The most raucous Xfinity Center environment in more than a year — “The best crowd that I’ve experienced as a head coach,” said Maryland’s Buzz Williams — nearly helped propel the Terrapins to an upset of their most storied and hated rival.
But when it mattered most, No. 6 Virginia showed why it’s one of the elite teams in college basketball this season.
The Terrapins held their largest halftime lead over a top 10 team in more than a decade, but struggled with shotmaking in the second half as Sam Lewis and Thijs De Ridder combined for 31 points after the break to lead the Cavaliers to an 87-83 comeback victory Friday night.
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“I’m so appreciative of everybody that was here. I am disappointed in the result,” Williams said. “I like a lot of what we did. We did not have the physical, mental, emotional stamina, endurance from start to finish that’s required to beat a top five team.”
Lewis lead all scorers with 28 points on 12-of-16 shooting and grabbed seven rebounds. De Ridder only had 6 points in the first half before shooting 6-of-8 in the second and finishing with 20. Johann Grunloh (15) and Chance Mallory (12) also scored in double figures for the Cavaliers (5-0), who shot an eye popping 76.9% in the final 20 minutes, making 20-of-26.
“They put a ton of pressure on us in the first half to respond. We had no other choice but to respond appropriately after halftime,” Virginia coach Ryan Odom said. “Once we got to halftime, our guys did a nice job of regrouping, trying to play more like ourselves. Maryland made us not necessarily play like ourselves in the first half.”
“I feel like we kind of just got complacent as a team, and we let foul calls, I guess, just get us to be a little bit less aggressive,” said Maryland guard Mike McNair. “And then when things were to go our way as a group, we kind of wouldn’t focus on the details that we were talking about. And so we’ve just got to continue to get better at focusing on details later in the game and putting two halves together.”
Center Pharrel Payne led Maryland (1-2) with 20 points on 6-of-10 shooting. Freshman Kaden House added 17 for the Terrapins and McNair finished with 15.
“I think I for sure could have had a better performance,” House said, being modest in defeat. “I gave up two offensive rebounds and I kind of got too deep into the pint a few times and I needed to play off two a lot more. I think I could have done a lot better for us to win. Even though I played all right, obviously it wasn’t enough.”
Maryland won the turnover battle, forcing 17 and only allowing 10. It shot 12 more foul shots than Virginia, 39-27. But it made only 11 shots after halftime and put in another dismal 3-point shooting performance, going 4-of 17 after a 3-of-20 effort in its prior game at Georgetown. Now in his second season, Maryland is 0-10 against ranked opponents under Williams.
“I think our shot quality is so important. Our shot quality impacts our free throw attempt rate. Our shot quality impacts our offensive rebound percentage,” Williams said. “We did a really good job in the first half. I think we got almost 50% of our balls back in the first half. Only 11% in the second half. Shot 24 free throws in the first half. Not near as many in the second half.”
Guard Bishop Boswell, who had 13 points for Tennessee in a second round NCAA Tournament win against Virginia last season, started for the first time as a Terrapin. Williams also added a second first-time starter in forward Robert Jennings II, who replaced Tomislav Buljan in the lineup.
UVA’s first three layup tries were all unsuccessful before De Ridder converted an and-one. He had all five UVA points and a 5-4 lead after 4 minutes.
Maryland stuck to a deliberate plan of trying to limit wasteful shots — Williams says he ranks shot attempts as gold, silver or bronze in caliber — as it made a conscious effort to generate quality looks for layups and jumpers with quick ball movement. A Baba Oladotun jumper and a House layup off an offensive rebound were examples of that quality as the Terrapins went up 13-9.
But Maryland went without a field goal for nearly 4 minutes after. Virginia could do nothing in the interim, as it struggled to a 1-of-5 mark in the first half from three and turned it over eight times.
Buljan and House made back-to-back layups to break UMD’s drought for a 20-15 lead just past the midway point of the half.
The Terrapins succeeded in drawing contact and getting to the line at the best rate all season: 24 attempts in the first half alone, making 19.
A frenetic final minute sequence sent Maryland to its largest halftime lead against a top-10 opponent since 2015.
House made another layup off a missed 3-pointer rebound. Then, off a Cavalier turnover at half court, Andre Mills followed it up with a right-handed flush over 7-foot Virginia center Grunloh. McNair delivered the exclamation point, draining a three from the near elbow as the buzzer sounded to put the Terrapins up 44-35.
Virginia quickly whittled down the margin down to five with an 8-2 run after halftime thanks to 5 points from Lewis and a three from De Ridder.
The Terrapins would continue to beat back the Cavaliers’ advances until a 14-4 run across nearly 6 minutes in the middle of the second, led by 5 points from Grunloh, finally got Virginia even at 67. A Mallory three put UVA up 70-67 with 6:31 remaining, its first lead since 5-4.
“What we’ve got to continue to figure out is our shot quality impacts those things, but it also impacts the opponent’s shot quality. When you look at those runs that they had in the second half, they’re correlated, and I thought in the first half we did a much better job within each possession,” Williams said.
It would stretch to 80-75 with under 3 minutes, as Lewis and De Ridder scored four apiece. A De Ridder three with 1:33 to go would seal the Virginia comeback.
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