The Terps’ regular season ended in negative fashion, with them unable to match Penn State’s physicality.
Maryland men’s looked the part of a team without its primary paint presence Sunday at Penn State. With star forward Julian Reese sidelined after appearing on the team’s injury report hours before tipoff, the Terps were massacred down low.
Penn State finished the game with 47 rebounds — 21 more than Maryland — to entirely control the teams’ regular-season finale. The Terps lost, 85-69, sealing their fate as the No. 12 seed in the Big Ten Tournament. They will play Rutgers in the first round on Wednesday.
As the offseason nears with ever-increasing pace, Maryland’s calamitous regular season ended with it losing eight of its last 10 games. Sunday’s result also extended the Terps’ streak of consecutive losses at Penn State (15-16, 9-11 Big Ten) to seven games, its last win in State College coming in 2015.
Reese, who had 24 points and 15 rebounds when Maryland beat Penn State in overtime on Dec. 6, went through warmups and was dressed on the bench, but never checked into Sunday’s game. Terps head coach Kevin Willard said postgame that Reese tweaked his ankle at practice on Wednesday.
“He looked good in walkthrough, but it’s just one of those things,” Willard said. “… I’m always a little extra cautious on that, especially this time of year when you’ve logged that many minutes.”
As a result, Caelum Swanton-Rodger saw extended minutes and Mady Traore started in Reese’s place, although he only played nine minutes and recorded just two points and two rebounds. Swanton-Rodger saw the court for a career-high 22 minutes but couldn’t provide a needed spark, totaling five points and three rebounds before fouling out late in the second half.
“Cal is used to coming off the bench, and I thought Cal came in and gave us good minutes. But once he got tired — he’s not used to playing those minutes — that’s kind of where our breakdowns happened,” Willard said.
Instead, the paint belonged to Nittany Lions center Qudus Wahab, who started at Maryland (15-16, 7-13) when Reese was a freshman. Wahab scored 19 points and grabbed 15 rebounds, imposing his will with relative ease.
Led by Wahab, the Nittany Lions scored a whopping 42 points in the paint, 14 more than Maryland.
For much of the season, Maryland’s offensive production has come from either Reese or star guard Jahmir Young. Without Reese, Young still managed 16 points, but didn’t receive necessary help to match the Nittany Lions’ output. Jamie Kaiser Jr., who finished with 13 points, was the only other Maryland player to reach the double-digit-point threshold.
Young wasn’t the best guard on the floor Sunday night, though. Penn State’s Ace Baldwin Jr. commanded the floor with dynamism, finishing with 17 points and 11 assists. He and Wahab were two of five Nittany Lions to score 10 or more points.
Maryland hung around for a short while, but as the game developed, Penn State turned a once-competitive contest into a convincing victory. A 15-2 run brought the Nittany Lions’ lead to 15 with 12:30 left in the second half, and that proved to be the nail in the Terps’ coffin — which at this point was already being lowered into the ground.
It wasn’t just Reese’s absence that cursed the Terps. They also capped their regular season with another poor shooting performance, making just 22 of their 58 field-goal attempts (38%) and shooting just below their conference-worst 3-point percentage of 28.5%.
Last year, Maryland’s regular-season finale at Penn State saw it playing for a top-four finish in the Big Ten. Twelve months later, the Terps finalized their worst conference finish since joining the league in 2015.
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Three things to know
1. Dreadful rebounding. With Reese sidelined, Maryland looked lost rebounding the basketball. Its inability to secure boards was ultimately its downfall.
2. Defensive issues. With Penn State dominating the paint, the Terps couldn’t find their usual defensive success. They finished the regular season allowing 70.1 points per game, still the second-best mark in the Big Ten.
3. Another losing season? Maryland has had just one season with more losses than wins since 1993. The Terps now need to win multiple conference tournament games to avoid that fate, which they also suffered two years ago.
“It’s been a really disappointing year,” Willard said. “A really frustrating year.”