WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — After receiving a bounce pass from junior guard Eric Ayala at the top of the arc, sophomore forward Donta Scott used a pump fake tease to throw his defender off and then stormed into the lane. He took off from the free-throw line, leaping into the air at full force to poster a Connecticut defender with a powerful one-handed slam.
Huskie forward Adama Sanogo then scored a layup on the other end, but Maryland men’s basketball wasn’t fazed in the slightest. The bright lights were on, and this time it was Aaron Wiggins’ turn. The junior guard cut into the paint, grabbed a pass from senior Darryl Morsell and burst towards the basket for a slam dunk of his own to extend the Terps’ lead to 13.
Maryland came into Saturday’s game as the lower seed of a first round matchup in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in head coach Mark Turgeon’s tenure, picked by nearly every college basketball expert to falter. But the team found its rhythm to play with confidence, allowing it to hold firm against a comeback attempt from UConn en route to a 63-54 victory.
The first round matchup was expected to be a defensive slugfest, but Maryland’s offense wouldn’t be stopped. The Terps shot 51.2% from the field and 50% from deep, tearing apart the Connecticut defense.
Nearly every college basketball expert around the country had picked the Huskies to win this one, and the opening minutes of the matchup gave a peek into why that may have been.
Connecticut had complete control of the boards from the opening tip, grabbing four consecutive offensive rebounds before draining a triple to take a 3-0 lead. All of the Huskies’ first seven points came on second chance attempts, with the Terps struggling to man the defensive boards.
Junior guard Eric Ayala allowed the Terps to stay up front despite such struggles. He came out of the gates on fire to score eight of Maryland’s first 10 points, doing so in dazzling fashion without missing a single shot.
The Terps played with hounding defense, only allowing the Huskies to make five of their first 18 shots from the floor, but it didn’t make much of a difference in the box score due to the their poor performance on the boards. At the under-12 media timeout, Maryland held just a 13-11 lead after allowing UConn nine second chance points on 10 offensive rebounds to start the contest.
Yet, the dismal rebounding performance didn’t do the Terps’ much damage as they got it done on the other end of the floor.
As the first half continued, so did Ayala’s heroic play. He was a man on a mission, not intending on slowing down anytime soon. After UConn took a 19-18 lead with a little under eight minutes left, Ayala drained a deep three with ease off a toss-off pass from Darryl Morsell to put his team back ahead. And they never trailed again from there.
That was the junior guard’s last bucket of the half, as he sat out the last four and a half minutes with two fouls. But as the Terps’ confidence grew, other players started to get into their groove as well.
On the next possession, following an ugly rebounding scramble for the ball after a missed UConn shot, Hart again had a crucial pass, kicking the ball out to Aaron Wiggins, who drained a triple to give the Terps a 28-19 lead.
The sequence was part of a 10-0 run from Maryland, but the real catalyst of that span was its hounding defense, which forced Connecticut into missing eight straight shots amid a 4:06 scoring drought.
While the Huskies failed get going offensively, its leading scorer in James Bouknight struggled to get on track himself. The Terps blitzed the projected lottery pick every time he got into the paint, with the Big Ten’s Defensive Player of the Year in Morsell not making it easy for him on the perimeter either.
UConn’s leading scorer was held to just 7 points on 3-of-11 shooting in the first half, as the Huskie offense was stuck in neutral for most of the first 20 minutes of play. The team shot just 23.1% from the field and 33.3% from beyond the arc, as Maryland’s scoring attack looked completely in rhythm, led by a game-high 14 first half points from Ayala to take a 33-22 lead going into the locker room.
The Terps’ 75% mark from the deep was more than Connecticut had allowed all in a half all season, with its previous high being 61.5% allowed to Georgetown on March 6.
Ayala’s hot streak picked up as soon as he got back in action to start the second half. He drained consecutive jumpers within the first two minutes of action, extending the Maryland lead to 43-29 before the monstrous dunks from Scott and Wiggins.
The Terps led by as much as 14 points, but the Huskies, who had struggled offensively throughout the matchup, began to climb their way back into the contest as the second half continued.
UConn used a 11-3 run over 6:37 to trim Maryland’s lead down to five with just under three minutes remaining, with Maryland needing a quick response to kill off its first round contest. And it did just that over the final 2:36, with four converted free throws from Ayala and Morsell widening the gap back to 57-48, allowing for the Terps to rely on their defense to get them across the finish line.
Three things to know
1. Eric Ayala was electrifying. To start the game, Ayala had eight of the Terps’ first 10 points but he did not stop there. The guard finished the night with 23 points shooting 8-for-14 from the field, 3-for-5 from deep and 4-for-4 from the stripe. In his 32 minutes on the court, Ayala grabbed four boards, had one assist and stole the ball away from the Huskies three times. Whenever the Terps needed him most, Ayala sparked the momentum for the team. In the final seconds of the game, Ayala got the ball to Hakeem hart for the layup to extend Maryland’s lead when they were up by just six points.
2. The play in the paint was pretty even. Despite UConn owning the size advantage over the undersized Terps, Maryland managed to hold its own in the paint on both ends of the floor. Though the Huskies totaled 18 points in the paint themselves, the Terps put up 24 of their own, including several on some rim-ratting slam dunks.
3. Maryland faces 2-seed Alabama next. With the victory, The Terps are set to play the Crimson Tide in the Round of 32 on Monday. Maryland looks to move on to the Sweet Sixteen after falling just short in the 2019 NCAA Tournament.