COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – Maryland coach Mark Turgeon had no answers.
His 16th-ranked Terrapins were thoroughly outplayed Thursday night, thumped 51-32 on the boards and beaten 80-56 on the scoreboard by an Ohio State team that had seemed brittle and timid just 10 days earlier.
”For some reason, we just weren’t any good tonight,” Turgeon said. ”We didn’t have it. We didn’t have it all night. We could never get going. I’ll take the blame for that. We weren’t tough enough tonight. And we didn’t make shots and it kind of affected our whole game.”
The Terrapins (18-4, 6-3 Big Ten), who had won four of five coming in, shot just 30.5 percent and looked lost at both ends. The Buckeyes (17-5, 6-3), who won their third in a row, shot 59 percent in the second half and went 10 of 17 on 3-pointers for the game.
”We just have to break down the film and remember what got us here,” said Dez Wells, who led the Terrapins with 12 points. ”We’ll have a tough practice tomorrow, so I’m not worried about any of that.”
The Terps have plenty of things to fix. They didn’t get their first field goal until 7 1/2 minutes had elapsed. They later gave up a 12-0 run in the opening half, then were on the wrong side of a 7-0 spurt near the start of the second half that put them in a hole too deep to overcome.
”I guess we weren’t tough enough,” swingman Evan Smotrycz said. ”It’s as simple as that.”
Turgeon struggled to find something positive.
”We just weren’t very good tonight,” he said. ”I hope it’s an aberration. Good thing for us, we’ve got a bye coming up. We’ve got six days before our next game, so we’ve got a lot of time to get better.”
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ONE-SIDED DUEL
It was supposed to be a battle between two of the top freshmen in the Big Ten, if not the country. But Ohio State’s D’Angelo Russell – who had 18 points, 14 rebounds and six assists – easily eclipsed Maryland’s leading scorer, 6-foot-3 Melo Trimble, who came in averaging 16.3 points per game.
Trimble had a forgettable night. He missed all eight shots from the field, including four 3-pointers, and ended up with three points, one rebound and one assist.
”He’s a terrific player,” Ohio State coach Thad Matta said. ”I’d like to say we had a lot to do with it, but he just sort of had one of those nights.”
QUOTE OF THE NIGHT
Turgeon, on the differential on the glass: ”I don’t know if I’ve ever had a team get outrebounded like that. I’ll have to look. I doubt it. My teams usually rebound.”
TIP-INS
Maryland: Balance is clearly one of the Terrapins’ strengths. Who do you want to stop? And what will it cost you? Maryland is the only team in the Big Ten with three players averaging 13.5 points or more per game. Trimble came in at 16.3, Jake Layman at 14.3 and Wells at 13.6.
Compare that with Ohio State, which had only one player over that mark (Russell at 19.4 ppg).
Ohio State: It was the first Big Ten matchup between the teams, but they had met six previous times with Ohio State winning four.
The schools met in three consecutive seasons (1983-85), with the Buckeyes taking two. Terps All-American Len Bias, who died of a cocaine overdose in 1986 after being selected No. 2 overall in the NBA draft by the Boston Celtics, starred in all three, averaging 20.3 points and six rebounds.
UP NEXT
Maryland: The Terrapins, who alternate home and away until stringing together a second straight home game on Feb. 24, return to XFINITY Center to play Penn State on Wednesday.
Ohio State: The Buckeyes, who also got 19 points from Marc Loving and 16 from Jae’Sean Tate, hit the road for four of their next five games, starting with a game at Purdue on Wednesday.
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Follow Rusty Miller on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/RustyMillerAP
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