Uncertain Principles

My Maryland Terrapins have been, shall we say, inconsistent this year, with back-to-back home losses to Ohio University (not Ohio State, Ohio U.) and American University. As a result, I didn't have really high hopes headed into Saturday's game at tope-ranked North Carolina. Much to my surprise, they played a really good game, and held on to win 82-80 on one of the ungainliest layups in the history of the game by Bambale Osby.

Carolina came into the game undefeated, and have been racking up big wins using Roy Williams's usual fast-paced style. They get up the court faster than almost any team in the nation, and blow a lot of teams out just on transition baskets. Beyond that, they have the nearly infallible half-court offense of "throw the ball up on the rim, and let Tyler Hansbrough crash in like a maniac and tip it."

Maryland held their own, though, largely because they play a similar sort of up-tempo game. They're not particularluy fazed by a team that gets up and down the court quickly, because they do the exact same thing. They mostly managed to get back and force the Tar Heels to take contested shots, and avoided getting blown out on the break. In the half-court, they did a great job on Hansbrough and the other Carolina big men, both by physically pushing and shoving them, and also by forcing them to work on the defensive end. Osby and James Gist had a ton of back-down shots in the post, and converted an impressive number of them.

(This is what's so frustrating about James Gist-- against Carolina and Duke, he'll pull out these games where he looks absolutely brilliant, but he's prone to vanishing against Virginia Tech or Florida State.)

The other big factor for Maryland was that Greivis Vasquez kept his game under control. He mostly restrained his impulses to throw wild cross-court passes, and played a solid game at point guard.

The win was Gary Williams's seventh over a team ranked #1 at the time of the game, a bit of trivia that the announcers repeated about a million times, which mostly just tells you that he coaches a team in a power conference, and gets a lot of chances to play highly ranked opponents. He's 4-3 in his last seven games against top-ranked teams, too, another nice factoid that doesn't mean much.

So, a great win for the Terps. Hopefully, they can carry some momentum from this into the rest of the ACC season-- they're now 2-2-- and make college basketball fans forget about the American U. loss... They host the hated Dukies next weekend, so we'll find out soon enough.