Maryland 88, NC State 64

Ouch. That hurt.

I know it doesn’t sound possible, but it actually looked worse than the score. NC State, now 2-4 in league play, came out flat from the first minute Saturday and never really looked in the game with the Terps. Greivis Vasquez shoulder-shrugged his way to 19 points and five assists and Landon Milbourne, who looked All-ACC much of the day, finished with 18 points and five rebounds.

NC State never got into any sort of rhythm Saturday against the Terps, and Maryland came ready to play. The defensive effort from the Wolfpack was the worst of the season and cannot continue if NC State expects to win anymore games. Maryland got any shot it wanted and, despite having a relatively small lineup, out rebounded the Pack by two.

On a side note, the free throw disparity was absolutely deplorable. Maryland made more free throws (24) than the Wolfpack attempted (16). NC State had only five more personal fouls that Maryland, but it just seemed like every foul on the Pack put the Terps on the line. Thanks Karl Hess.

Here’s the box score. Tracy Smith had the quietest double double in history (18 and 10) and Howell tallied 10 points and seven boards. Other than that it was a pretty pedestrian night for the Pack offensively. The Pack shot just 36 percent from the field and only 62 percent from the charity stripe.

There’s not much more to say really. For some additional commentary and observations you can click here for the ACC Sports Journal’s entry and click here for some discussion on our message boards. This is the type of game you try to forget as quickly as possible. The fact that Carolina comes to town Tuesday should help.

09-10 Basketball

95 Responses to Maryland 88, NC State 64

  1. Thinkpack17 01/23/2010 at 9:06 PM #

    I don’t believe his scholly gets pulled, I just think he gets left out of the rotation. Kind of like a Painter or Thomas this year.

  2. GoldenChain 01/23/2010 at 9:13 PM #

    I will say that I had hoped the seemingly haphazard substitutions of the pre-conference would settle down and it appears that it has. Mays, Javi, T Smith, Horner, Wood, Degand, and Howell. No one else got double digit minutes.
    Frankly those are the players that give us the best chance to win.

  3. Clarksa 01/23/2010 at 9:17 PM #

    Meh..the only positive I can think of is that since we laid and egg tonight, maybe that will make us play with some fire on Tuesday night.

  4. GoldenChain 01/23/2010 at 9:19 PM #

    Wow, just noticed that Javi had 0 assist. I think that was because of the defensive effort for the most part. Degand repeated his 6A/1TO game he had against Duke.
    I still think moving Degand to the 2 is a good thing, in effect giving us 2 PGs on the floor.

  5. wolfonthehill 01/23/2010 at 9:24 PM #

    Holy crap – pretty sure there were numerous predictions of a thirty-something percent shooting night tonight, immediately following Duke… with 36 being a best guess.

    We know our team too well…

  6. Wolfy__79 01/23/2010 at 9:38 PM #

    yeah, it appears degand runs the fullcourt offense and javi/juls get the halfcourt responsibilities…

  7. wolfpackbball 01/23/2010 at 9:39 PM #

    We’re not as good as we looked against Duke, and not as bad as we looked tonight.

  8. tuckerdorm1983 01/23/2010 at 9:47 PM #

    we laid an egg. I truly expected it. Still improvement. The terps are a tough team.

  9. Wulfpack 01/23/2010 at 9:59 PM #

    Non-conference scores of interest:

    Northwestern 73, Illinois 68
    Florida 58, South Carolina 56
    Syracuse 76, Marquette 71
    Vanderbilt 82, Auburn 74

  10. Wolfy__79 01/23/2010 at 10:01 PM #

    i had a feeling we’d shoot a little lower percentage tonight. we’ve been pretty solid with the fg% this year. i think we can definetly improve our interior play, tracy seems to force sometimes.. as does howell. we were a little more patient towards the middle of the second half, i would have liked to see that more towards the middle of the 1st. i think immaturity at the point has led to that on more than one occassion this season. although i like javi’s three’s he made, i would much rather have a leader on the floor rather than another shooting guard. things to look forward to i suppose.

  11. Wolfy__79 01/23/2010 at 10:07 PM #

    yeah i kept an eye on some of those games today. pretty good games all around except for ours. … i think the last two games we’ve played shows us and hopefully what can be expected for the rest of the year. but yes the terps are tough, very tough.. possibly peaking a little early? i see that unc-ch has been off since their wake loss, i expect a very similar effort defensively from them as we got from md today? we were just too quick to give up on our inside game, and very quick to shoot three pointers even though we were missing them. 🙁

  12. Texpack 01/23/2010 at 10:13 PM #

    Maryland played much better defense than Duke. Their doubles on Tracy were effective and their rotations didn’t leave us with many good open looks. The ones we got, we didn’t convert very well. We are not a good shooting team, period. We can be streaky good, but if I’m designing the defense against NC State, I’ll go with what UMd did tonight. Take away Tracy Smith and dare everybody else to win the game. Maryland whipped us on the offensive boards as well. I’ll say it again – this team will run hot and cold all year long. This our first really bad performance of the year. Our other losses have been due to cold stretches within games. This one was a bad 40 minutes.

  13. Wolfy__79 01/23/2010 at 10:21 PM #

    yeah, md has had the best defense we’ve faced so far this season. but they’ve also had the luxury of seeing us at our “best” thus far into the season. they are a tough out for us, a real matchup problem. or atleast until we get more consistent on the offensive end. i don’t think we’re a great shooting team, but were ok. i think its more about who’s taking the shots. if we’re depending on javi to hit three’s early like today, i can say then and there we’re going to have problems. they were nice, but it would have better to have a pointman out there distributing the ball, creating offense. each of our guards do this at times. IMO, juls stays away from it best. if he takes a shot, its a higher percentage shot whilst howell/horner and tracy are in place for the board. … … i’ll be interested to see how well sid can get these guys to forget some of their bad habits by tuesday!!

  14. VaWolf82 01/23/2010 at 10:22 PM #

    UMD is not all that good. They are 1-5 against the RPI Top-50 and a bubble team at best right now. (Their only top-50 win was against #50 FSU.)

  15. Wolfy__79 01/23/2010 at 10:22 PM #

    i think the doubles not only worked on tracy, but the rest of the team didn’t seem to work for the ball early and take advantage…

  16. Wolfy__79 01/23/2010 at 10:23 PM #

    they were pretty affective tonight?

  17. VaWolf82 01/23/2010 at 10:26 PM #

    they were pretty affective tonight?

    So what conclusions do you draw?

  18. NJpack 01/23/2010 at 10:46 PM #

    As much as I hate him, Greivis put on a clinic for us tonight. Lessons we can learn: Play under control, take what the defense gives you (Greivis got other guys involved in the 1st half and took it to us in the 2nd half), and let the game come to you (see 2nd half).

    We were only 8 points down at halftime, 4 of that due to boneheaded fouls on a guy that shoots 89% at the FT stripe. Sometimes when a guy kicks your butt in a sport, all you can do is shake his hand and try to get him next time.

  19. blpack 01/23/2010 at 10:50 PM #

    Should have seen the loss coming, but not the beat down. We couldn’t make many shots, but we looked like we didn’t want to be out there. We need to focus for Tuesday b/c it is a golden opportunity to beat the holes.

  20. Wolfy__79 01/23/2010 at 10:58 PM #

    njpack kind of highlighted for us. we didn’t take what they gave us, although not much, we were forcing it a little too much today. i think our efforts to feed tracy were a little weak. midway thru the 2nd, we were a little more patient to get the ball inside. the rest of the second, the team was very quick to take tough shots, some of them three. i don’t think we experimented with our size (vandenburg) enough early. he came in for just a few early minutes. i think md was working us inside early. i guess in all, we just weren’t patient enough. when wood got in foul trouble, i thought sliding horner over to three might help on offense, maybe too slow on defense? i felt like today, having him on the floor would have been good timing… it seemed like some senior leadership was needed. all in all, i would like to see us be tough to handle inside, that means being consistent. somthing we can go to the entire game. i’ve noticed we can get locked in to being down and short sighted on how to come back aside from missing three after three. of course, from 12 mins into the end of the game.. down big. there’s not much you can do. we were scoring then, but we committed fouls, allowed penetration into the paint… almost every score we had, they came down and answered with a three or two. … …

  21. Thinkpack17 01/23/2010 at 10:58 PM #

    “UMD is not all that good. They are 1-5 against the RPI Top-50 and a bubble team at best right now.”

    The Terps are notorious slow starters, but when the chips are down expect gay ass Greivis and gay ass Gary to deliver. As much as I hate to say it.

    They will finish top 3rd and make the tourny.

  22. Wolfy__79 01/23/2010 at 11:00 PM #

    unc-ch has had all the time in the world to prepare for us… first game after losing three straight and our performance tonight. it should be a battle. hopefully we rattle them early….

  23. Wolfy__79 01/23/2010 at 11:01 PM #

    yeah, md is pretty good. i don’t keep track of them early season, from what i saw tonight, they saw our struggles from the first half and put us away early in the second. very flat second half performance!

  24. Wolfy__79 01/23/2010 at 11:03 PM #

    i’ll be looking forward to them coming to the rbc! i can’t stand vasquez.

  25. VaWolf82 01/23/2010 at 11:13 PM #

    They will finish top 3rd

    I don’t think that they will finish in the top 4. We’ll have to keep track of the Twerps, especially since State plays them again in about 3 weeks.

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