Penn State Men's Basketball
Maryland Head Coach Mark Turgeon
vs. Maryland – February 27, 2019
Opening Statement
We weren't very good from the beginning to the end tonight. I'm going to take all the blame for that. I don't know what we did different, but we weren't very good. Penn State was terrific. We had two live ball turnovers to start the game, jump passes. You got Myles Dread going. He got two wide-open threes and kind of got them going. We never really responded. We let our offense effect our defense throughout the game. No matter what buttons I tried to push, it just didn't seem to work tonight. We fumbled a lot of rebounds. We fumbled a lot of balls, missed a lot of wide open shots. In the end, Penn State was clearly better than we were. Lamar Stevens is terrific. He's really good.
Q: You referred back to that opening sequence, did you know pretty quickly that something was not going well for this team tonight?
A: We've started poorly a lot, so I thought we'd respond. But we never really responded. We'd get all the way to the rim and miss the layup. We'd get an open three and then we would miss it, and we let it affect our defense. About the 10-minute mark you knew we weren't us tonight and there was no fight in us. That was the disappointing part. I thought we fought a little bit harder in the second half even though there was no rhythm to the second half whatsoever. What are we, 21-8? So, in 29 games I think we've really competed in 27 of them, maybe 27 and a half. We just weren't here tonight. I can't explain it, but hopefully we'll bounce back.
Q: When you took the five starters out in the second half, was that to send a message?
A: No, I was just searching and there was no flow the second half. We started in the zone, which I didn't want to do because I wanted to play harder, but we had good possession. Then, we foul a shooter and we turn it over our first possession. Then we didn't run back on defense and that was about all I could take. I was just trying to find somebody that was going to play hard and play with a little energy in the game and just try to get better. We worked on a few things in the second half. We treated it like a practice, basically. I said, "We've got the 15-minute mark. Okay, we don't have it tonight, let's treat the next 15 minutes as a practice and try to get better". I think we did that. I think we got a little bit better in the last 15 minutes.
Q: Jalen Smith, last time out, against Lamar had a pretty good outing. This time Lamar Stevens seemed to have the upper hand. What did he do or what did he maybe take advantage of?
A: He's just really good. I can't explain it. How he gets his shot off and makes tough shots. He made a lot of tough shots, shot clock going down, it was really good. Then he made a three tonight, which he doesn't make a lot of those. We just weren't aggressive defensively early. We let our offense effect our defense. Lamar [Stevens] is good. He's really good in this building.
Q: This is three straight times you've come up here and not played very well. Is it the atmosphere or lack of atmosphere that makes it hard to get into a game or do you chalk it up to your guys just not playing well?
A: No, I think last year Penn State had better players. They won NIT and we didn't get invited to it. We beat them at home. The year before, I don't know what the situation was, and tonight I don't know what it was. We've been pretty consistent. We just weren't very good. If we had played our best game we would have been lucky to win. They're good. They're good in this building right now. They've won four out of six. They should've had Purdue, didn't get a call late in that game, which they could've won. It would've been five out of six for them. They are very confident in this building, and we just weren't any good. I can't explain it. If I had an answer, we'd fix it.
Q: Does this put more pressure going into Sunday with Michigan?
A: No. [We're] 21-8. We've had a heck of a year. Hopefully this wakes us up a little bit. It'd be nice to go home. That's eight out of 11 on the road for us. That's hard. So, we've got the last two at home. We have some time to practice, get ready for the post-season. My guys have responded all years. We're 21-8. We've got the fifth youngest team in basketball. I love my team, we just stunk tonight, and I stunk.
Q: Were you expecting the problems you had in turns of keeping them off the offensive blast?
A: Yeah, it's disappointing. That's all we do is try to rebound, talk about it. Even the last possession, we're making a little bit of a run and Darryl [Morsell] doesn't box out [Lamar] Stevens. It's just like, come on guys. I don't know what the boards ended up. How we were tied going into the last timeout on the boards is a miracle in itself. We fumbled five or six balls we had our hands on out of bounds, gave them four or five dead ball rebounds. We weren't ourselves. Our guys have to respond. We have to practice better. We have to have a couple good days of practice leading into Sunday.