Maryland finally loses a close game after bizarre ending against Purdue

With 30 seconds left in Saturday’s Top 25 battle between Maryland and Purdue at the Xfinity Center in College Park, the Terrapins and Boilermakers were, of course, locked in a close game.

Of course, because is Maryland ever not locked in a close game?

And if the recent past had been any kind of indication, those final 30 seconds looked set to transpire just as so many other end-of-game sequences involving the Terrapins have transpired since Melo Trimble arrived at Maryland in 2014. Trimble had the ball in his hands, his team up by one, his opponents at his mercy. He had played 35 two-possession games since his freshman season. He had won 29 of them. Surely he was about to win a 30th.

With an eight-second differential between shot and game clocks, Trimble bent over just inside midcourt, biding his time, the ball bounding gently between his hand and the floor. But when he drove left off a ball screen and pulled up for a 12-footer, he left it short. Then Purdue freshman Carsen Edwards did what Trimble couldn’t. Out of a timeout, he drew a foul at the rim and sunk both free throws with 2.1 seconds remaining.

Then things got weird.

Maryland’s baseball pass from the baseline was errant, but when Isaac Haas caught the pass, uncontested, his basketball brain shut off. The game, he must have figured, was over. It wasn’t:

After a review, the officials ruled that Haas had travelled with 0.5 seconds left, giving Maryland one more shot to pull out an unlikely close win. It seemed like destiny. The narrative that looked on the verge of death was suddenly alive.

But then it perished. Kevin Huerter got a shot from the corner, but it rimmed off, and was likely released after the final buzzer anyway. Purdue escaped, and closed the gap between itself and Maryland to a half-game.

But the story is the Terps. Maryland has been the subject of a familiar debate throughout the first three months of the 2016-17 season. Its inordinately good record in close games had left it with a 20-2 overall mark in a traditionally strong major conference. But that record — 9-1 in contests decided by six points or less — also left the Terrapins disrespected (in the eyes of some) by many advanced metrics. They entered Saturday’s game ranked 38th by KenPom, behind teams such as Tennessee and Wake Forest.

The debate boils down to the main source of that 9-1 record, and the 29-6 record over the past three seasons. Many believe the Terrapins, and specifically Trimble, are “clutch,” or “just know how to win.” Others believe the outcomes of close games have a lot to do with randomness, and that Maryland’s run more or less amounted to luck. That school of thinking doesn’t discredit the wins, it just posits that they won’t keep coming as frequently as they have in the past.

Skeptics also took into account Maryland’s ledger of wins, which was devoid of a headliner. Its best was by one point over Kansas State on a neutral floor. Its best of the last two months was at Minnesota. Both were impressive. Neither was proof of Maryland’s top-20 status.

Saturday was supposed to be an opportunity to win that proof, a day for Maryland to prove their doubters wrong. It didn’t necessarily do that. But it didn’t necessarily prove the doubters right. It didn’t prove they can’t beat Top 25 teams, just as prior games didn’t prove they were invincible in tight games.

The loss to Purdue was a win for close game randomness, but didn’t necessarily disprove the idea that Maryland is a Big Ten contender. It didn’t mean the Terrapins will now go on a binge of close losses. It leaves them a mere half-game behind Wisconsin at the top of the conference. They could be favored in seven of their last eight games, and should be favored in six of the eight.

Just as one win over Purdue wouldn’t have drastically swayed opinions, one loss to the Boilermakers, especially a narrow one, shouldn’t either. Maryland isn’t an extraordinary team, but it is a balanced one that does a lot of things pretty well. Its freshman trio of Anthony Cowan, Kevin Huerter and Justin Jackson is very legit. And although Trimble isn’t the player many thought he could be after a superb freshman year, he’s one of the better guards in the Big Ten.

So if you were on the Maryland bandwagon, don’t hop off just yet. And if you were convinced you’d never climb aboard, don’t be patting yourself on the back just yet.