Terps Fall to Duke in First Game on Gary Williams Court, 74-61

and get ready for VT on Saturday for a chance to get back to .500 in league play.

Tough loss. Terps need a true point guard. I love Pe but he is out of control at times but I love his passion.

very underwhelming. The should have put a figure of gary’s figure holding up the fist-pump or something to make it stand out a bit more. Looked like a Chic-Fil-A sign from a far

Should have definitely got more burn.

The only saving grace is that dook is really not as good as advertised, and at least I don’t have to worry about them going deep in the NCAAT this year. They have early upset written all over them.

….not to mention how disoriented he looks when he’s in the game lately. There were several times where he had a chance to get a pass for an easy jam or lay up and he fumbled the ball around. Also on rebounds it looks like he’s grasping at air. Almost like he’s trying to catch a football when it bounces off the turf.

I’m sure a lot is due to being young but he has to regain his confidence or he’s going to be another big man bust. COME ON ALEX!!

GO TERPS!!

that moment when Gary came out was electric and awesome. The place was rocking, and it was a great experience being there for that. Wish we could have won a huge game for him. But the atmosphere at the place was unreal throughout the game. There was one timeout after we reclaimed the lead where no one even thought of sitting down. The place was bouncing and it was an awesome site. From such an unexperienced and young team, I really thought they played tough all the way through. I definitely didn’t expect as much as they gave us, so I am happily pleased. Really looking forward to the future of this team…hopefully next year or the year after, this game will end up in the W column for us.

Looked great on TV. Too bad they are automatic on foul shots. Maybe we will be by the end of the season.

Torrey Smith is going to become one of the best recievers in the league! Love that he came to the game last night and worked to get a BB recruit into the Maryland scene!!

Turge made a great point, if you watch the MD team play last night compared to the MD vs Alabama, two totally different teams. Very much improved on defense especially. To me it seemed quite simple, Turge was content to let our bigs go1v1 with Plumlee. We found out our bigs are not too good defensively right now. Although I don’t know why he didn’t’ give Padge a shot, at least he would have been physical maybe even a couple of good hard fouls.

The rotation was terrible last night, they consistently left the paint wide open when the Plumlees would get out to the 3 point line, leaving it for the easy drive and lay in. When Miles (?) would get the ball, it was the same move, over and over and over. Why couldn’t one person just jump in and disrupt the motion of it at least? It was so frustrating to watch because right when he got the ball in the paint you knew what was going to happen.

Overall though the perimeter defense was vastly improved, but it was at hte expense of interior defense. I agree with the posters above, if we can somehow figure out a way to prevent these 12-15 point runs in the second half we could win a lot of these games. Although, if we could just improve the Free Throw shooting…..ugh.

I thought the first half was as good as we played all year. Great execution, defense and we were hitting free throws. The second half fell apart. Shots were forced and we started turning the ball over, and lost our touch at the line. Coach K figured us out. We are what we are. Len is a work in progress, as is Faust. Pankey is just coming back from two missed seasons. Padgett is giving us more than we ever hoped possible. P’Shon is a good player, lots of heart but not a true game leader. Parker is still adjusting to real competition. Mosley is Mosley, plays hard, is under-sized, and an under-achiever. Stogs is the real deal, but can’t do it all. Give it all time. Enjoy the ride, and let Turg and Co get us some real talent for years to come.

i didn’t know what to say. It seems we can only play really well for 20 minutes, and once we come back after halftime, we lose it. Turgeon needs to yell at them more, or say something different cause i don’t understand how we look like 2 completely different teams each half.

We couldn’t stop Plumlee’s in the paint. No matter how hard we tried. At times they were left wide open too. Alex Len gets into foul trouble WAY too easily. I’d rather him just stand with his hands up, rather than try to block shots.

FREE THROWS. I swear he needs to utilize an entire day of practice of shooting free throws. When Stoglin missed both, my jaw dropped.

This team gives up easily as well. We could’ve won, up until about the 7 minute mark in the second half, you could tell they just gave up.

I think pe’ looks better. He’s getting there. I’m not sure if he’s a true pg, but he’s my favorite player because he has alot of heart. You can tell he wants to get better. Plus, although his passes aren’t the best, they are pretty unique which makes him, him.

Stoglin had a rough night, but of course he’s gunna get his points regardless. he’s very quick.

Mosley, was a hit and miss tonight with scoring. But his defense was good for the most part.

I hated the refs. especially the white haired one. He needs to go, even though we lost on our own right, the refs definitely helped duke catch up several times, gave them alot of BS calls.

It’s easy to pick apart a young team lacking in the kinetics of ball play. It’s been a constant at MD since Blake left and for a small amount of time when Hayes was a senior. The team lacks focus and part of the problem is Stoglin hogs the ball and occasionally does quite well with the brick. I have to wonder what goes thru a guys head when he’s missing and continues to shoot. Like Robbie Hummel who regained his stroke in the middle of the game earlier this week it was conventional wisdom that he should keep shooting. Not for lack of trying many misses later it was obvious he wasn’t being fed the ball in his sweet spot. And there lies the problem with this team and the previous half a dozen. There are spurts because there is latent talent which gets exposed as tarnished when the game gets hot and there is no ball handler out there. Stoglin couldn’t run a team if he were tied to the post because he’d find a way to shoot. But I recall a guy like Page last night on OK State and MacNamara at Cuse and even that pain in the neck Scheyer at Duke. They weren’t outstanding ball players but they were consistently smart passes, looking for the open man. I don’t think Howard has that eye for it. He runs the ball down court like he’s heading for the end zone. I’m missing a guy like Steve who was a general out there. Even with improved play from starters and the bench there’s no fluidity. They are all role players not first team players not for lack of trying, but for lack of a skilled ball hawk. That’s Turgeon’s job to recruit someone. The better teams have one constant in college. They move the ball around. They make foul shots generally. They avoid fouls when possible. But they know what to do out there. I still see a team searching for its identity. Watch Syracuse or GTown and you’ll see liquid dynamite for the most part. This year Nova and UConn lost the drill. It’s something players have to know I guess. There’s only so much a coach can do when u get out there. Screaming won’t help.

Let’s think back to our expectations for this team at the beginning of the season. 7 scholarship players with Howard and Len out, big question marks in Pankey, Padgett, and Faust, and a new coaching staff. We played Duke tough right until the bitter end, which is more than I can see for some recent teams that had a full complement of players.

Hopefully some recruits were there to see Comcast rocking like it used to and to want to be part of that themselves.

Did anyone notice Mosely was shooting the ball differently than he has the last 3 years? It was coming out quicker and at a different trajectory..The 1st few were going in but the last cpl were at the front rim.

Turgeon I thought made a good move not to give Duke the open 3-point shots and instead elected to play Mason Plumlee and Ryan Kelly one on one with Len, Pankey, and Padgett alternatively. Duke is (normally) such a good 3-point shooting team that this absolutely seems liek the correct call. In fact for the most part our defense on Duke’s guards were pretty good.

The problem there is that defensively Len and Pankey (Len moreso in this game where I noticed several times he got caught out of position) are still learning the defensive systems and an experienced and athletic front line like Duke can take advantage of them not knowing their positions or gambling to pick up fouls, make backdoor cuts, etc…… which kind of makes me wonder why we didn’t see more Weijs.

Duke’s front line isn’t that much more athletic, that much taller,…but right now they have a better court sense than our big men and that’s what killed us.

I also would like to see more Parker. He has really improved each game I see and think he should be stealing more minutes from Pe/Mosely/Faust….

In the first 3 ACC games, Mosely averaged 15 points on about 45% shooting. In the last three games (FL St, Temple, and Duke), he’s averaged 4 points on 19% shooting. Maybe the better teams have figured out that Stoglin can’t really be stopped, but neutralizing our secondary scorer/all utility glue guy on offense is the ticket to beating us. Just an observation, maybe just coincidence.

And it was real exciting to watch. Its a bit depressing that our best does not beat Duke’s mediocre, but this team simply doesn’t have a lot of talent, which we knew, and I’m ok with if we continue recruiting. But this game, above all others, makes me optimistic for the future. In the first half that offense did not just evolve around Stogs, everyone contributed and our guards mad more good drives than I can remember in game in a while.

A few interior stops and late shots hit and we would’ve beat a team that, on paper, we have NO BUSINESS, getting close to.