Baltimore Sports Post

The Terps pulled off an unexpected upset of the #1 North Carolina Tar Heels 82-80 on Caronlina’s home floor the Dean Smith Center.  The Terps got a solid effort from their starting five lead by James Gist, Landon Milborne and Greivis Vasquez offensively and Boom Osby defensively.  This is a huge win for the Terps who seem to be a bit of a jekyll and hyde team this year losing to Miami OH and American, but that’s what you’re going to get on a team with 6 freshman and 3 sophomore contributors where Gary Williams is still figuring out the right rotation and player rolls and the players are still learning the college (and now ACC) game.  The Terps dropped to 0-2 back to back years in ACC play, but this year they bounced right back to 2-2… we’ll see if they can keep it going next weekend when they play another top 5 team in Duke this time at the comcast center.

The Terps notched their first ACC victory last night by beating wake at the comcast center 71-64. They were beating wake handily, but managed to let them back into the game at the end to make things interesting. The win is a nice building block after having to recover from the demoralizing loss to Virginia Tech. The Terps schedule only gets tougher with the #1 Ranked Tarheels coming up this weekend and the following weekend a game against #5 Duke.

Eric Hayes is still missing from the Terps lineup, but freshman Adrian Bowie has filled in nicely. ACC play is going to be the true test for the six freshmen and three sophomores that the Terps are trying to groom. Hopefully they can mature sooner rather than later, because this weekend will be their first measuring stick type moment to see how good they are right now and how far they have to go to return the Terps to ACC elite status.

The Terps were winning 66-61 with 1:46 remaining, but somehow managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in losing 67-66. The “beatable” hokies managed to pull off a 6-0 run to close out the game when the Terps couldn’t hold onto the ball or make a shot. Eric Hayes didn’t play in the game, resting his sprained ankle, but the Terps were still in great position to win the game. Greivis Vasquez took a terrible off balance desperation shot with the clock at 3-4 seconds and bricked it off the back of the iron. It is possible he was under the impression that there was less time on the clock, but there was enough time for another pass or to move into position for a better shot. Oh well, the Terps start off the ACC 0-2 again…

The Terps won their final game before going into the ACC part of their schedule, beating Holy Cross 73-48. Holy Cross is usually a pretty good team coming out of the Patriot League, but clearly a team Maryland should have beaten. Then again that isn’t a given this year with the Terps and their youth considering a couple of weeks ago the Terps lost to American University who is also a member of the Patriot League. Maybe this means that the Terps have gotten their act together or found the right rotation of young players to be a better team. Holy Cross, which is usually the class of the Patriot League, beat Ohio University which is a team that beat Maryland earlier in the season. Also, the Terps main 3-point shooter Eric Hayes missed the game due to a sprained ankle, but they managed to shoot 50% from the field and Greivis Vasquez went 5-6 from behind the 3 point line.

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