CHAMPAIGN, ILL. — With less than three minutes remaining in Wednesday's game against Illinois at State Farm Center, Maryland men's basketball coach Mark Turgeon substituted for Dez Wells after the senior guard took an off-balance jump shot that missed badly, falling wide without even grazing the rim or backboard.
It summed up a night in which Wells looked far from one of the best players in the Big Ten Conference and the No. 11 Terps looked far from one of the best teams in the country. After taking a two-point lead at halftime, Maryland was dominated for much of the second half in what became a 64-57 defeat.
Yet unlike his first three seasons in College Park, when he might have piled on the performance of some players with caustic postgame comments, Turgeon praised his Terps more than he buried them. Maybe it was because the undermanned Fighting Illini had done that already.
"I told our team, we've played 16 games, and 15 of them, they've given me everything they had," said Turgeon, whose team bused from here Thursday to West Lafayette, Ind., where the Terps will play Purdue on Saturday. "They never quit tonight, and tried to come back. … Tonight, we just weren't ourselves."
Maryland (14-2, 2-1) had won its first two Big Ten games, over Michigan State on the road and Minnesota at home, largely because of its defense and rebounding.
Against an Illinois team that had lost leading scorer and rebounder Rayvonte Rice to a broken hand Monday, the Terps allowed the Illini to score on nine of their first 10 second-half possessions, including five straight jump shots by sophomore guard Malcolm Hill, two of them 3-pointers, in a 20-3 run.
Taking Rice's role as the primary scorer, Hill finished with a career-high 28 points on 9-for-18 shooting, including four of seven 3-pointers. It was just his second game with 20 points or more at Illinois.
Maryland, which came in leading the Big Ten in total rebounding and rebounding margin, was outrebounded 36-33 by a team with just one player in its rotation over 6 feet 6. Nnanna Egwu, a 6-11, 250-pound senior, finished with 11 points, nine rebounds and four blocked shots.
"I think these guys were even more fired up without Rayvonte Rice tonight," Maryland junior forward Jake Layman said. "We've got to be ready for anything. Every night, you've got to come to play."
Maryland's lack of effort on defense and on the boards, as well as its inefficient offense, proved disastrous. There were more than a few occasions when the Terps seemed totally confused as to what set they were running against the Illini, who often switched defenses.
If not for a furious comeback led by freshman guards Melo Trimble and Dion Wiley, who helped cut a 16-point deficit to five, 60-55, with 24 seconds to play, the outcome would have been more one-sided. Trimble scored a team-high 17 points, nine in the first half and the remainder in final 52 seconds. Wiley had nine points, all coming on 3-pointers.
The freshmen — including forward Jared Nickens, who scored seven points — made up for a horrendous shooting night by Maryland's seniors. Forward Evan Smotrycz, guard Richaud Pack and Wells were a combined 3-for-21, with Smotrycz finishing 0-for-6. As a team, the Terps were 19-for-52 overall, though a respectable 9-for-21 from beyond the arc.
"We didn't have it today," said Pack, who was 1-for-7 from the field and, uncharacteristically, forced a few of those misses. "I think it's just a today thing."
After arriving in West Lafayette, Ind., on Thursday, Wiley said: "We just had one bad night. Everyone has that [kind of] night."
Notes: Forward forward Ivan Bender has enrolled at Maryland, according to eurobasket.com's Dave Pick. The 6-9, 210-pound Bender averaged over 10 points and five rebounds for Croatia in the 2013 under-19 World Championships, then missed most of 2014 after tearing his anterior cruciate ligament.
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