sub-6-foot Brickus is averaging 8.7 points, 2.7 assists, and 1.7 steals per game through the first seven games of his collegiate career.
It will certainly be a step down in competition from Maryland’s last two outings, but the Terps know they need to show vast improvement regardless of who they’re playing and they are not in a position to take anyone lightly based on how they’ve looked recently.
“I just want to see improvement,” Turgeon said. “La Salle is a really talented team. They have really good players, a couple of players that we recruited. They have a nice team and they’re coming off of a win, and three of their last four. So we just want to lock in on La Salle, play well, and hopefully show improvement in areas that might not be so much Xs and Os type things that we have to get better at with our team. So that’s really what we’re looking for.”
Maryland and La Salle are scheduled to tip off in College Park at 7 p.m. EST. The game will be televised on the Big Ten Network and can be heard on the Maryland Sports Radio Network.
