Mackey Arena continues to be a house of horrors for Maryland men’s basketball.

The Terps dropped their seventh consecutive game at the home of No. 8 Purdue, which overcame a five-point deficit midway through the second half with a 26-16 outburst to emerge with a 83-78 victory Sunday afternoon in West Lafayette, Ind.

Maryland (8-2, 1-1 Big Ten) has not experienced a triumph at Mackey Arena since Jan. 10, 2015, when that squad won 69-60. Perhaps more relevantly, the team was denied its sixth straight win and lost for the first time since a 78-74 setback to then-No. 15 Marquette on Nov. 15.

Freshman center Derik Queen scored a career-high 26 points for the Terps, grabbed 12 rebounds for the fourth double-double of his fledgling year, and blocked two shots. Junior point guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie compiled 18 points and four assists, and graduate student small forward Selton Miguel and sophomore shooting guard Rodney Rice each scored 13 points.

Maryland owned a 62-57 lead with 8:25 to go in the second half, but the Boilermakers responded with a 10-0 run and then added a 10-5 spurt for a 10-point advantage — the only double-digit lead of the game — to pull away and keep the Terps at bay.

As disheartening as the defeat was, Big Ten Network analyst and former Purdue forward Robbie Hummel came away with positive thoughts on Maryland.

“I don’t care about the result today,” he said during the network’s broadcast. “Just from the eye test of the talent and seeing them up close in the last two games against Ohio State and here today, This is as tough a building in college basketball to win as anywhere. The schedule kind of lightens up before they get back into Big Ten play, but I think very highly of the Maryland Terrapins. I think Kevin Willard is going to have an opportunity for this team to really compete this year.”

Willard echoed that sentiment, telling the school’s radio broadcast after the game, “I’m excited about this team. The first time we played in front of a packed Xfinity Center, we did some things I had never seen. Now on the road in this conference, this is what it’s like every game. It’s one of the best atmospheres. We’ll go back and watch film, we’ll learn from this, but I’m proud of the way our guys went out there and battled for 40 minutes.”

Meanwhile, the Boilermakers (8-2, 1-1) produced four double-figure scorers, a group led by junior point guard Braden Smith (personal-best 24 points) and junior power forward Trey Kaufman-Renn (21). They also bounced back from Thursday night’s 81-70 upset loss at Penn State and avoided their first 0-2 start in the Big Ten since the 2013-14 seasons.

Here are three observations from the outcome:

Derik Queen isn’t bothered by freshman jitters

Hardly anyone would have faulted the precocious youngster from Baltimore for feeling a little heat in his first true road game of the season in a hostile environment like the one created by the crowd at Mackey Arena.

Queen, however, continues to prove that he is no ordinary freshman. He scored 18 points in the second half, which included back-to-back 3-pointers after missing his first 11 attempts from beyond the arc in his career. Queen nearly scored as many points as his teammates did (24) in that second half.

In the first half, Queen scored eight points to trail Gillespie’s and Rice’s 10 points, but he refused to cave in to the announced 14,876 in West Lafayette. After drawing a foul with 72 seconds left before halftime, he jawed with the student section behind one corner of the court, inviting a chorus of boos. Despite the reception, Queen calmly sank both free throws.

While Queen seemed resistant to the crowd’s raucous support of the home team, Willard seemed to acknowledge that the first away game from Xfinity Center in College Park, Md., not involving a neutral venue impacted the players.

“Our halfcourt defense in the first half was really good,” he said. “The crowd got into it, we got a little bit rattled, and we did some things. This is our first road game. It reminded me of some of the things we did against Marquette.”

In the first two Big Ten games of his career, Queen has totaled 43 points, 23 rebounds, three steals and two blocks. And it doesn’t appear that he is showing many signs of playing like he should be intimidated about playing at the Division I level.

Maryland’s defense allowed Purdue’s stars to get unleashed

In Wednesday’s 83-59 rout of Ohio State, the Terps locked down on the Buckeyes standout junior point guard Bruce Thorton, who finished with a quiet nine points, four rebounds and two assists. The defense could not repeat that performance against the Boilermakers.

Smith and Kaufman-Renn each scored 15 points in the second half. Smith, the Big Ten’s preseason Player of the Year, added a game-high 10 assists, four rebounds and two steals to his day and demonstrated that his six-point, five-assist, three-rebound outing at Penn State was perhaps more of an anomaly than a concern.

The 6-foot-9, 230-pound Kaufman-Renn, who turned the ball over seven times to offset the 15 points he scored against the Nittany Lions, found success in the lane against both the 6-10, 245-pound Queen and 6-9, 230-pound senior power forward Julian Reese, who fouled out with 12:32 left in the second half. Kaufman-Renn and 6-7, 205-pound sophomore small forward Camden Heide (15 points and three rebounds) helped Purdue outscore Maryland, 42-32, in the paint – a first by any opponent against the Terps.

Willard said Smith was the catalyst for the Boilermakers’ offensive explosion.

“Braden Smith’s pick-and-roll killed us,” he said. “We tried to make some adjustments, but when you have a lot of new guys and you’re trying to make adjustments with six minutes to go in the game and you’ve got some lineups out there and without Ju in there, we weren’t able to adjust. I thought that really hurt us.”

Throw in 12 points and seven rebounds by junior shooting guard Fletcher Loyer, and the Terps failed to craft the answers that could limit the damage done by the Boilermakers’ top players.

Maryland relied too much on its starters — or it didn’t get enough from its reserves

One of the team’s top storylines so far had been a growing comfort and confidence coach Kevin Willard had in going to the bench to give the starters some much-needed rest and continue to carry out the offensive and defensive strategies employed by the coaching staff.

But when push came to shove against Purdue, the Terps showed how dependent they are on the starters. The first five of Queen, Gillespie, Rice, Miguel and Reese accounted for 75 of the team’s points (96.2%), 26 of its 36 rebounds (72.2%), 11 of its 15 assists (73.3%), and all four of its steals. And with the exception of Reese due to his foul trouble, the other four played at least 32 minutes each.

Sophomore shooting guard DeShawn Harris-Smith had two points, two rebounds and two assists, but junior power forward Tafara Gapare finished with more turnovers (two) than points (one). In his three previous games, the Georgia Tech transfer had averaged 13.3 points and 5.7 rebounds.

Considering how potent the Boilermakers were on offense, perhaps it shouldn’t be startling that Willard was forced to shorten his bench on Sunday. But Maryland would surely welcome greater contributions from its reserves to alleviate some of the pressure on the starters and convert some of these negative results into positive ones.

Up next

Saint Francis at Maryland

Tuesday, Dec. 17, 7:30 p.m. ET

____

©2024 Baltimore Sun. Visit baltimoresun.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.