If there is a common thread running through half of Maryland’s eight defeats this season, it occurs in the first few minutes of the game.
Shots are missed. Passes are stolen, or simply thrown away. The opponent’s early lead mushrooms, often into double digits right before or immediately after the first media timeout.
And the Terps are left to play catchup the rest of the game.
While Maryland has erased big early deficits to win — the largest being a 14-point hole against Indiana on Jan. 11 after the Hoosiers scored the first nine points of the game — many of the sluggish starts have quickly doomed coach Mark Turgeon’s team.
There were two early influences in the coaching career of Michigan’s John Beilein.
One was his uncle, Tommy Niland Jr., who turned the basketball program he started at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y., over to the up-and-coming coach at Nazareth College in nearby Rochester.
It happened against No. 9 Michigan, No. 17 Maryland’s opponent Sunday at Xfinity Center, in Ann Arbor, Mich., on Feb. 16. The Wolverines, ranked sixth at the time, went up 21-6 midway through the first half and eventually went on to a 65-52 win.
Perhaps the most glaring example came Wednesday at Penn State. The Nittany Lions had an 11-point lead just over five minutes into the game, doubled it by halftime and went up by as many as 29 points in a 78-61 loss for the Terps.
It was the largest margin of defeat for Maryland (21-8, 12-6 Big Ten) this season.
“We’ve moved on. We left it in the locker room, we left it on the bus when we dropped them off that night,” Turgeon said after practice Saturday. “We’ve moved forward. We’ve practiced well. We’ve had a really, really good season for such a young team.
While starting games slowly has been a constant this season — as well as with several other teams in Turgeon’s eight years — the past six games have been particularly troublesome. Surprisingly, the Terps have won four of them.
In the first five minutes of those six games, Maryland has scored a total of 19 points, shooting 7-for-44 from the field with 10 turnovers. In the four wins, the Terps have been down by a combined nine points at the five-minute mark.
In the two losses, Maryland has been outscored a combined 24-5.
Asked Saturday if he has to change his approach, and possibly his lineup, to get his team to start faster, Turgeon said, “We really talked about it the last two days. The key is that we make a shot. Make a layup, get fouled, do something early to get us going.
Sophomore guard Darryl Morsell (Mount Saint Joseph), who called the Penn State loss “humbling,” said Saturday that the key is playing with more energy from the opening tip.
Turgeon hasn’t ruled out the possibility of changing his starting lineup. The question is whether or not to move freshman wing Aaron Wiggins from his role as the team’s sixth man.
Wiggins was quickly subbed in Wednesday night after Morsell committed two early turnovers.
On a night when nearly every Terp played poorly, Wiggins finished with 11 points (despite missing all four 3-point tries), five rebounds and two assists in 21 minutes. It was his third game in double digits in the past five.
It could be determined Sunday by Michigan’s starting lineup. Playing without senior wing Charles Matthews in Wednesday’s 82-53 home win over Nebraska, the Wolverines started sophomore power forward Isaiah Livers.
Over the course of a college basketball season, even good teams suffer inexplicable defeats. That’s why no team has gone through a season unbeaten since Indiana in 1975-76.
Smith is not alone in that regard.
The starters, in particular Morsell, junior guard Anthony Cowan Jr. and sophomore center Bruno Fernando, seemed to be lackadaisical at both ends against the Nittany Lions, who beat the Terps in State College. Pa., for the third straight year.