Maryland Easily Tops Charleston Southern In Season Opener, 89-51

Maryland scored first and never trailed in its season opener against Charleston Southern, using a 26-11 second half run to put the game away and ultimately win easily, 89-51.

The big stories of the day were Greivis Vasquez and the freshman duo of Jordan Williams and James Padgett. Vasquez ended up with just eight points on a very average shooting performance, but he added 13 assists, most of them wowing the crowd. Twice he dropped my jaw, once a behind-the-back fake to real behind-the-back, once a pass that started as a reverse layup. While flashy play and flashy passing are nothing new for Vaz, he's definitely in midseason form already.

Jordan Williams earned his first start of his career in the first game of his career, suiting up in place of the ineligible/suspended/whatever Dino Gregory. Luckily for Maryland, he also earned his first double-digit scoring game today, putting up 10 points in the first half alone, adding a bucket in the second. He paired that performance with 9 rebounds, again, most of which came in the first half. Williams was very impressive against a smaller CSU team, but clearly tired as the game went on. Most people expected that, but he'll have to work on his conditioning for ACC play. Maryland will need that type of performance to beat the Clemsons and GTs of the world.

Fortunately, when Williams tired, James Padgett picked up the slack. After only scoring 2 in the first half, Padgett picked up 8 points and 8 rebounds in the second. The opposite of Williams, he looked very average until later in the game, when he started to get in the flow of play. They were surprisingly effective when on the floor together, too, though I would hope we aren't in that situation too much.

The rest of the team performed pretty much how we expected them to. Landon Milbourne led all scorers with 16, and Sean Mosley scored just one fewer, with 15 on the night. Both looked very impressive - Mosley's jumper looked good, he hit all of his layups, and he was traditionally himself: just imagine last year's Mosley with a more developed offensive game.

Maryland actually had 5 total players with double digits, and only Jin Soo Choi and Ersin Levent didn't score at all. Very good performance. I'll get more into the minuses later in the week, but just know that the first game went according to plan.