Feature photo courtesy of Maryland Athletics.
It took them 34 minutes and 32 seconds, but the No. 3 Maryland Terrapins eventually took the lead over Rider Friday night.
After trailing by as much as 14, once they took the lead, the Terps didn’t find themselves down again.
Freshman center Diamond Stone appeared to come out of his shell, helping the Terps close out the game on a 36-15 run over the final 15:40 of the game.
“We wouldn’t have won the game without him,” Turgeon said. “He was terrific.”
Over the course of the late game run, Stone scored 10 of his 12 points and recorded three rebounds, two blocks and a steal.
But the night didn’t start out with the same excitement as it ended with for Stone and the Terps, and Maryland trailed 31-29 at halftime.
After starting in his first two career games, Stone found himself on the bench, as center Michal Cekovsky earned his second career start.
But that didn’t get him down. “I come in and decide to just play my heart out,” Stone said. “Just play hard and try to win.” Jake Layman, who led all players with 11 rebounds, was pleased with the effort Stone put forth. “It was very impressive to see Diamond to be able to sit that long and come in and kind of give us a spark and still have his confidence,” Layman said. “That’s going to be really important for him to always have his confidence when he goes in there, just keep attacking and just keep trying to score.” After the game, Stone said the Broncs zone defense forced the Terps to take more jump shots. On the night the Terps were outshot 47 to 46 percent from the field, 27 to 23 percent from behind the three point line and 75 to 64 percent from the free throw line. The shooting struggles prompted the Terps to feed it to Stone in the post. “[I was] pushing hard and putting my hands up for the ball,” Stone explained. “The guards, they threw it to me and I made plays.” The Terps won the rebound battle 34-27. With 13:10 remaining in the game, Stone flew over defenders and slammed down a two-handed put back dunk to bring the Terps within eight.
Just over two minutes later, Stone secured an offensive rebound over Rider guard Jimmie Taylor and put it back up to cut the Broncs’ lead to six.
“Diamond was terrific against the zone,” Turgeon said. “It kind of opened some things up for the rest of us.”
Turgeon said he didn’t have his players prepared tonight and that held them back, but he was still impressed with Stone and sees a lot of room for him to grow.
“He didn’t ask to be ranked so high coming out of high school, he just was,” Turgeon said. “That puts more pressure on a kid. He’s a tough kid and he wants to be great. As a coach I just need to be patient with him and continue to make him better.”
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