Maryland-UVA Preview

Where: Comcast Center, College Park, MD

When: 8 pm

Where to Watch: ESPN360, possibly Justin.tv (p/w is juanjuan)

Line: KenPom: Maryland by 9. Vegas: Maryland by 9.

Notes: Second game in 3 days for Maryland. The last time that happened the Terps went on the road to Winston-Salem and lost to Wake Forest in OT.

Keys in Cliches:

• Rebounding. Figuratively. I know I'm not a player, but if I was asked to take over for David Pearman as the fourth SG off the bench, I probably wouldn't even be excited to do it. I'm mentally exhausted for a number of reasons, but I don't feel a lot of excitement or energy surrounding today's game, which isn't a good thing for a game this important. If they come out flat from the whooping Duke handed out, they'll pay for it. This team is too good to lose to UVA at home unless they don't come out ready to play.

• Rebounding. Literally. Duke thrashed Maryland on the boards, and we saw how bad it hurt Maryland. UVA and UMD are about equal in their rebounding prowess, and its one of the few places they are. If they let UVA dominate the boards even close to what Duke did, it'll make the rest of the game all the easier for the Hoos.

• Slow down Sylven. Mr. Learning Center (sorry, couldn't help myself) is actually quite good. We saw with Duke's Big 3 that stopping a great player altogether is extraordinarily difficult, but keeping Landesburg from lighting up the house would be nice. If they can do that, I don't have confidence in the rest of UVA's team to step up and pick up the slack. Keep him out of the lane - easier said than done, even for a guy like Sean Mosley - and he'll be forced to give it up at least some of the time.

• Control the tempo. UVA is sloooooow, at least in terms of tempo. Slowest in the ACC, actually. Maryland, on the other hand, is one of the fastest. Bring the tempo up to a faster pace than UVA is used to, and their entire game will be thrown out of sync. Let UVA control the speed of the game, and they'll control the game as a whole.

Graph:

Prediction: My heart is not confident. But my head sees a team that is worse than Maryland by a slight margin in a lot of places. They bring little that Maryland doesn't have a better version of (Vasquez > Landesburg, Hayes > Zeglinski, Milbourne > Scott, Williams > Meyinsse, Tucker > Farrakhan). So when I think about this game, I don't see any way Maryland loses unless they simply come out flat and don't perform to what they're capable of. That's certainly a possibility, but it's tough to predict. I say Maryland makes a statement back on their home court and wins by 14, controlling the tempo while doing so: 78-64.