Maryland’s Rodney Rice acknowledged he felt motivated going into the Big Ten Conference tournament quarterfinals Friday night against Illinois because he was left off the all-conference teams.
If a 26-point performance that included making seven 3-pointers is how Rice plans to play for the season’s remainder, third-seeded Michigan (23-9) might want to pay attention to him when it tries to stop the second-seeded Terrapins (25-7) on Saturday afternoon in the semifinals in Indianapolis.
Rice, who averaged 13.7 points a game and hit 36.3 percent of his 3-pointers during the regular season, scored 18 of his game-high 26 points in the first nine minutes. Rice produced two 4-point plays during Maryland’s 88-65 win.
“I’m just going to play and let my game do all the talking,” he said.
His game — and the Terrapins’ game — spoke volumes. No. 11-ranked Maryland led No. 24 Illinois 57-31 at halftime and increased the margin to 84-48 at the 9:41 mark of the second half before Terrapins coach Kevin Willard started using the bench heavily down the stretch.
Maryland made 11 of 23 3-pointers, thanks largely to Rice, and owned a whopping 22-0 advantage in points off turnovers. It played the entire first half without a turnover and committed only three for the game.
“Any time you’re up 26 at halftime, you must have done something right,” Willard said. “I thought we came out very focused, really understood what we wanted to do with the game plan.”
Perhaps the most impressive part of the Terrapins’ effort was their defense. Playing a team that scored 106 points Thursday night in eliminating Iowa, Maryland forced 17 turnovers and allowed seventh-seeded Illinois to make only 23 of 63 attempts from the field.
Meanwhile, No. 22-ranked Michigan stopped sixth-seeded Purdue 86-68 in Friday night’s final quarterfinal behind an outstanding all-around effort by Danny Wolf. The 7-foot Yale transfer had 18 points, 11 rebounds and six assists as six Wolverines scored in double figures.
Much like Maryland, the Wolverines played under control and executed well on both ends. They finished with just six turnovers and hassled Purdue’s star point guard, Braden Smith, into a 5-for-18, 12-point showing.
“They got out to an early, I think, 6-0 start, and I don’t think anyone blinked an eye,” Wolf said. “We just kept at it and kept with our game plan. We only turned it over six times, and we won the rebounding battle by six. That’s a recipe for success.”
Michigan recorded 25 assists on 30 field goals, the kind of ball movement that wasn’t part of its attack when it played Maryland on March 5 in Ann Arbor. The Wolverines fell behind 33-22 at halftime en route to a 71-65 defeat.
The key stat from that game might have been Michigan’s 16 turnovers that the Terrapins cashed in for 21 points.
“We turned the ball over, we played a little too anxious on offense, and we tried to do a little too much,” Wolverines coach Dusty May said of that game. “We made some errors that were uncharacteristic.”
The winner of Saturday’s game will advance to the championship game Sunday against top-seeded Michigan State or fifth-seeded Wisconsin.
–Field Level Media
