In the first of the final two home games of the regular season, Maryland took aim at Northwestern with eyes on avenging its three-point loss in Evanston a month prior.
Trailing by 11 points with just under five minutes to play, the Terps went on an 8-0 run to slice the deficit to three and give life to the Xfinity Center for the first time all night. Northwestern quickly answered with four straight points of its own, adding late free throws to put it out of reach to exit College Park with its 20th victory, 68-61.
The Wildcats were already without Ty Berry, but suffered another tough break just before tip as Ryan Langborg was ruled out. In their absence, Nick Martinelli scored a career-high 27 points, connecting on 9-of-14 from the field and 9-of-10 from the free throw line. The forward seemed to be everywhere on Wednesday night, as his late layup secured a massive road win for Northwestern.
With the loss, Maryland falls to 15-14 on the season and 7-11 in Big Ten play, and now essentially needs to win its final two games for any shot at a bye in the conference tournament.
Maryland’s impossibly bad three-point shooting woes continued, as the Terps shot just 2-of-22 from beyond the arc on Wednesday.
“It’s always tough playing a team twice,” Jahmir Young said. “They knew all of our sets and they made it tough for us to get our easy baskets and easy twos, so we got a lot of open threes – we missed them and it cost us.”
The first half left a lot to be desired offensively, as Maryland shot just 5-of-26 from the field and 1-of-14 from three-point range in the first 20 minutes. The Terps went over eight minutes without scoring a field goal midway through the half, but still found themselves down by only five at halftime. The teams combined for only two three-point makes in the first half.
Young scored a team-high 24 points on 6-of-14 shooting, doing most of his damage in the second half. He, alongside DeShawn Harris-Smith, supplied the majority of the offense for the Terps, who shot 39% from the field.
Harris-Smith, who finished with 14 points and five rebounds, continued to showcase his newfound confidence over the last several games. He was able to utilize his strong left hand drive and create contact at will throughout the second half. His performance has given hope for his development for next season and beyond.
“I just feel like I’ve got an alpha personality, so when we’re down it’s my job to try and rally the team together and do whatever I can to help us win,” he said. “I was just trying to do whatever it takes to get us some momentum, get us some energy to get us back in the game and today it just happened to be to score.”
“Like I’ve been saying all year, the more games I get under my belt the more comfortable I get and the more the game is going to slow down for me,” he added.
Maryland’s frontcourt dealt with foul trouble throughout the evening, as Julian Reese picked up his fourth foul with 12:31 remaining. After a quiet first half, Reese finished with 12 points on only eight field goal attempts in just 26 minutes of play.
“They were extremely physical with [Reese] in the first game and I thought they were extremely physical with him in the second game,” head coach Kevin Willard said. “If you get some calls, it can loosen [him] up, or they can just keep hacking you and hacking you and you don’t get the calls – Ju got a little frustrated.”
Northwestern made four out of five field goals to take a double-digit lead with just over six minutes to go. Boo Bui, who entered play averaging just under 19 points per game, connected on his second three to help push the Wildcats’ lead to 58-49.
After free throws made the score 60-49, Maryland rattled off four straight field goals to pull within three points with a little over two minutes to go. But a pair of free throws and a layup by Martinelli gave Northwestern enough cushion to fend off the late comeback attempt.
“We just didn’t do a good job on Martinelli,” Willard said. “We kept closing out a little bit too deep, we wanted him to shoot the basketball, we didn’t want him to get in there – we just had some blown assignments.”
Maryland will play its final game at home on Sunday against Indiana, before having a week off prior to the season’s final regular season game at Penn State on March 10. The Indiana game will tip at 2 p.m. on CBS.
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