NCAA Tournament South Region: Maryland Or Hawaii To Play Kansas

Previewing the No. 5 seed Maryland Terrapins’ clash with No.13 Hawaii Rainbow Warriors. Who has the edge but, more importantly, which one wants to play Kansas?

Upsetting the California Golden Bears on Friday wasn’t exactly surprising. As soon as the bracket became official a week ago, many circled that 4-13 matchup in Spokane as the upset specialty of the week.

Then California had to fire assistant coach Yann Hufnagel on Monday due to a sexual harassment investigation. Two days later, the team’s leading scorer, Tyrone Wallace, broke his hand and was ruled out for the rest of the season. Two days later, the day of the game, Jabari Bird became ill and was unable to play.

In the span of five days, the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors went from being the darkhorse candidate to the team expected to win. Though Cal had been on a roll entering the NCAA tournament, losing two starters and your top assistant coach takes away any sort of momentum and Hawaii capitalized.

Foul trouble got Cal early and often and Hawaii’s defense did the rest, resulting in a 77-66 win to advance to the second round. Though the Golden Bears were the higher seed, the crowd was heavily in favor of a Hawaii victory.

For their efforts on Friday, they get another shot at upsetting a team on a higher seed line. But, again, not everybody’s sold on their opponent and the upset special wouldn’t seem all that surprising.

No. 5 seed Maryland got up by 18 in the second half against No. 12 seed South Dakota State, but the Jackrabbits got on a roll and rattled the Terrapins, attacking the paint, which opened up the three-point line, and got physical on defense.

Through it all, SDSU closed the gap and made it a two-point game with 14 seconds left but were unable to get a play off to possibly tie it up in the final seconds. Maryland survived.

Surviving’s the name of the game, but for a team with Maryland’s talent — two potential lottery picks, three other potential draft picks this year in the starting lineup — should perform better than they have.

Since their random non-conference blowout win against Bowie State in early February, the Terrapins are just 4-5, including Friday’s game. And while the Terrapins were dominating for a while against SDSU, if it weren’t for Jake Layman, Maryland loses that game.

Layman picked the perfect time to have a career day against South Dakota State. Layman went for 27 points, which tied a career-high. Maryland needed every single point to escape with the win that many assumed they’d easily get.

Going against Hawaii now, the Terrapins will have to make some adjustments, the first of which is taking care of the basketball.

In this same stretch that goes back to the Bowie State game on Feb. 9, the Terrapins have turned it over 12 or more times in seven of them, including 13 in their first round game.

Taking care of the ball will be especially important against Hawaii. The Rainbow Warriors forced 16 turnovers against Cal and averaged 14.8 forced turnovers per game prior to the start of the NCAA tournament.

Melo Trimble, who has grown his game this season, still has trouble taking care of the ball, turning it over almost three times per game (91 through 34 games), including three on Friday against an SDSU team that doesn’t force turnovers.

In the sample size sample of Maryland’s troubles taking care of the ball (nine games), Hawaii has forced 11 or more turnovers in each of those nine games.

Something that can’t be accounted for in stats, though, shined through the most during Friday’s games that got both Maryland and Hawaii here, battling for a spot in the Sweet 16.

Maryland is not the aggressor and responds poorly to being matched in physicality.

The Terrapins are big, that much is obvious. Diamond Stone and Robert Carter Jr. alone make for a dynamic frontcourt, but adding in Layman’s 6-foot-9 length, Rasheed Sulaimon‘s long arms and Trimble’s sturdy build, there are very few teams that should match their physicality.

But that’s exactly how South Dakota State, despite being outmatched in the size department at every position and down for most of the game, came back to scare Maryland. The Terrapins took the hits and never really responded. Rather, they stalled for the final five minutes and held on for dear life before the Jackrabbits ran out of time in their comeback attempt.

They won’t have the luxury of sitting back and waiting for it against Hawaii because the Rainbow Warriors are going to attack from the very beginning, especially now that there’s so much to play for for a team that knows it won’t be going to the postseason next season (self-imposed ban for the 2017 postseason).

Hawaii knocked the Golden Bears around, even without leading scorer Stefan Jankovic for long stretches of time as he sat out with foul trouble late. They weren’t scared of Ivan Rabb or Jaylen Brown, so they should be just fine against Trimble and Stone.

But something else about this game is important and it involves what happens afterward: which one of these teams actually wants to play No. 1 seed Kansas, who plays the winner of this game in the Sweet 16.

Kansas is always a hard out and now that they’ve gotten past their two straight seasons of being bounced in the first weekend, it’s hard to see the Jayhawks being an easy game for either team.

Next: NCAA Tournament Preview: Bracket, Preview & Predictions

They still haven’t lost since Jan. 25 on the road against Iowa State, winning 16 straight games. Of those 16 wins, 10 have come by double digits. Their top six scorers all shoot better than 40 percent from three and can go 11 deep in any given game.

That’s the “reward” for winning Sunday’s game. Does either team really want that reward? Both will likely say they’re up to the challenge, but this is no easy task. Kansas is as strong as it has been in quite some time.

But in order to get to that game, somebody’s gotta win on Sunday, so will it be Maryland or Hawaii?