Buzz Williams’ welcome to the Big Ten was less than hospitable.
Making his debut in the conference, Williams watched Maryland men’s basketball get thoroughly waylaid by host Iowa in an 83-64 romp at Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City, Iowa.
The Terps (6-4, 0-1 Big Ten) took a 4-2 lead before the Hawkeyes (8-1, 1-0) erupted for a 21-5 run that put the game out of reach. The 19-point setback was the program’s worst in a league opener and most lopsided defeat to a conference foe in the first game since Jan. 5, 1992, when that squad was clobbered by Georgia Tech, 92-67, when the school belonged to the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Maryland senior power forward Pharrel Payne had his second consecutive double-double with 17 points and 14 rebounds. Graduate student point guard David Coit and redshirt freshman shooting guard Andre Mills came off the bench to score 13 and 11 points, respectively.
Senior guard Bennett Stirtz scored a game-high 25 points on 10 of 17 shooting (4 of 8 from 3-point range) for Iowa. Junior forward Cam Manyawu racked up 12 points, seven rebounds, three assists and two steals, freshman guard Tate Sage compiled 12 points, four rebounds and three assists, and redshirt freshman forward Cooper Koch had 11 points and three rebounds.
Here are three takeaways from Saturday’s outcome:
Iowa offers a glimpse of what Maryland could be
Like Williams, Hawkeyes coach Ben McCollum is in his first year at the helm. Unlike Williams, McCollum has constructed a roster that appears more than equipped to handle the rigors of the Big Ten.
Since McCollum succeeded Fran McCaffery in March, Iowa mined the transfer portal. And the results have drawn accolades, such as 247Sports rating the class as the eighth-best in the country.
Stirtz, the team’s leader in points per game at 18.8 and assists at 4.9, Manyawu, their leading rebounder, and Tavion Banks followed McCollum from his previous stop at Drake.
The Hawkeyes’ chemistry was apparent early as they erased that early deficit and then distanced themselves from the Terps, who never got closer than 16 points in the second half.
Williams’ hiring was not announced until April 1, and Maryland was involved in the NCAA Tournament until March 27. Meanwhile, Iowa could concentrate on rebuilding its roster. The argument could be made that McCollum had a head start over Williams, which might have contributed to the talent gap between the teams.
Williams came away impressed with what he saw from Iowa.
“Really tough team, incredibly well-coached,” he told the Terps’ radio broadcast crew after the loss. “I think since all of those players and coaches have been together, they’ve lost five Division I games. They for sure started the game really well. I thought they started the second half just as well.”
Williams found a silver lining
In a blowout like Saturday’s, it might be difficult to isolate many positives. But there are a few — if you look really hard.
Payne continued a stellar campaign thus far. He has scored at least 10 points in each of the nine games he has played, and his 14 rebounds were a career high — although he leads the team in turnovers with 24.
Maryland won the battle of the boards, outrebounding Iowa, 39-32. Then again, the Hawkeyes rank last in the Big Ten in that department at 30 rebounds per game.
The Terps continued to demonstrate their knack for getting to the free-throw line, making 38 trips compared with the Hawkeyes’ 12. But Maryland missed 14 of those foul shots, which figures to be a point of emphasis during practice this week before Saturday’s Big Ten home opener against No. 3 Michigan (8-0, 1-0).
Williams took some solace from the players’ effort in the second half. After the first media timeout of the 15:30 mark, the Terps outscored Iowa, 32-27.
“I thought there was a stretch there from the first media timeout, from that point forward, we did fine,” he said. “We lost the second half by five [39-34]. We did not play as hard or as together as we have to. We’ve made considerable progress, and [there were] lessons learned this week. And we’ve got to continue to stack those lessons relative to the process so that we can have some momentum going into games like this that we’re going to continue to play.”
Maryland’s lineup remains a work in progress
The fivesome of Payne, senior small forwards Elijah Saunders and Solomon Washington, redshirt junior point guard Myles Rice and freshman shooting guard Darius Adams made its second consecutive start. That group was also Williams’ fourth lineup of the season.
For a large stretch of the second half, though, Williams replaced Rice with Coit, and that group stayed on the floor. From the 11:14 to 5:43 mark, they were on the court uninterrupted. Mills was inserted into the game for Washington with 5:43 remaining, but Williams switched Washington for Mills soon after, and the same fivesome played until there was 1:53 left in the game.
Injuries have kept players out of practice, and Williams said the three days between Tuesday’s 89-63 win against Wagner and Saturday marked the first time the Terps had 10 healthy bodies for practice. He explained that his reasoning for keeping Adams, Coit, Payne, Saunders and Washington on the floor had everything to do with their effectiveness.
“I felt that group was playing hard and playing together,” he said. “We were getting consecutive stops. We were doing OK offensively. We were doing a great job on the offensive glass in that stretch, and we did a great job getting fouled in that stretch. We didn’t do a great job making our free throws, but we did a really good job of putting pressure on the rim in that last 15 minutes of the game. But who is it? That’s what we’ve got to continue to figure out through practice so that we’re not having to do that all of the time during the games. But some of that is, this is the first week, two games and four practices. So we’ve got to continue to make progress in that regard.”
Have a news tip? Contact Edward Lee at eklee@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/EdwardLeeSun.
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