Maryland men's basketball upsets Iowa to start its first Big Ten win streak

Chase King
16 hours ago
3 min read

Andre Mills and Diggy Coit caught fire and propelled Maryland to its first back-to-back wins since it beat UNLV in the Players Era Tournament.

Maryland Men’s Basketball (10-14, 3-10) hosted the Iowa Hawkeyes (18-6, 8-5) and had its biggest win of the season in a close game to avenge the 19-point loss back on Dec. 6.

Mills led the way with a career-high 24 points while shooting at least 50% from the field for the fourth consecutive game.

Maryland used the same three-forward lineup as they did in their win at Minnesota and their loss against Ohio State, and it made an immediate impact, with the Terps having five offensive rebounds in the first five and a half minutes.

“I think that the starting [Colin Metcalf] was exclusively based on, ‘here are list of deficiencies on both sides of the ball, which ones are intertwined,’ and it was rebounding.”

Metcalf would finish the game with a season-high 11 rebounds and three blocks and did a good job altering Iowa’s shots near the rim. Iowa finished the game shooting 14-of-23 on layups.

The five offensive rebounds early helped the Terps maintain a lead, but the Terps were not finding any good looks inside and settled for threes on their first eight shot attempts of the game.

Mills jump-started the Terps inside scoring, scoring six straight. Maryland would build off that and start attacking the paint more often, scoring 14 points in the paint in the first half and shooting 7-for-9 on layups.

“Dre’s energy is just infectious. As soon as he gets going, the rest of us, we see it, we start clicking,” said Collin Metcalf.

The Terps would struggle against Iowa’s ball movement on the defensive end, with lanes opening up in the Terps defense while rotating.

“I thought the game early on, we were giving them too many shots at the rim,” said Head Coach Buzz Williams. “But I thought it settled down a little bit towards the end of the first half, and for the most part in the second half.”

But Maryland’s defense would settle down and allowed them to go into half leading 37-32, while out-rebounding Iowa, 17-to-11, in one of its best first-half performances of the year.

Mills would once again lead the Terps with relentless aggression on his drives to the rim, along with freshman guard Darius Adams, who scored the Terps first four points of the half.

“Seeing him in attack mode makes me want to be in attack mode,” said Adams.

Maryland was relentless in the paint in the second half, scoring 16 points in the paint and getting to the line 23 times.

But Iowa would not go away, bouncing back to regain a lead in the second half, with Stritz taking the wheel and scoring nine quick points along with a pair of three-point shots from Brendan Hausen.

Maryland responded with an 8-0 run, with three free throws coming from Mills and five straight

points coming from Coit.

The Terps would keep the lead for the rest of the game despite resistance by Iowa, largely due to big defensive stops by the Terps in the last two minutes of the game.

Iowa missed three straight shots and did not make a field goal from 3:09 to go up until the last 19 seconds.

Solomon Washington started following Stritz down the stretch and forced some big stops. Despite that, Stritz would finish the game with 32 points, 6 assists and 4 rebounds.

Despite the tough matchup Coit finished the game with 19 points and six assists and came up big for the Terps down the stretch to team up with Mills.

Maryland will now take its two-game winning streak on the road to Rutgers, the lowest-ranked Big Ten team in KenPom at No. 161, for a noon tip-off on Sunday.

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