A Couple Takeaways (and Giveaways) from Maryland's Win Over Seattle University

I think, coming into this game, my expectations were too high on what to expect from the Maryland Terrapins this season. I loved the incoming freshman; I loved Jordan Williams and Sean Mosley as the scoring options with Cliff Tucker and Dino Gregory supporting them.

I wasn’t so sure about Adrian Bowie and how he would handle running the point on a Gary Williams-coached team, and he did nothing to reassure me tonight on my reservations against him. Bowie seemed over his head and kept pressing. The highlight of the night is when he got trapped by one person at midcourt and couldn’t get the ball out.

Pe’Shon Howard and Terrell Stoglin proved tonight they are going to eventually push Bowie out of the starting position. Not sure exactly which one of them is going to do it because both freshmen are extremely different from each other. One scores, one passes and plays much better defense.

Maryland has a few things to work on if they are going to get back to the dance and defend their ACC co-championship.

Cutting down on their turnovers is first and foremost.  Having 29 turnovers against a team that isn’t even good enough to be your practice squad is inexcusable. I will say that Seattle is a very scrappy team that pressured the ball well and forced Maryland into some awkward positions on the floor, which led to bad passes.

It would seem very simplistic, especially for guys who have been playing for 10 years to work their angles better. The areas on the floor where they were throwing to the post didn’t make any sense, they allowed the lanes to be filled but still threw the pass anyway, most of the time right to a Seattle player.

The Terps just did not take care of the ball. Too many soft cross court passes or passes into traffic or passes to wide open guys on the other team or in the fifth row.

I can’t blame a single player; everyone who played had a turnover except for Jordan Williams.

Maryland also had no semblance of a half-court game either.

You think that the since Seattle didn’t trot out anyone on to the floor over 6’7” that the offense would have been to kick the ball down to Jordan Williams and let him abuse the undersized Seattle front line, but most of the guards seemed to have an issue getting the ball down into the post and this really hurt the Terps in their offensive sets.

Having a guy like Greivis Vasquez or Eric Hayes out on the perimeter to make teams pay for doubling down on Williams is going to hurt. After this game, it seems like Dino Gregory could be the only real scoring option from the outside and makes me wish that Nick Faust could forgo his senior year of high school and enroll now. The two-guard position would be all his.

A positive for this team though is its depth. The Terps went 11 deep, and everyone scored from the people who logged meaningful minutes. Ersin Levent was the 12th man to play; he made it in during mop up duty and was 0-1 from the field. The last 18 people in the building for the final two minutes really cheered for him to make that wide open three, but he missed it just short.

Outside of being deep, this team is a lot more athletic; no longer do we have to worry about the ageless Dave Neal-type of player out there. Everyone on this team can run, and that will honestly be Maryland’s best offense. Trap and get into fast breaks, push the tempo and wear the other team out just like they did tonight.

Seattle was worn down and tired by the middle of the second half, and that is where Maryland really took the game over and finally put the Redhawks away.

Another thing I took away from this game is that Mychal Parker can jump. I can’t remember the last time we had a Terp that could jump like that. His dunk towards the end of the second half was one of the best dunks I had seen in a while.

Now for Wednesday's game against the College of Charleston which is a better team than Seattle, as long as the turnovers don’t approach 30 again, they shouldn't be too much of a threat to Maryland.