Maryland coach Gary Williams is far too competitive to feel satisfied after a loss. His losses remain with him like hundreds of tiny scars.
But Maryland's 71-64 defeat to top-ranked Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium appears to be in a class with other elite losses that — while not exactly acceptable — at least contain enough positives that they can be of benefit.
"You can use that to your advantage, the fact that we competed," Williams said Tuesday of the Duke game, in which the Terps held the Blue Devils to 40.3 percent shooting and minimized their advantage on the boards.
Duke had entered Sunday night's game averaging 89 points and 50.1 percent shooting — best in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
If the Terps (10-5, 0-2 ACC) — who held Nolan Smith, the ACC's leading scorer, to 5-for-18 shooting — can sustain that level of defense, they believe they can carve out quite a few wins in conference play, which continues Wednesday night at Wake Forest (7-9, 0-1 ACC).
"I think we're doing a lot better job playing defense," said Maryland guard Adrian Bowie, who called the Wake Forest contest "definitely a must-win game." "We're 0-2 and we need to get it going."
Wake Forest, under new coach Jeff Bzdelik, is in transition. The Demon Deacons have losses this season to Stetson, Winthrop and Presbyterian. Only two players — freshman Travis McKie and sophomore C.J. Harris — have started all 16 games.
Wake Forest has lost five of its last six games. It fell to North Carolina State by 21 points in its ACC opener on Saturday.
"Any time there's a new coach, there's a time element there to develop a new style of play," Williams said.
Sunday's Duke loss parallels Maryland's overtime defeat last season at Wake Forest. That Deacons team had Al-Farouq Aminu and Ishmael Smith — both have since advanced to the NBA — and posed an important early-season conference test for the Terps.
Maryland fell, 85-83, to the Deacons. But Williams called it "a great game" and pointed to it later as a milestone in the team's ability to compete in a difficult environment. After that contest, Maryland was soon off to its best ACC start since 2002-03.
Asked about that game Tuesday, the coach replied: "You hate to lose, number one. But we played. We showed up for that game and we showed up the other night [against Duke]."
Maryland's hopes of making an ACC run center on defense. In Maryland's system, defense leads to fast breaks and fast breaks lead to points. The Terps outscored Duke, which has won 25 in a row, in fast-break points and points off turnovers.
Defense enabled the Terps to hang in the game despite shooting 39.4 percent.
Maryland ranks second in the ACC to Florida State in field-goal percentage defense (37 percent) and 3-point defense (30.5 percent).
Sunday's defeat marked the fourth time the Terps have come within single digits — and lost — against a team that was nationally ranked at one point in the season. The Terps, who have six new players this season, face another such team on Saturday in seventh-ranked Villanova.
"We're a better team now than when we lost those games in November. But we have to show it," Williams said. "We're pretty confident. I don't think we need a confidence boost. We need a win."
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