COLLEGE PARK, MD - The University of Maryland’s men’s basketball team opened up their exhibition schedule against the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Crimson Hawks Tuesday evening, defeating IUP 75-54.

 

The student section at Comcast Center seemed to be in midseason form with their chanting, waving and over all involvement in the game. The first play of the game, a Greivis Vasquez steal and coast to coast layup, elicited a home-crowd excitement that remained throughout the contest.

Not once did the student section take a seat during the game. Even when the outcome was well in hand, Terrapin nation was on its feet and as rabid as their basketball team’s head coach appeared to be.

Yes, Coach Gary Williams was as animated as ever: roaming the sidelines and giving whoever was within five feet of his person an earful. Marching up and down the court, fans could hear Coach Williams shouting, “Get him!” as the Terrapins switched from man defense to a full court trap. Coach Williams even went on a tear, stomping his feet as his team allowed four consecutive offensive rebounds on one play that culminated in a layup for IUP.

Williams was ticked off early in the game as his team gave up three early turnovers and played very anxiously in general. But amid all of the excitement and frenetic atmosphere of the evening, everything came to an abrupt halt as sophomore guard Sean Mosley fell to the floor, grabbing his knee. All was well, however, as two minutes after the injury, Mosley was able to cut hard to the free throw line, receive a pass, and hit a jumper that later turned into three consecutive buckets for himself which allowed Maryland to tie the game at18 apiece.

From that point in the first half, Maryland began to pick up its defense, especially with their second unit on the floor, lead by junior guard Adrian Bowie who had a hand in a Maryland 12-0 run that gave them the lead for good.

With Maryland up 42-29, Coach Williams called a timeout to chew out his players for an apparent drop off in intensity. The Terps had not been boxing out as hard as they had before they had such a large lead and Coach Williams was not going to tolerate it.

Freshman Jordan Williams got the message as he got his first ever basket, hustling to get an offensive rebound after he missed his first shot attempt. The Terps’ other freshman big man, who fans are hoping will provide added low post presence along with Williams, forward James Padgett had the play of the game on a follow slam off a Terrapin missed shot that even got “Oo’s and Ah’s” after the replay was shown.

The Terps ended up defeating a team that many felt was not an everyday, easy, preseason matchup that Division I coaches invite to give their guys confidence after a blow out. IUP went 22-8 last year, and proved to be a decent matchup that tested the Terrapins Tuesday evening.

“When I set up the game, I was hoping it would be a team that was very aggressive and quite hard,” said Coach Williams. “They did a great job and now we can go back and point out some things. Games like that are really valuable so that you can walk in tomorrow with a tape of you playing someone else instead of playing against yourself all the time.”

Maryland is scheduled to play Charleston Southern on November 13 at 8 PM.