Maryland Beat Georgetown In One Of The Most Ridiculous College Basketball Games I've Ever Seen
What an unbelievable game. An absolute whistle show for sure, but a great game regardless. Georgetown did everything in their power to give that game away, and Maryland took full advantage. Closing out a game with a 72-66 lead with 30 seconds left really isn’t that complicated. You just gotta avoid turning the ball over, take the fouls and make the free throws, and make sure the other team earns any points in their comeback effort. They failed at all 3 of those things. TWICE they turned the ball over and TWICE they fouled Maryland and sent them to the line before they could even inbound the ball.
An incredible choke job for sure, but also gotta credit Maryland for taking full advantage and making all 6 of their free throws in the final 20 seconds. And of course… the man of the hour… Kevin Huerter. Made a huge 3 with 58 seconds left to cut it to 70-66, forced Tre Campbell to step out of bounds with 8 seconds left down 1, and made the game-winning block on the final possession. Just a fantastic play and it wasn’t even his man.
If you watched the Terps play American on Friday, you saw the Terps’ freshmen struggle at times. Last night they played like men. Anthony Cowan looked completely comfortable out there running the show, Huerter obviously showed his worth with a collection of veteran plays, and Justin Jackson played with oodles of confidence by knocking down three 3’s and grabbing a bunch of impressive rebounds. I said in Friday’s season preview that the Terps were going to have to lean heavily on these 3, and they certainly looked impressive last night. Melo was Melo down the stretch and got his, but he can’t do it on his own. I’m real excited to see these 3 develop over the course of this year and see what this team’s ceiling is.
The last note I have about that game was the refereeing, which continues to be a problem in college basketball. So many ticky tack fouls. It’s not even that the calls all seemed to be going against the Terps (which they were, Georgetown attempted 42 free throws to Maryland’s 22). It’s just the sheer volume of whistles throughout the game. It makes college basketball unbearable to watch. That game took 2.5 hours! The Wisconsin-Creighton game on FS1 was approaching halftime by the time it switched over. That’s ridiculous, and it’s gonna upset a lot of fans and sponsors if that’s the way things are going to go all year. We even had a Joey Crawford moment where Cowan was in the middle of shooting a key free throw and the scorer’s table laid on the buzzer. Truly a bizarre moment. Plus the fact that the Terps had EIGHT players with 2 fouls in the 1st half, and had FIVE players with 4 fouls going into the last minute… it completely affects the course of the game. More hoops, less whistles.
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Having said all that, great win against a local rival. NEED this game every single year. It matters in recruiting, and nobody knows that more than Turge. This was a big win, just look at him go
WE’RE GOING TO BENTLEY’S