Another poor performance on the road found Nebraska Saturday afternoon inside the XFINITY Center in College Park, Maryland.
Turnovers, rebounding and basically everything else were major issues for the Huskers, who lost 73-51 to the Terrapins to mark Nebraska's fifth conference loss away from Pinnacle Bank Arena. Big Red falls to 15-6 overall and 5-5 in Big Ten play. Maryland improves to 13-8, 5-5.
The loss will be a Quad 2 defeat — for now — for the Huskers, who came into today with a NET ranking of No. 47. The blow-out loss comes at a bad time as Nebraska will play two ranked teams in the next eight days. The Huskers host No. 13 Wisconsin on Thursday before traveling to Champaign, Illinois, to play Brad Underwood's No. 10-ranked Fighting Illini next Sunday.
The numbers weren't pretty when the clock hit zeros.
Nebraska committed more turnovers (18) than made shots from the field (17). And Maryland took advantage of the sloppy ball security by scoring 25 points off them. The Huskers forced eight Maryland turnovers and scored eight points.
And the rebounding? Not even close to good enough.
Maryland out-rebounded the Huskers 43-25 overall and 17-3 in offensive boards. The Terps used those 17 extra possessions to score 18 second-chance points. Nebraska had just five second-chance points Saturday.
“The thing that bothers me more than anything today is the turnovers and offensive rebounds," Fred Hoiberg told media in the postgame press conference. "You can’t give up 25 points off turnovers and 18 second-chance and have any chance of keeping it close.”
After scoring a career-high 34 points against Ohio State, Rienk Mast was held to five points on 2-of-5 shooting against Maryland. Maryland's best player, guard Jahmir Young, was held to 12 points on 5-of-15 shooting, but his team still managed to beat the Huskers by 22 points. Young impacted the game in other ways Saturday, grabbing a whopping nine rebounds while dishing out six assists.
Just one Husker scored in double-digits Saturday in CJ Wilcher, who ended with 14 points and went 4-of-6 from 3-point range.
Speaking of 3-point range, both teams were hitting from deep. That made sense for Nebraska, which came into the game sixth in the conference in 3-point shooting at 35.9%. But Maryland isn't a good 3-point shooting team. Before Saturday, the Terps were shooting a Big Ten-worst 29% from behind the arc. But on Saturday, they shot 42% and made 11 treys.
Two more areas where Maryland owned Nebraska in were bench points (25-19) and paints in the paint (30-12).
Maryland got a combined 25 points off its bench from two players you wouldn't expect it from — Jamie Kaiser Jr. (14 points) and Jahari Long (11). Kaiser came into Saturday averaging 3.6 points while Long was at 5.0. Those two combined to make seven 3-pointers, too, which was another anomaly — Kaiser came into the game shooting 21.9% from 3 while Long came in shooting 34.1%.
Jordan Geronimo and Young both hauled down five offensive boards for Maryland. Julian Reese, the Terps' best big, finished his day with 15 points and 16 rebounds, besting Mast in the game.
At the half, Nebraska faced a 17-point deficit at 44-27 that was created by poor ball security and a lack of physicality on the boards.
Nebraska enjoyed a good start to the game, gaining a 12-2 edge early. But Maryland soon woke up and used a pressure defense to get the Huskers uncomfortable, and it worked.
Nebraska committed nine first-half turnovers, which led to 14 Maryland points. The Terps were tougher with rebounds, too, winning that battle 22-11 overall and 10-2 on the offensive glass, which Maryland scored 16 second-chance points on.
The Huskers ended the first half missing their last seven shots from the field and on a scoring drought of 3:26. They didn’t make a shot from the field in the final 7:23 of the half. When the first 20 minutes were in the books, the Huskers were outscored 45-15 after that early 12-2 lead.
“We talk about going out and throwing the first punch in an early game is so important, and we did that," Hoiberg said. "We were blocking out — our block-outs were great early. We get up 10 right away, and then we completely went away from what was making us successful out there in that first run.”
The Huskers continue to face the same issues on the road. If they want to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time since the 2013-14 season, which is still a real possibility, those turnover and rebounding issues need to get fixed.
“That’s becoming a very discouraging issue and a theme for our team on the road on the glass,” Hoiberg said.