BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Landon Milbourne took a hit from Indiana's Tom Pritchard and calmly rolled in a layup to give the Terrapin men's basketball team a 11-point lead with just more than two minutes left in last night's game.
As the senior forward walked to the free throw line, a wave of white-clad fans headed for Assembly Hall's exits. With each Hoosier foul to prolong the game, more red and blue seat backs peeked out from the former sea of white. After an emotional back-and-forth in the first 38 minutes, the Terps had finally broken the spirit of a crowd hungry for an upset.
The Terps broke away late to ease past Indiana 80-68 in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge last night.
After taking a precarious two-point lead into halftime, the Terps shot 57 percent in the second half, while making 19 free throws to pull away and snap a two-game losing skid heading into Sunday's highly anticipated matchup with No. 3 Villanova.
Guard Greivis Vasquez scored 23 points, including hitting 11-of-12 second-half free throws, and added eight assists as the Terps (5-2) won their first true road game of the season.
"We just took the momentum over and did a great job closing the game," said guard Sean Mosley, who finished with 13 points and a career-high nine rebounds.
The Terps needed the late run because Indiana, which lost to Boston University and George Mason earlier this season, kept the threat of an upset alive well into the second half.
The Hoosiers (3-4) went ahead 49-48 on a 3-pointer by leading scorer Maurice Creek with 11:44 left in the game and continued to match the Terps shot for shot before a final cold spell doomed their comeback efforts. The Terps closed the game on a 26-12 run that included 10 points from Vasquez, who started the season with four single-digit scoring efforts.
"He's not going to make too many mistakes in those situations," said coach Gary Williams, who praised the senior for his leadership under pressure.
Despite shooting just 33 percent for the game, Indiana led for most of the first half, extending their advantage to as many as seven points as the crowd of 17,039 got into the game.
The Terps hit just one of their first seven shots and struggled with 12 first-half turnovers in an ugly half for both teams.
But Vasquez, who missed seven of his first nine shots, sunk a three in the last minute of the half to cap an 11-2 run and put the Terps up 35-33 entering the break.
"Sometimes when you get on the road, you have to take the other teams' shot in that first 10 minutes or whatever," Williams said. "They came after us — there's no doubt about that."
The Hoosiers cut through the Terps press early on, but after Milbourne, who added 19 points and seven rebounds, got into foul trouble, the visitors relied on the zone defense that served them so well during last season's NCAA Tournament run.
And Indiana, which shot 7-of-26 from long distance, couldn't hit enough shots to force the Terps out of it.
"[Getting out of the press] helped as much as going zone," Williams said. "We were giving them open looks in transition, which is their game."
The Terps' maligned half-court offense started to come together late in the second half, resulting in some easy baskets, and the Hoosiers couldn't keep up.
In a rematch of the 2002 national title game— in which the Terps came out on top — Indiana coach Tom Crean criticized his fans postgame for some of their unsportsmanlike behavior. But it was the young Hoosiers who started to unravel late.
Even though it wasn't pretty at times, the Terps won for the eighth time in 11 Challenge appearances and got a confidence boost after a pair of tough losses to close the Maui Invitational last week.
"We needed a game like this," Milbourne said. "We had to prove to ourselves that we could win in an environment like this."
edetweiler@umdbk.com
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