Maryland Dominates Oregon 33-12 at Halftime in Big Ten Tournament First Round at United Center in Chicago
The Terrapins came into Tuesday's Big Ten Tournament opener as the lowest seed in the field with the worst record in the conference — and promptly delivered the most lopsided first half of the day. Maryland leads Oregon 33-12 at the break, with the Ducks shooting a historically cold 3-of-22 from the floor through the opening 20 minutes.
A Historic Collapse from Oregon
Oregon made just three of its 22 field goal attempts in the first half, with center Nate Bittle responsible for all three made baskets and six of the team's 12 points. The Ducks went scoreless through their first six possessions to open the game. Maryland's Darius Adams attacked the rim early, and the Terrapins opened on a 9-0 run before Oregon got a field goal on the board after 10 attempts.
Maryland guard David Coit led all first-half scorers with 12 points, and the Terrapins converted five of their last six attempts before halftime — including an emphatic dunk at the buzzer. That sequence put a punctuation mark on a half that was never remotely competitive.
The Context Behind the Mismatch
Neither of these teams had any business playing deep into March by conventional metrics. Oregon entered at 12-19 overall and 5-15 in Big Ten play, while Maryland finished 11-20 with a 4-16 conference record — two of the worst records in the tournament field.
Oregon had actually won the only regular-season meeting between the two. Back on January 2, the Ducks beat Maryland 64-54 in College Park, with Bittle posting 16 points, seven rebounds and five blocks alongside Takai Simpkins' 16 points and Kwame Evans Jr.'s 12. That interior dominance was supposed to be the blueprint again Tuesday. It hasn't been.
Head coach Dana Altman's program was projected for another deep tournament run entering the season, but an injury-riddled roster that dropped 10 consecutive Big Ten games derailed those expectations entirely. Altman's Ducks closed the regular season by scraping together three wins in five games — including a dramatic finish against Washington on March 7 when Evans scored nine points in the final 11 seconds.
Maryland's Freshmen Carrying the Load
For head coach Buzz Williams, two players have defined what little has gone right during an otherwise brutal season. Redshirt freshman Andre Mills enters Tuesday averaging 21.4 points over his last eight games. He set a Maryland freshman record with 39 points at Northwestern this season and became just the second Terps freshman alongside Joe Smith in 1993-94 to post multiple 30-point games in a single campaign.
Coit's first-half output Tuesday fits his profile exactly. He has posted multiple 40-point games this season — the only Big Ten player to do so — and is one of just 14 major conference players since 1996-97 to reach that mark twice in the same year.
What's at Stake in the Second Half
The winner of this first-round game advances to face No. 9-seed Iowa in the second round at noon ET on Wednesday, March 11. That turnaround gives the winner roughly 16 hours of rest — a brutal schedule, but one both teams accepted when they landed at the bottom of the bracket.
Maryland is 1-0 all-time in Big Ten Tournament first-round games. A second-half collapse would erase everything the Terrapins built in the first 20 minutes — but based on what Oregon showed in Chicago on Tuesday afternoon, that seems unlikely.
Bittle, the 7-foot senior center who is playing his final college season, needed a better ending than this.
