Maryland men’s basketball secures rare winning streak with 77-70 victory over Iowa
· Yahoo Sports
COLLEGE PARK — Maryland men’s basketball forged something the team had not experienced in three months: a winning streak.
Building off of Sunday’s 5-point victory at Minnesota, the Terps unveiled a surprisingly tenacious defense and turned back a second-half comeback attempt by visiting Iowa to prevail, 77-70, Wednesday night at Xfinity Center.
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Combined with that 67-62 result against the Golden Gophers, Maryland (10-14, 3-10 Big Ten) strung together back-to-back wins for the first time since mid-November when the team surged to four straight victories over Alcorn State, Marquette, Mount St. Mary’s and UNLV from Nov. 11 to 24.
After that, the Terps have gone into a 5-13 spiral punctuated by four-game skids bookending a 96-73 win against Penn State on Jan. 18. So they took a distinct amount of pleasure in Wednesday’s outcome.
Maryland began the second half with a 7-point advantage at 39-32, which would be their largest of the game. But Iowa continued to chip away at the deficit and took a 48-47 lead after senior shooting guard Brendan Hausen drained a 3-pointer with 11:42 to go.
The two sides traded punches and leads over the next three minutes before the Terps scored eight unanswered points – including five by graduate student point guard David Coit – to assume a 62-56 advantage with 6:31 left.
The Hawkeyes got buckets from senior shooting guards Tavion Banks and Bennett Stirtz to close the gap to 62-60. But Maryland responded with an 8-4 spurt for a 70-64 lead that it nursed until the final score.
Redshirt freshman shooting guard Andre Mills ignited the Terps with a career-high 24 points (14 in the first half) and four rebounds. Coit racked up 19 points, five assists and two rebounds, and senior power forward Elijah Saunders chipped in 12 points and eight rebounds.
Freshman shooting guard Darius Adams added 11 points and three rebounds, and senior small forward Solomon Washington contributed 10 points and eight rebounds.
Maryland’s defense limited the Hawkeyes (18-6, 8-5) to 42.4% shooting from the floor (25 of 59). That included limiting an Iowa offense that entered the game ranked second in the conference in 3-point efficiency at 37.9%. The Hawkeyes finished at 25% from 3-point range (7 of 28).
The Terps opened with 3-pointers by Mills and Adams to take a 6-2 lead before the game was two minutes old. But Iowa scored seven unanswered points in a 2:02 span as Maryland went scoreless over 3:26.
By the first media timeout with 15:09 remaining, all eight of the shots the Terps had taken were behind the 3-point line. They made just the aforementioned two by Mills and Adams.
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Through much of the first half, the two sides exchanged buckets with neither team gaining more than a 3-point lead.
But Maryland closed out the final 4:13 on an 11-5 burst fueled by two layups from Adams. The team took a 37-32 advantage into halftime for its first lead at intermission since going up 56-26 against the Nittany Lions last month and only its third advantage at the break against Big Ten competition. (The Terps led then-No. 2 Michigan, 50-45, on Dec. 13.)
Stirtz paced the Hawkeyes with a game-high 32 points, six assists and four rebounds, and Banks compiled 13 points, eight rebounds and two assists. Iowa finished with 15 assists on its 25 field goals, but could not extend its winning streak to seven after absorbing its first setback since Jan. 14 when then-No. 5 Purdue won, 79-72.
Have a news tip? Contact Edward Lee at [email protected], 410-332-6200 and x.com/EdwardLeeSun.