Terps head to Indiana for vital matchup

Landon Milbourne was fortunate to get a lot of sleep during the Terrapin men’s basketball team’s Thursday plane ride home from the Maui Invitational.

Other than the needed rest for the senior forward weary from playing three games in three days, it wasn’t a very happy Thanksgiving.

After finishing the preseason tournament without a win against a Division I opponent, the Terps’ only reward was a long trip home. But with a pair of key nonconference tests looming this week, the team needed to process their Maui disappointment and assess what went wrong quickly.

“It’s tough when you have a lot of time to just sit there and think about what you did wrong, but it could definitely help,” Milbourne said. “It was a tough ride, but it was a learning experience.”

The Terps (4-2) get their first chance to show what they’ve learned in their first true road game of the season tonight at Indiana as part of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge.

Against the Hoosiers, who have taken their lumps since former coach Kelvin Sampson departed in February 2008 with the storied program in shambles, the Terps come in desperate for their fifth straight win in the Challenge, which the ACC has never lost. Almost as important, they hope a good road performance can springboard them into Sunday’s crucial BB&T Classic matchup with No. 3 Villanova.

“Right now, we’re looking at this game as a way to get ourselves back into the rhythm of things,” said freshman forward and leading rebounder Jordan Williams, who struggled to stay out of foul trouble in the team’s losses last week.

Indiana (3-3) would seem to be the perfect cure for the Terps’ struggles. The Hoosiers lost three games at the Puerto Rico Tipoff, including losses to Boston University and George Mason.

But this week, Milbourne said the team has kept its practice goals simple, focusing on upping its intensity, which lacked at times in Maui, especially early in games. Milbourne, who leads the team in scoring with 13.7 points per game, said some of his teammates might have gotten caught up in the excitement of the island paradise.

“I think it’s more about us right now,” Milbourne said. “I think it’s more about the way we’re going to execute and the way we’re going to come out on defense.”

Much of the focus remains on the Terps’ thin frontcourt as they continue to play without suspended forward Dino Gregory. Although Gary Williams has lamented not being “at full strength,” he’s hoping Jordan Williams and fellow freshman James Padgett benefited from the team being outrebounded 80-61 by more experienced frontcourts in two Maui losses.

The freshmen, who have split minutes at the spot opposite Milbourne, seem to have a more favorable matchup against a Hoosier squad that starts a sophomore and a freshman at the forward spots.

“The only way you learn is to really go against somebody and be taught a few things,” Williams said.

That’s good news for a Terp team that bounced back from two losses at the Old Spice Classic last season with a quality win against Michigan, which eventually made the NCAA Tournament, in last year’s Challenge.

After the trip home to decompress and three practices to set improvement in motion, Williams is confident his team has taken a necessary step forward. In advance of a week that will likely make or break the team’s nonconference résumé, Williams isn’t using last week’s disappointment as an excuse.

“That’s a long time ago in terms of the basketball season,” Williams said. “Hawaii seems like a while ago now.”

edetweilerdbk@umdbk.com