1. One Queen is better than no Ace. Queen absolutely abused us in all facets of a game. For a post player, he is extremely skilled dribbling, driving, passing, and shooting. Kid just glides around and makes it look effortless. 29 points, 15 rebounds, 5 assists. Fifty scouts showed up to watch these freshmen, and Queen was the best player on the floor.
2. This was yet another example of “Rutgers can’t win unless both Ace and Dylan have good games.” Dylan had a “good” game — but didn’t hit an outside shot — while Ace was invisible because of the flu that seems to have impacted every team in the country.
3. The team showed fight in the second half, kudos to that. But you can’t win games only hitting 2 threes during the meat of the game, especially when the other team hits 10 threes.
4. In Ace’s absence, Dylan Grant really showed out with 19 points and 8 rebounds (6 offensive). Solid game from Sommerville too with 12 points and 9 rebounds, hitting several buckets to keep things close in the first half. But we just can’t win without Ace and Dylan scoring 35-40 points combined. They had 24 today.
5. Maryland plays really good defense, constantly putting on ball pressure and getting into passing lanes. They got 7 steals and caused a total of 13 turnovers. Every time we would cut into the lead, the Terps would get stops to keep us at arms length.
6. The game was basically played evenly, and the difference was Maryland hitting 10 threes to our 3 threes. That’s a 21-point difference.
7. Kevin Willard won the portal this year. Gillespie, Rice, and Miguel is a really good troika of guards who can ball and shoot. What a difference compared to Martini, Derkack, Acuff, and Hayes.
8. I would stack up Maryland’s starting five against any other team in the Big Ten, and the bench guys can all defend. Pike has to be green with envy with the roster Willard assembled, guys that can score and defend.
9. For what it’s worth, our foul shooting was really good again today, 26-31 for 84%.
10. I predicted a loss today, and the game went down about as I expected with a 9-point loss. But I can’t help but wonder if things might’ve been different had Ace Bailey been healthy. This season has been just a series of misfortunes, and our progress has been like fits and starts. So goddamn frustrating, thinking we were on the way back but then hit with yet another setback. The basketball gods are not Rutgers fans.
11. Our modified goal is still the same despite this loss. Win enough games to finish 9th to get a single bye in the BTT and then go on a magical run.
