OHI-NO: BOBCATS STUN TERPS

It was bound to happen.

After a couple of too-close-for-comfort victories against inferior opponents, the upset finally took place.

In an uninspiring and downright ugly performance, the Terrapin men's basketball team lost to Ohio last night at Comcast Center, 61-55. Since coach Gary Williams arrived in 1989, it is only the fourth time in 141 games that the Terps have lost a home nonconference contest.

"I mean, this is super embarrassing. I can't even go out there and go home," guard Greivis Vasquez said. "This is just horrible. We didn't play hard; they outworked us. We weren't ready - once again."

"I'm definitely embarrassed," guard Eric Hayes said. "For Ohio to come in here, being in the MAC conference, and coming in here and beating us on our home floor - it's definitely embarrassing. We took a step back tonight."

Hayes and Vasquez shot a combined 8-for-28 from the floor, including 5-of-18 from three-point range. It was just one of many ugly stats from the game.

Ohio outrebounded the Terps, 37-27, but that wasn't the only glaring problem: The Terps often lacked fundamentals. Cliff Tucker went in for an uncontested layup and hit the front of the rim with the shot; twice Vasquez took a 3-pointer and chose to watch the shot instead of follow it up, as an Ohio player scooped up the rebound in front of him; Hayes, an 83 percent free-throw shooter, missed a technical foul shot.

"There's no excuses," said Williams, who was calm during his postgame press conference. "We have to play better basketball. … I'm the coach, so I take responsibility."

For about 35 minutes, the Terps were outhustled, outworked and outplayed by Ohio. The Terps (6-5) trailed by 17 points at one point in the second half, and when they finally had a run, there wasn't enough time left on the clock to complete the comeback.

Down 58-55 with 51 seconds left, the Terps waited 23 seconds to foul the Bobcats, rather than foul immediately or not at all. The Terps only took two shots - both missed threes - the rest of the way. Once the buzzer sounded, a giddy Ohio squad left the floor, celebrating as if it had just won a national championship.

"There's a lot of people criticizing us recently," Vasquez said, "and we let people talk bad about us because we really don't play hard as a team. And that's how it is - that's where we are right now."

In what has become an all-too-familiar trend this season, the Terps again started off slow. There were too many turnovers, bricks and sloppy passes during a disastrous first half, in which the Terps trailed 12-4 less than five minutes into the game, only scored 10 points in the first 10 minutes and tallied just 23 points.

Ohio's Jerome Tillman beat Dino Gregory for a back-door layup, giving the Bobcats a 27-18 lead with 2:40 left in the half. Williams immediately called a timeout - his second of the first half. But it didn't help - on the Terps' next two possessions there was a turnover and a badly missed 3-pointer. The Terps trailed 34-23 at halftime and left the court to a few boos from the sparse crowd.

"We definitely got to understand that we cannot keep coming out flat in the first half," forward James Gist said. "I don't think that we have the team right now to be able to start off flat in the first half and be able to come back and still win in the second half. That's just one thing we have to get out of our systems now. We can't keep doing that."

The Terps never led once during arguably the program's worst defeat since a home loss to Manhattan in the first round of the 2006 NIT. The crowd seemed more excited by the Chevy Chase Bank and Papa John's promotional contests than watching the Terps' play on the court.

And now with a hefty break due to exams, the reeling Terps have 10 days off to think about a loss that many players deemed the toughest they've ever dealt with.

"Coach said earlier that they hadn't beaten anybody with an RPI in the top 150," Bambale Osby said. "And then they come in and beat us on our home court. That's tough."

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