There was plenty of eventful men's college basketball on Wednesday night. Nos. 1, 2, and 5 all lost tough road games, Mississippi State produced a statement blowout over Pitt, Texas eked out a nail-biter over NC State, and UConn got themselves right with a victory over Baylor. But sometimes a blog girl just wants to have fun, and for this reason we turn our eyes to College Park.
While the other major conferences were doing crossover events, the Big Ten gave fans a little early preview this week: Teams play a couple conference games, retreat for variety over the holidays, then return in the new year for the full gantlet. Ohio State, in head coach Jake Diebler's first full season, is looking to shed its underachiever reputation with an experienced roster bolstered by a couple of key transfers. Maryland, meanwhile, is hoping that the arrival of top-tier freshman Derik Queen will catapult them back into the tourney picture.
Based on the results from this matchup, Maryland is further along in their journey. In an 83-59 stomping that at one point saw the Terrapins up by 40 points, the home team benefited from sloppy Buckeye play, hit big threes early, and consistently penetrated inside. Ja'Kobi Gillespie, a stellar shooter and two-way point guard who came over from Belmont, led the way with 23 points, while Queen put together another standout night with 17 points and 11 boards. The action took place in a pretty roomy-looking barn—who would go out of their way to see An Ohio State University?—but Gillespie earned loud cheers just the same with this ankle-breaker in transition that made the score 39-14.
The KenPom win probability graph for this game really succumbed to the effects of gravity. This is not a chart of Uncle Kracker album sales; it's merely a tool which we can use to see how quickly the night got out of hand.
Maryland was so good, in fact, that they enjoyed perhaps the first-ever usage of "We looked great in practice" as something other than helpless bargaining after an ugly defeat.
“We had our best practice we’ve had all year yesterday,” Maryland coach Kevin Willard said. “What you saw in the first half (is) how we practiced yesterday."
For Ohio State, who lost their last game thanks to an OT buzzer-beater by Pitt, this is a one-two punch they'll have to process quickly—not only for Rutgers on Saturday to avoid an 0-2 in-conference start but also the looming giants of Auburn and Kentucky later this month. For a loss this terrible in school history, you'd have to crack open the history books and go all the way back to four days earlier, when the OSU football team, nearly three-touchdown favorites, absolutely blew it in Columbus against a depleted Michigan squad that somehow managed to beat them 13-10 despite only passing for 62 yards.
The Terrapins were at home and they've already got a logo there, so they had no pressing need to plant some iconic symbol of theirs at center court to emphasize their dominance. But they so thoroughly owned this game that they would have been justified in doing so anyway. Maybe it's time to cut Ryan Day some slack. It's hard to win at a school like Ohio State.
