The Terps’ plethora of unforced errors made it hard to come away with a win.
Maryland men’s basketball fell to Northwestern, 76-74, in an overtime heartbreaker Thursday in Evanston, Illinois, topped off by a buzzer-beater by the Wildcats’ Nick Martinelli.
The Terps are now 3-4 in Big Ten play and have yet another underwhelming loss under their belt. The Wildcats entered the game with a 1-4 conference record and on a three-game losing streak.
Here are three takeaways from the game.
Sloppy, sloppy performance
It’s really hard to win a game with the amount of mistakes Maryland made Thursday.
The Terps were plagued from buzzer to buzzer by uncharacteristically bad turnovers. They finished 16 turnovers — tied for their season high — and a large portion of them came from inaccurate or dropped passes. Ja’Kobi Gillespie, Rodney Rice, Selton Miguel and Derik Queen all had blooper-reel giveaways in the opening five minutes.
A minute into overtime, Gillespie was responsible for taking the ball up the court in overtime. He operated with zero urgency, drawing a completely unforced 10-second violation that encapsulated many of the Terps’ issues Thursday.
Rice fouled out late in the second half, and Queen missed large stretches of the game due to foul trouble. Northwestern outfouled Maryland, 18-15, but that says more about the Wildcats than it does the Terps.
It wasn’t just the silly mistakes either. Maryland put forth a shooting performance that resembled its historically bad 2023-24 shooting season much more than this one. It was 24-of-63 from the field (38.1%) — the Terps first game below 40% this year. That was paired with a lackluster 6-of-20 effort from beyond the arc. Maryland’s only saving grace was a stellar 13-of-14 performance by Julian Reese from the free-throw line.
Queen left a lot to be desired
Queen finished with nine points and 14 rebounds — not his best line, but not his worst either. That doesn’t tell the full story of his performance, though. The freshman struggled with unforced errors, got into foul trouble and, at times, lacked the effort and demeanor expected from a Big Ten basketball player.
Queen could have had a handful more rebounds if not for lackadaisical attempts to bring them in. And Queen took his time in transition repeatedly. On one occasion, poor effort getting back on defense and securing a rebound led to Northwestern free throws and a heated response from Reese directed at Queen.
I talked here about Derik Queen’s stretches of less-than-ideal effort last night against Northwestern. This is the sequence I referenced where Julian Reese gets in his face about it.
It was Queen’s first defensive possession after a 6-minute bench stint. https://t.co/3DMy4H7qCl pic.twitter.com/M8E89A9k5Y
— Matt Germack (@MattGermack) January 17, 2025
Queen committed a foul on the defensive end and threw a ball out of bounds on offense in the game’s first 75 seconds. He finished with a team-high five turnovers to go with four fouls, which forced him to play just 28 regulation minutes, the fewest of any starter.
Two of Queen’s four fouls came from offensive violations that occurred in the exact same manner: he had the ball high on the floor, drove down the lane and threw an elbow into a defender. He’s developing a habit of putting his hands up in disbelief on every foul called on him — and oftentimes, they’re good calls. It’s something no player, and certainly no freshman, should do as consistently as Queen does.
The Terps’ road struggles continue
Maryland is now 0-4 on the road this season. All four have come down to the wire, but head coach Kevin Willard’s squad has faltered down the stretch each time.
Lousy shooting stretches in the closing minutes against No. 17 Purdue, Washington and No. 13 Oregon led to the Terps first three losses. Against Northwestern, it looked like they were on their way to bucking that trend.
Maryland trailed by nine points with less than four minutes remaining in the game. But it closed out regulation on an 11-2 run kicked off by a Rice 3-pointer and capitalized by an easy Gillespie layup to tie the game with just six seconds left. The Terps shot 4-of-8 in that stretch, and Rice added two free throws.
Then, overtime happened. Maryland reverted to its old end-of-game ways, turning the ball over on three of its first five possessions in the extra period. That stretch was followed up by a 0-of-3 shooting run that allowed Northwestern to stay in the game.
The Terps face No. 19 Illinois and Indiana on the road before the end of the month. They need answers on how to close out games away from Xfinity Center fast — otherwise, they risk falling even further in Big Ten standings.