Thursday night's shellacking of St. John's seemed to be mostly about the ineptitude of the Red Storm, rather than an indicator of greatness for the Terps. I fully expected them to come out and lose to Michigan State, who beat a ranked Texas team in their half of the semifinal bracket.
Much to my surprise, when we got back from dinner and flipped on ESPN, St. John's and Texas were locked in a tight game, that Texas eventually won by two, which either meant that St. John's was better than I thought, or that Texas was wiped out from their last-second loss to Michigan State the night before. Either way, the Terps' chances looked better.
And, indeed, there were a couple of points where it looked like Maryland might run away with this one. Michigan State hung in there, though, and rallied again and again to keep it close, thanks in large part to incredibly sloppy play by the Terps. Of course, they never quite got all the way back, thanks to incredibly sloppy play on the part of the Spartans, and Maryland hung on to win the "2K Sports College Hoops Classic Benefitting Coaches vws. Cancer," a tournament which better have either a gigantic trophy or a really good engraver.
So, what do we learn from this? Well, not all that much. This looks like a fairly typical Maryland team, really-- in the first half, they came out with a lot of intensity, and pressured Michigan State into a lot of turnovers, and got easy baskets. In the second half, when they tried to run some clock, their half-court offense was pretty bad. D.J. Strawberry is a great defender, and really excellent on the press, but not so good as a half-court offensive player. Ekene Ibekwe continues to try to make up for lousy defensive fundamentals by using his quickness to block shots. Mike Jones continues to be streaky as all hell.
I think this team has the potential to be really good, but they haven't quite got everything working together yet. Their big weakness is going to continue to be in the half-court game, but if they can figure out a way to consistently generate points from their set offense, they should do well. For the moment, though, they're the champions of a pre-season tournament with a really long name, and that's a good way to head into Thanksgiving.
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Maryland was definitely the better team that night, but MSU managed to hang around somehow. I'd like to see Maryland (or someone) take a nip out of UNC and Duke in the ACC this year, so this could be a good omen along those lines.
Still not sure what to make of MSU after the CvC final. I think they are going to be able to drag most teams down to their level and keep things close, that's about the best I can say for them right now. Wisconsin and a fully Oden'ed OSU will still be pretty tall tasks.