Maryland Terrapins: Terps Suffer First Loss of the Season to Pittsburgh

The Maryland Terrapins endured their first loss of the season in Tuesday night’s ACC/Big Ten Challenge, falling to 7-1 on the season as they were defeated by Pittsburgh, 73-59.

It was a tale of two halves for the Maryland Terrapins Tuesday night as Pittsburgh handed the Terps their first loss of the season in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.

Before last night’s game, the undefeated Maryland Terrapins were riding high off the team’s fourth straight holiday tournament championship. Melo Trimble was just named Big Ten Co-Player of the Week, and everything appeared to be going Maryland’s way leading to a home contest against ACC foe, the Pittsburgh Panthers.

Maryland jumped out to a quick 6-0 lead, as the four-star recruit, Justin Jackson nailed a corner three and soon after, Trimble followed up with a three of his own. The Terps maintained a six-point lead for just about five minutes into the game before Pittsburgh caught fire.

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Pittsburgh pulled out to a 17-16 lead, their first lead of the game, following a made jumper by ACC’s leading scorer, Michael Young, with just over 12 minutes left in the first half and never looked back.

By the three-minute mark in the first half, Pittsburgh had stormed out to a 20-point lead as the Panthers drained all the momentum and energy out of the young Terps. At halftime, a frustrated Maryland team headed to the locker rooms trailing Pittsburgh 45-24 as boos poured down from the Maryland faithful.

The Maryland Terrapins shot a dreadful 34.6 percent from the field and 25 percent from three-point range. For a second, things seemed to be looking up for Jared Nickens as he made his first three-point shot attempt. Nevertheless, Nickens missed his next five field goals, including four missed three-point attempts, and never left the bench in the second half. After tonight’s performance, Nickens is now just 4-of-29 (13.8 percent) from the field this season.

VS.

	1	2	T
Terrapins	24	35	59
Panthers	45	28	73

The Terps came out in the second half just as bad, if not, worse. Just about five minutes into the second half, Maryland had scored just four points as Pittsburgh continued to dominate, stretching their lead to a game-high 25 points.

Around the 12-minute mark, shots finally started to fall for the Terps as the momentum slowly started to shift in Maryland’s favor. The Terps made their next four three-point shots and cut Pittsburgh’s lead to 15 points with a little over eight minutes remaining.

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Suddenly, with just about three and a half minutes left, the Terps 25-point deficit deflated to single digits with the scoreboard displaying 63-55. Maryland failed to take advantage

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