Maryland men’s basketball never stood much of a chance Tuesday night in Las Vegas.
No. 12 Gonzaga stormed ahead to a 21-point first half lead en route to a 100-61 demolition of the Terps in the second leg of the Players Era tournament. The Bulldogs were far and away the better team, and they would be against almost anyone in the country.
Advertisement
Maryland’s final game in Las Vegas will take place Wednesday at 12am ET against No. 8 Alabama.
Here are three takeaways from Tuesday’s action.
Gonzaga is very good at basketball
Maryland didn’t have its best game Tuesday night. But the lopsided final score says much more about Gonzaga than it does about the Terps.
The Bulldogs were ranked No. 21 in the preseason Associated Press poll and have done nothing but rise. Now sitting at No. 12, they’re set to play in the Players Era tournament championship against No. 7 Michigan and look like one of the best teams in the country.
“Playing in a tournament like this affords us an opportunity to diagnose even more at a faster rate,” head coach Buzz Williams said. “None of that is fun, but to be able to play a team that’s good enough to win the national championship in the fourth week of the season, there’s a lot for us to grow from.”
Advertisement
The Terps were outplayed in virtually every facet of the game. Gonzaga outrebounded them, 39-29, outshot them from both the field — 57.8% to 36.4% — and beyond the arc — 14-of-33 to 5-of-21 — and forced 18 turnovers while Maryland forced just 12.
No matter who Gonzaga had in the game, they produced. Eleven Bulldogs scored a point Tuesday night — just 10 Terps saw the court.
6-foot-10 redshirt junior Braden Huff, putting together a breakout campaign, led Gonzaga with 20 points. 2024-25 first-team All-WCC forward Graham Ike added 13, and graduate forward Steele Venters — who missed the past two seasons due to injury — posted 14 points, the most in a game since his return to action.
Losing by 39 points is never an acceptable outcome, but Gonzaga is one of the few teams that make it an understandable one.
Advertisement
Lopsided bench battle
Aleks Alston and Myles Rice were key parts of Maryland’s win over UNLV on Monday. But the entire bench unit fell silent when it mattered against Gonzaga.
The Terps’ backups scored just nine points Tuesday night, and only four of those were in the first half — courtesy of a 3-pointer from Isaiah Watts and a free throw by Rice. When those two are cold, Maryland simply doesn’t have the bodies off the bench to be productive as long as Solomon Washington is out.
An Aleks Alston layup with two minutes left and a last-second 3-pointer from Guillermo Del Pino — who played 12 minutes — represented the only other bench contributions for the Terps. Payne, Andre Mills and Darius Adams scored 62.3% of their points.
Advertisement
Meanwhile, 11 Bulldogs played at least five minutes — and all 11 of them had at least four points. Venters was the biggest bench contributor, but sophomore Emmanuel Innocenti added 15 points and freshman Davis Fogle exploded for eight points in the closing minutes.
Gonzaga ultimately won the bench points battle, 51-9. Maryland needs more out of its backups, but the discrepancy is a testament to the Bulldogs’ depth and roster-building excellence than anything.
Terps kept Gonzaga off the line
Head coach Buzz Williams has repeatedly emphasized the need to “get fouled, and defend without fouling.” Tuesday was the best his squad has done at the latter.
Advertisement
Gonzaga shot 15 free throws, but only two of them came in the first half, and 11 were in the final 10 minutes of the game. That was despite 44 of its points coming in the paint and a flurry of attempts near the rim. The Bulldogs were 12-of-15 on those attempts, with Ike the only player with more than two makes, going 4-of-4.
The drawback of not fouling was the Bulldogs simply made their shots, again and again. They were 15-of-21 on layups and 37-of-64 overall. But that’s a byproduct of Maryland playing one of the country’s elite teams — something it will not have to do most games.
Maryland continued its excellence at getting to the line in the first half, with 17 attempts; primarily by Payne and Adams, who had six and seven in the half respectively. But with a comeback opportunity at hand, the Terps lost that strength; their first made free throw in the second half didn’t come until there was 7:34 left in the contest.
