Maryland Terrapins Beat North Carolina Central in Final Contest of 2013

Have the Maryland Terrapins men’s basketball team finally figured things out?

Let’s hope so, but a win against N.C. Central is not the kind of game you can really judge the Terps on. If they had lost, then it would have been a different story, but Maryland took care of business and did what they were supposed to do.

Maryland (9-5) handily clipped the Eagles in a 70-56 win.

Coach Turgeon on the game,

"“Most complete game we’ve played. Really happy with the way we played. We really defended. Did a great job on [Jeremy] Ingram. I thought Dez [Wells] and Nick [Faust] really were committed to guarding that kid. Coach Bino [Ranson] did a great job with the scouting report. I thought we were prepared defensively. We were deep, we were a very deep team today. Nick really helped us off the bench with 19 points, but [we] played a lot of post guys and finally figured that out. Gave everybody a chance. Charles [Mitchell] really played well today.”"

The Terps were led by junior guard, Nick Faust, who came off the bench and equaled his career high of 19 points and pulled down a season-high 9 rebounds.

Faust was great on offense but don’t downplay his play on the defensive end. Defense is a part of his game that he has worked hard on as Mark Turgeon has really emphasized playing team defense since he arrived.

His hard work showed tonight by helping to guard one of the nation’s leading scorers in Jeremy Ingram. Ingram came into the game averaging 24.6 points-per-game but left Comcast Center with only 11 points.

As a team, Maryland held the Eagles to 32.7% shooting from the floor and 13.3% from 3-point land. Besides N.C. Central’s 11-2 run in the final minutes, Maryland clearly dominated the game from beginning to end, which was something we all needed to see from the Terps as they now head into ACC play.

Could Seth Allen be the glue that keeps this Maryland team from falling a part during games? Time will only tell, but for now, we can all be excited to have him back on the floor and playing like he never left.

The Terps open up ACC play on January 4th against Georgia Tech at home.

Go Terps!