Maryland men's basketball blows signature win, leaving familiar feeling following UVA loss

18 hours ago

3 min read

Head coach Buzz Williams described it best when reflecting on Maryland men's basketball's second loss, this time to sixth-ranked Virginia in a four-point loss at home: "an incredible response to a disappointing result."

For a team that was all but dominated at Capital One Arena against another regional rival just six days ago, Maryland found themselves in a much different spot after leading by as many as 11 and ahead for all but ten minutes.

Then, the second half happened.

An 11 point halftime lead all but evaporated within a matter of minutes into the second half. Consecutive threes from DJ Wagner and Mike McNair Jr. briefly pushed Maryland ahead, but Virginia responded with a 9-0 run within a three-minute span that made it a brand new game. With eight minutes left, Maryland and Virginia traded the lead five times before Virginia guard Sam Lewis, who finished with a career-high 28 points on 75% shooting, finished in the paint to push Maryland in a deficit for good.

Virginia went on to shoot over 62% from the field, but it was the 76.9% shooting from the field in the second half that proved no match too much to stop. Virginia made nine of its final ten buckets, compared to Maryland shooting just 33% over the final 12:36.

"I think that what we got to continue to figure out is our shot quality impacts those things, but it also impacts the opponent's shot quality," head coach Buzz Williams added.

Kaden House, who finished with a career-high 17 points while recording three offensive rebounds and a steal, put the second half woes simply: "I don't really know."

"I mean, I feel like we kind of just got complacent as a team, and we let foul calls, I guess, just like get us to be a little bit less aggressive," McNair, who tallied 15 points on 50% three point shooting, said. "And then when things wouldn't go our way as a group, we kind of wouldn't focus on the details that we were talking about. And so we just gotta continue to get better and focus on the details later in the game."

Another difference was Maryland turning eight first half turnovers into 13 points through the first half, while committing only three themselves. The second half was more evenly split with Virginia scoring two more points off turnovers than Maryland. Maryland also shot just 23.5% from three in Friday's loss, now shooting just 21.5% from three through the trio of regular season games as Buzz Williams admitted, "it is a category that we've got to continue to improve."

Williams did not that Maryland did a, "much better job within each possession, regardless of who shot, being more aware of our shot quality."

With Maryland trailing by one with 3:48, Williams called a critical challenge that proved to be the right call after replay review confirmed an out of bounds against Chance Mallory to give Maryland possession. Though Virginia responded with consecutive layups to move ahead by five over the next minute, Williams did note that Maryland made an adjustment after the challenge, "to have more presence at the rim because they were scoring at such a high rate. They were scoring twos. They weren't scoring threes, but they were scoring twos at the rim, and we were fouling too much in the second half."

Yet it didn't matter given Virginia made all seven of their shot attempts over the final 5:42 en route to another humbling loss. In a game with a sold out student section and Xfinity Center with the best atmosphere since the Michigan State game in 2025, Maryland ultimately fell short in an opportunity for Buzz Williams and the revamped roster to meet the moment. Instead, a familiar feeling began to seep through the Xfinity Center as fans headed for the exits over the final two minutes, leaving more questions than answers in a season where fans crave more. While Maryland will look to bounce back to .500 when they face Alcorn State for a 6 PM tip on Monday, the bigger question will be whether they can get over the hump to beat a top team. That will be a question answered in ten days with a matchup against 11th-ranked Tennessee to kick off the Players Era Tournament.

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