COLLEGE PARK -- When Keith Booth was a senior at Dunbar, Towson State was on his short list of schools to attend. It might have just been a courtesy, but the Tigers are wishing they could have won the recruiting battle over Maryland, Duke and Kentucky.
In the two games he has faced them since becoming a Terrapin, Booth has played as if the Tigers had passed on him, not the other way around. After scoring a career-high 18 points against Towson State as a freshman last year in a lopsided win at the Baltimore Arena, Booth matched it against the Tigers last night.
The 6-foot-5 sophomore forward scored 18, including 15 in the first half, as the 12th-ranked Terps put the disappointment from their loss to fifth-ranked Massachusetts behind them by routing the Tigers, 120-73, before 11,237 at Cole Field House.
Only a missed dunk with a little under 11 minutes left prevented Booth from reaching the 20-point mark for the first time in his college career. Six other players scored in double figures for Maryland: Exree Hipp (16), sophomore All-American Joe Smith and freshman Sarunas Jasikevicius (14 each), Johnny Rhodes, Wayne Bristol and Mario Lucas (11 apiece).
It was the highest point total by a Maryland team since Gary Williams took over and the most a Terps team had scored since a 117-51 win over UMES in the 1986-87 season. It was the fourth time this season Maryland went over the 100-point mark.
The other first for the Terps was that junior Duane Simpkins didn't start for the first time since taking over the point guard job last season. His streak of 38 straight starts ended after Simpkins, still upset with his play against the Minutemen, was late for a team meeting Sunday.
Simpkins, replaced in the starting lineup by sophomore Matt Kovarik, came in with a little under eight minutes left in the first half and was greeted with polite applause. He started the second half, but continued to struggle, missing both of his field-goal attempts and finishing with four points.
The most positive aspect of last night's game for Maryland (7-2) was the play of Jasikevicius, whose defensive problems earlier in the season caused Williams to be hesitant to use the muscular 6-4 guard. Though he didn't play against Massachusetts, Jasikevicius had shown positive signs lately.
Jasikevicius hit his first shot, a three-pointer, and demonstrated his ability to drive to the basket in the second half. He wound up shooting 5-for-6 from the field, including all three of his three-point attempts.
There was little positive Towson State (3-3) could extract from this trip down I-95. It was the second worst of 10 straight defeats to the Terps, not quite matching the 53-point disaster of a decade ago when a frustrated Maryland team won on its fifth try to get Lefty Driesell's 500th victory.
Except for Simpkins, the Terps didn't appear have any emotional hangover from Saturday's loss to Massachusetts. But the Tigers, coming in off two straight victories, hung around for a while.
In fact, after Towson State saw an early 7-6 lead turn into a 17-9 deficit, the Tigers showed some resolve by cutting Maryland's lead back to 20-19 on a three-point shot by Florian Schneider with 13:35 left in the first half.
But the Terps ran off 10 straight points, the last six coming on back-to-back three-pointers by Lucas and Rhodes. Maryland stretched its lead to 37-25 on another three-point shot by Lucas and to 39-25 on Hipp's first basket of the night.
It came with 7:40 to play in the first half, just as Simpkins was entering the game for the first time. It also came during a stretch of 4 1/2 minutes when the Tigers failed to score from the field and Towson State coach Terry Truax, frustrated by the way the game was going, got hit with a technical foul.
"When are you going to make the right call?" Truax yelled at referee Steve Gordon, prompting the T.
It was the second technical on the Tigers in the half, the first being called on Ralph Blalock (team-high 13 points) for hanging on the rim after a breakaway dunk. But Smith missed all three technical free throws for the Terps, whose woes from the line continued as they missed eight of their first 16 attempts.
But Maryland made 10 of its last 12 free throws for the half, as the Terps took a 60-33 lead into the locker room. Booth had 15 points by half, Rhodes added 11 and Smith scored 10. Blalock led the Tigers with 11, but failed to score in the last nine minutes.
NOTES: The Terps dropped from 11th to 12th in this week's Associated Press poll, five spots below where they started the season. . . . Because of exams, Maryland won't play again until facing Morgan State on Dec. 23.