Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams was quick to note during his afternoon session with reporters on Friday an interesting statistical tidbit.
The Terrapins had 56 shots in their 74-57 loss to Virginia Tech on Thursday. So did the Hokies.
And how Maryland spent those shots ... well, let's just say Maryland didn't live up to the label Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg gave them earlier in the week: The ACC's most efficient offensive team.
A major problem, of course, was limited touches for sophomore Jordan Williams. And upon further review, things were even more frustrating for Gary Williams.
"We were open inside," he said. "It's hard to tell that sometimes. That's a lousy seat, at court level, because you're not looking down at it where you can see the spacing. But we were open inside. We did a lousy job of getting the ball inside. It wasn't one guard or anything like that. As a team, we did a lousy job. So I take that to mean I did a lousy job preparing them to go inside."
Maryland had moments when it looked like it was completely confounded by the mere concept of a zone defense, one Virginia Tech has employed to great success in recent weeks. Williams said Maryland logically worked on zone offense throughout the week.
It just didn't seem to matter during the game.
"Some of that might be that what we went against in practice wasn't good enough to give us the look to get we needed to get so we could run good zone offense," Williams said. "It's always a team thing."
But it was more than just dealing with the zone. Maryland's passing wasn't as slick, its shot selection was shaky and its play was quickly disrupted.
The Terps were 6-for-20 from beyond the 3-point line, and just 3-for-17 when Cliff Tucker's brief torrid stretch is removed. And they rebounded only 11 of their 36 misses (30.6 percent), well below their season offensive rebound percentage (37.7 percent).
"We didn't move well on offense and our patience wasn't very good," Williams said. "By patience, I mean plays would break down well before we needed to do something else. We could have made three or four more passes with a couple options we didn't get to. ... Just getting out of position, not grinding it. Virginia Tech plays a good zone; you might have to make two or three moves before you get open on the fourth move. Some guys, they make one or two and then they're standing around. It's not necessarily a quick shot, it's you wind up taking bad shots because you're out of position and what that does is it screws up your offensive rebounding because you don't have the look at the glass you're supposed to have."
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