LINCOLN, NEB. — The first foul was called a little more than a minute into the game, on Nebraska forward Shavon Shields. The last one was called with 41 seconds remaining, when Shields was fouled after hitting a driving layup.
For the game, the three Big Ten officials pierced the air at the Pinnacle Bank Center for a total 51 personal fouls, plus technical fouls on the respective coaches.
By the end of Maryland's 64-61 victory Sunday night, the Terps were not in as much individual foul trouble as Nebraska. And the 10th-ranked Terps survived largely because they made their free throws and the Cornhuskers did not.
Maryland made 21 of its 25 free throws, including seven of its last eight to help win a 10th straight game this season decided by six points or less. Nebraska made just 23 of 37, missing seven of its last 11 and lost a second close game to the Terps this season.
As difficult as it was to watch at times, the final Big Ten regular season game this season was even harder to play.
"Tonight's game didn't have a lot of flow to it for either team," Maryland coach Mark Turgeon said. "We had serious foul trouble. We survived the first half without Melo [Trimble] A lot of guys stepped up for us. Except for the fouling, I thought our defense was terrific."
Said Trimble: "It was very difficult, because we didn't know what kind of whistle they were going to call on us. They could have bumped into us a little and they would have called a foul for them. I knew it was going to be great execution on the offensive end that was going to win the game anyway."
Trimble picked up his second personal with 13:24 left in the first half and wound up playing just nine minutes in the first half. The number of foul calls and stoppages allowed Turgeon to get Trimble in for offensive possessions several times while using senior Varun Ram (River Hill) to play defense.
In retrospect, the early foul trouble was a blessing for Trimble, whose legs seemed fresher at the end as he hit couple of big 3-pointers down the stretch.
"If I had played more minutes in the first half, I wouldn't have had as much gas in the second half," said Trimble, who didn't come out of the game in the second half and wound up with a team-high 21 points, along with seven rebounds and four assists.
Speaking of the lack of rhythm in a game with so many fouls being called, Trimble said, "It's really hard [to play]. I almost kind of lost it, but I maintained composure and played basketball. The whistle wasn't really going our way at , but Coach Turgeon said we were going to get a foul and we would win the game."
Ram, a former walk-on, got one of the longer stints in his career, playing seven minutes. He even drew a key foul on Nebraska star Terran Petteway late in the first half, which helped the Terps take the lead at halftime. It turned out to be Petteway's third personal and seemed to affect him the rest of the game.
"I didn't realize that it was his third foul at the time," Ram said. "I just try to get in [front of] guys, as important as he is. I didn't want to let him score. I was lucky enough to cut him off."
One of the biggest defensive plays in the second half came when junior forward Jake Layman blocked Shields on a drive with Maryland leading 55-53 with a little under six minutes left.
It came right after Shields, who led the Cornhuskers with a game-high 26 points, had scored and was fouled by freshman center Michal Cekovsky.
Asked if he was surprised that a foul wasn't called on the block, Layman said, "Yeah, it was so unpredictable when there was going to be a call and when there wasn't. I was happy that they didn't call it when it could have gone either way."
Turgeon didn't criticize the officiating after the game, and he even said that he told his players to foul in the final seconds after Dez Wells had given the Terps a three-point lead. The decision to foul was contrary to what Turgeon did in similar circumstances in wins earlier this season over Indiana and Penn State. (Though the Terps didn't end up fouling this time either.)
The reason Turgeon wanted his team to foul was because of Nebraska's poor free throw shooting. Shields wound up missing a corner 3-pointer that could have sent the game into overtime.
"We were trying to foul. We weren't trying to foul for those other 27 fouls," Turgeon said. "It took them a long time to get up the court, [and] I thought we were going to foul around three seconds. We reached in, they didn't call it and it was like, 'Oh no.' And they missed it for us."