Maryland still isn’t playing to its potential as March approaches
With the return of Melo Trimble and Jake Layman and the arrival of a trio of promising newcomers, Maryland entered this season expecting to ascend from an upper-echelon Big Ten team into one of the nation’s elite.
The Terps instead have already lost one more game than they did all last regular season and have fallen out of realistic Big Ten title contention as a result.
Saturday’s 83-79 loss at Purdue was Maryland’s sixth setback of the season and it dropped the preseason Big Ten favorite Terps two games behind first-place Indiana and a game back of second-place Iowa with one week left in the regular season. The only way Maryland could earn even a share of the Big Ten title would be if wins out, Indiana loses its two remaining games and Iowa beats the Hoosiers next Tuesday but drops at least one of its other two games.
At 23-6 overall and 11-5 in the Big Ten, Maryland is hardly a major disappointment, yet the Terps still don’t appear to be playing up to their potential either.
Maryland boasts a starting five as talented as any in the nation, yet the Terps don’t have a resume laden with quality wins and they’ve dropped three of their last four games. They’re on pace for either a No. 3 or 4 seed entering the final week of the regular season.
One of Maryland’s issues is that its frontcourt doesn’t fit together all that well.
Jake Layman’s best moments at Maryland came as mismatch at power forward last season, but he has to play more small forward with Robert Carter and Diamond Stone now in the fold. Layman’s quickness and perimeter shooting are not nearly as big an advantage against opposing wings. Also Stone would be better off paired with a stretch forward because it would give him more space to operate on the low block with his back to the basket.
Both Layman and Stone actually had strong offensive games against Purdue’s mammoth frontline, however, their combined 33 points did not offset their total inability to keep the Boilermakers off the glass. Somehow Purdue had 19 offensive rebound even though it shot 51.7 percent from the field for the game.
Center A.J. Hammons had 19 points for Purdue and guard Dakota Mathias had 17 off the bench. The Boilermakers frittered away a late nine-point lead because they couldn’t handle Maryland’s switch to full-court pressure, but Johnny Hill saved his team with a crucial driving layup with 1:15 to go and then a big offensive rebound one possession later.
Maryland might not have been forced to stage a second-half rally if Trimble could find a way to emerge from his late-season slump. The sophomore point guard is shooting 13-for-59 from the field in his last five Big Ten games and 4-for-21 from behind the arc.
While Trimble had 19 points against Purdue and got to the foul line consistently like he did earlier this year, it was still clear his confidence is not where it was. He shot 4-for-12 from the field and at times appeared to be unusually tentative taking open looks.
Issues like this wouldn’t be as big a deal if this were mid-January, but the Big Ten tournament is only 11 days away and the NCAA tournament looms the following week.
In other words, Maryland needs to shake Trimble out of his slump, get greater consistency out of Layman and fix its rebounding woes before a once-promising season starts to slip away.
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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
