Much was made of Ohio State notching its fifth ranked win of the season on Thursday against Iowa, becoming the first team in the country to do so, but the unranked opponent on tap next for the Buckeyes isn’t far behind in that category.
Maryland (10-9, 4-8 Big Ten) has made a habit of playing spoiler this season, upsetting four ranked teams in the past 11 games, and the Terrapins will seek to add No. 7 Ohio State (15-4, 9-4) to that list when the programs meet on Monday.
The problem with that plan for head coach Mark Turgeon and company is that the Buckeye team they’ll see at the start of the week has been on a wrecking ball run through the Big Ten as of late, winning six of its past seven games, including four different top 15 opponents.
Riding high off of four-straight wins, with the last coming against National Player of the Year frontrunner Luka Garza and the Hawkeyes, the Buckeyes are in third place in the conference, and even though Maryland is sitting all the way down at the No. 11 spot in the Big Ten, it has already made several of the conference’s top teams pay for overlooking the Terrapins in the past.
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Make no mistake, Maryland has taken plenty of lumps both in and out of conference play, as it sits just one win above .500 this season. However, the games Maryland does win tend to be impressive, as the Terrapins’ resume includes upsets of then-No. 6 Wisconsin, then-No. 12 Illinois, then-No. 17 Minnesota and No. 24 Purdue.
The Purdue win came this past Tuesday against a Boilermaker team that had won five out of six games entering the contest, and already claimed two victories over the Scarlet and Gray this season.
But much like it often has for Maryland this year, its follow-up performance fell flat, as the Terrapins dropped to Penn State 55-50 in their latest outing on Friday. In fact, Maryland has not won back-to-back Big Ten games all season.
Maryland lost both of its top scorers from a season ago in Anthony Cowan and Jalen Smith, but several returners have taken on bigger roles to try and fill that void this year.
Maybe chief among those that have stepped up for the Terrapins is 6-foot-5 junior guard Eric Ayala, who is scoring six more points per game this year than he did last, leading Maryland with an average of 14.4 this season.
Sophomore Donta Scott, a 6-foot-7, 225-pound forward, is second on the team with 12.5 points per game and leads the Terrapins with 6.5 rebounds per contest.
Despite the presence of 7-foot-2 center Chol Marial on the roster, the four-star prospect from the class of 2019 class plays just 7.3 minutes per game.That means Scott and 6-foot-8 junior forward Jairus Hamilton are the two members of the Terrapin frontcourt that see significant minutes, which, in terms of size alone, should bode well for the Buckeyes given their own roster make-up.
But Maryland possesses good positional size at the guard position, with its top four all standing at 6-foot-5 or 6-foot-6.
Alongside Ayala and Scott, junior guard Aaron Wiggins is the only other Maryland player scoring in double digits this season, with an average of 12.3 points per game. Wiggins was a top 50 prospect in the class of 2018, and has scored at least 10 points in seven of the past nine games, including two 20-point efforts.
Maryland’s games tend to be low-scoring affairs, and its team statistics reflect that trend. The Terrapins are dead last in the conference in scoring offense, putting up 69.7 points per game, but they also have the third-ranked scoring defense in the Big Ten.
Maryland is the worst offensive rebounding team in the conference, and is one of the bottom five Big Ten teams in rebounding margin overall, which underscores the team’s lack of size down low.
Big Ten opponents have also shot the deep ball exceptionally well against Maryland, which has the conference’s second-worst 3-point field goal defense at .342. The Buckeyes are often streaky from 3, but as evidenced by a late barrage in the Iowa game, that could be a key to victory as well.
Tip-off, which is scheduled for 9 p.m. on Monday, will be at the Xfinity Center in College Park, Maryland, but playing at home has been a dangerous proposition for opponents of the Buckeyes as of late.
Ohio State has now won four-straight road games against Big Ten teams, and Maryland could push that streak to five.
