Men's basketball fades but doesn't fall to Florida Gulf Coast

Friday's game against Florida Gulf Coast offered the Terrapins men's basketball team a chance to return home and flee the lingering disappointment of last week's Puerto Rico Tip-Off.

And for some of Friday night, the young team seemed to leave it all behind. Playing selflessly on offense and with vigor defensively, the Terps built their largest lead of the season against any opponent.

But after a 16-point second half lead dwindled to just four in the final minute of an eventual 73-67 win, coach Mark Turgeon addressed the media afterward with measured happiness.

"It's just like a day at the park," Turgeon said. "Real easy for us."

The Terps (3-2), with their fourth different starting lineup in five games, needed nearly 10 minutes to claim the lead against the Eagles (2-4). After walk-on guard Jonathan Thomas nailed a 3-pointer midway through the first half, the Terps seized the lead and held onto it for the rest of the way.

Coasting with a double-digit advantage in the second half, the Terps saw Florida Gulf Coast inch back into the game with a disruptive full-court press. Turnovers and missed free throws narrowed the Terps' lead from as many as 16 to seven and then to four with just 47.6 seconds left.

Guard Terrell Stoglin, who led all scorers with 24 points, missed six of his eight free throws in the final 75 seconds as the Eagles slowly narrowed the gap.

"I've never missed that many free throws in my life," said Stoglin, who went 12-for-21 from the line. "We thought we had the game because we were up so much. But as I was telling guys in the huddle, ‘The game's not over.' They can come back, and they showed that."

Turgeon attributed Stoglin's late misfires to exhaustion, as the sophomore often looked to dissect the press by dribbling through multiple defenders himself. But the first-year coach also said his team started to lose composure against the Eagles' defense.

"Our guys lose confidence really fast and you can see that in the course of a game," Turgeon said. "We can have it one stretch and two minutes later we don't have it."

"We were just trying to get the ball past half court instead of attacking them," guard Sean Mosley said. "We could've taken the lead up to 20 or 30 points. We settled and didn't attack."

Florida Gulf Coast guard Brett Comer scored 14 of his 16 points in the second half and closed the deficit to four with a reverse layup with less than a minute remaining. After two missed free throws by Stoglin, the Eagles had a chance to draw even closer.

But guard Nick Faust made his third steal of the night and Stoglin hit a free throw to close the contest.

"I'll be honest with you, we built the lead and I was really proud of our team," Turgeon said. "We guarded, we were executing, they were changing their defenses and they were handling. … If we had handled the press, we're really, really happy right now."

Forward James Padgett had 11 points and four rebounds, while Faust added eight points, five rebounds, four assists and two blocks. But Turgeon was most pleased by walk-on-turned-scholarship forward John Auslander, who played a season-high 20 minutes.

The 6-foot-7 forward scored six first-half points and was rewarded with a second-half start.

"He's in the right position, he knows every play, he knows where the holes are in the zone," Turgeon said. "He does everything right."

Auslander's time dwindled in the second half as Turgeon turned to a guard-heavy lineup to combat the Eagles' press. The same defense that plagued the Terps against Iona in Puerto Rico came back again, and forcefully.

To Turgeon and the Terps, it's just another small step in the learning process in a season that's sure to be full of them.

"We panic and we pick up the dribble when we don't need to," Stoglin said. "We were waiting for the double team to come instead of just going."

ceckard@umdbk.com