On Wednesday night, the Big Ten lost five of six games to drop the ACC/Big Ten Challenge for the first time since 2008. This result represented an already disappointing start to the season for the league, but several teams have an opportunity to right the ship this weekend with solid resume-enhancing wins. In this season’s first weekend look-ahead, we’ll discuss how those teams can get big victories Saturday that may prove consequential on Selection Sunday.

For a second straight season, Nigel Hayes is shooting below 30 percent from the three-point line. (Getty).

• Oklahoma at Wisconsin (Saturday 1:00 PM ET, BTN). This is the Madison installment of a home-and-home series where the Badgers were run off the court in Norman last year. Of course, the Sooners no longer boast three of the seniors – including Naismith POY winner Buddy Hield – who led last year’s squad to the Final Four. Even with all that attrition, it is foolish to bet on a Lon Kruger team to miss the postseason, which means this game is a golden opportunity for Wisconsin to add another victory over a likely NCAA Tournament team (Syracuse) to its non-conference resume. To accomplish this, Wisconsin needs to establish greater offensive balance against a strong Sooners’ defense (24th nationally). Nigel Hayes would be wise to abandon his burgeoning propensity to shoot threes — where he is only hitting 29 percent on the season — and instead establish himself by geting into the paint and earning trips to the free throw line.

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Rush the Court will be providing wall-to-wall coverage of each of the NCAA Tournament from each of the 13 sites this year. Follow our NCAA Tourney specific Twitter accounts at @RTCEastregion, @RTCMWregion,@RTCSouthregion and @RTCWestregion.

Three Key Takeaways.

Perry Ellis carried Kansas to the Elite Eight past a scrappy Maryland team. (KU Sports/Nick Krug)

1. Maryland’s guards took care of business, but got little help down low. The final box score tells a different story, but for a long stretch of the game, the Terps’ backcourt of Melo Trimble and Rasheed Sulaimon got the best of counterparts Frank Mason III, Wayne Selden, Jr., and Devonte Graham. That Jayhawks unit combined for 13 points on 5-of-16 shooting in the first half, while Sulaimon and Trimble guided their team to a six-point lead. What happened after halftime? The wheels came off in the rebounding department, where Kansas dominated 21-8 on the boards and claim a 43-28 advantage for the game.
2. Kansas is winning without production from beyond the arc. Despite ranking fourth in the nation in three-point percentage at 41.8 percent, the Jayhawks have only shot a combined 15-of-42 (36%) through tonight’s game. That’s a double-edged sword: While overreliance on the three-point shot never bodes well for championship prospects, they need to be prepared to keep up with Villanova on Saturday should the Wildcats’ streak of lightning-hot shooting continue from behind the arc.
3. Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon was unfazed by his sentimental ties to Kansas. One of the central storylines in the week heading up to this matchup was Turgeon’s deep connection to the Kansas program, for whom he played and coached in his youth. That didn’t stop him from giving his alma mater all it could handle, in the process reaffirming that he’s serious about again making Maryland a powerhouse program. In his postgame press conference, Turgeon was dismissive when asked if this one hurt more because it came at the hands of Kansas. Instead, he focused on the fact that this was Maryland’s first Sweet Sixteen in 13 long years.

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Rush the Court will be providing wall-to-wall coverage of each of the NCAA Tournament from each of the 13 sites this year. Follow our NCAA Tourney specific Twitter accounts at @RTCEastregion, @RTCMWregion,@RTCSouthregion and @RTCWestregion. Kenny Ocker is at the Spokane pods of the South and West regionals this week.

Three Key Takeaways.

Maryland Moves Into the Sweet Sixteen for the First Time Since 2003 (USA Today Images)

1. The run Maryland went on is the stuff of champions: The Terrapins trailed 41-39 midway through the second half before Diamond Stone finished off a lob. Jake Layman then slammed home a breakaway jam. And Melo Trimble pulled up on a fast break to hit the Terps’ first three-pointer after 15 misses. From that point on, the game was over. The 16-1 run took what had been a competitive game and turned it into a blowout – and Hawaii never got within 10 points again.
2. The Terrapins are still very frustrating: That second-half run should never have been necessary. Two days after doing its best to squander a 17-point second-half lead to South Dakota State, Maryland sleepwalked through 30 minutes of Sunday afternoon’s affair. Until waking up for the second-half run, it seemed like another showing of squandered talent by coach Mark Turgeon’s squad. When you have NBA shoo-ins like Stone and Trimble and another player in Rasheed Sulaimon who will likely get a look, it’s inexplicable to keep lesser-talented teams in the game again and again. Why there’s not at least one ball screen – if not two, three or four more – set for Trimble on each play, the world may never know.
3. It’s a real bummer Hawaii won’t be in the NCAA Tournament next year: The Rainbow Warriors worked hard, hustling to as many rebounds as they could get their hands on all weekend, and they play fun, energetic basketball. But first-year coach Eran Ganot inherited a postseason ban for next year and loses two scholarships for each of the next two seasons, thanks to improprieties under former coach Gib Arnold’s regime. But Hawaii will always have its upset win over #4 seed California on Friday, the program’s first ever NCAA Tournament win, and the first by a team currently in the Big West since 1990.

Star of the Game: Maryland sophomore point guard Melo Trimble. His three-pointer – the Terps’ only successful conversion in 18 tries – changed the game. His 24 points led all scorers. He made 13 of his 14 free throws. He grabbed eight rebounds. He had three assists.

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Rush the Court will be providing wall-to-wall coverage of each of the NCAA Tournament from each of the 13 sites this year. Follow our NCAA Tourney specific Twitter accounts at @RTCEastregion, @RTCMWregion,@RTCSouthregion and @RTCWestregion. Kenny Ocker is covering the Spokane pods of the South and West regionals this week.

Three Key Takeaways.

Maryland Survives the Bakersfield Push (USA Today Images)

1. South Dakota State knew what was coming, but it didn’t matter: Jackrabbits coach Scott Nagy said Thursday that the key to his team’s defense was collapsing around Maryland star sophomore guard Melo Trimble because he knew there wasn’t one player who could stop him on their own. Trimble tore up that defense for 15 points in the first half before foul trouble limited his second-half minutes somewhat. A 34-22 deficit was too much to overcome for an SDSU team that neither had the length nor the athleticism of the Terrapins. Trimble also drew a foul late in the second half and made both free throws to stop a Jackrabbits run that had closed a 17-point deficit to five at one point. (Man, fouling out with a minute left on a dumb play isn’t a good look though…)
2. If Maryland’s Jake Layman plays this well…: The senior stretch forward picked up the slack after the troubles with Trimble, scoring 17 of his 27 points after halftime. He was unafraid to take the shots that came to him and his shooting punished South Dakota State whenever it sagged. If Layman is able to pull opposing big men from the lane, Trimble will get more space to work with, which should in turn also bring more easy buckets to freshman center Diamond Stone. Layman is the matchup problem that can make Maryland go far in the NCAA Tournament, especially now that fourth-seeded California is out of the way.
3. This won’t be Mike Daum’s only trip to the tourney: The Jackrabbits’ freshman forward, who comes off the bench, has been one of the most efficient scorers in the country this season despite using more than 30 percent of SDSU’s possessions. He is among the top 10 players at drawing fouls and shoots 82 percent from the free throw line, plus he shoots 58 percent from two-point range and 45 percent from behind the arc. Oh, and he’s an excellent rebounder on both ends of the court, too. Daum finished with 16 points and six rebounds Friday.

Star of the Game: Maryland forward Jake Layman. His two free throws with 43 seconds to go gave Maryland a two-possession lead when the Terrapins sorely needed it, and he did it again. And that was a microcosm of Layman’s performance in the second half. Layman finished with 27 points on 7-of-11 shooting (5-of-8 from three-point range) and was a perfect 8-of-8 from the free throw line.

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Three Key Takeaways

Deyonta Davis and the Spartans staved off Maryland in Saturday’s semifinal. (Joe Robbins/Getty Images)

1. Michigan State’s defense can win games. After scoring 41 points in the opening 20 minutes, Michigan State’s offense struggled mightily in the second half, mustering just 23 total points and failing to rediscover its high-efficiency transition game. And yet, thanks to one of the best defensive halves of basketball they have played all season, the Spartans managed to survive. Tom Izzo’s group held Maryland to just one made field goal in the final 10:27 of play, a stretch of grind-it-out, physical basketball that culminated in two huge defensive stops to seal the win. Senior forward Matt Costello, who helped key the effort, cited his team’s defense as “the only reason we won.” For most of the season, Michigan State’s exceptionally efficient offense has carried it to victory. On Saturday afternoon, the Spartans proved that their defense can also bail them out.
2. The Spartans’ half-court offense can be worrisome against large opponents. Like Purdue – the last team to knock off Michigan State – Maryland is one of the largest teams in the country, boasting a front line with enough strength and length to frustrate nearly any opponent it faces. In the second half, the Terrapins did just that, limiting the Spartans’ transition game and forcing them to score over its massive bodies in the half-court. Diamond Stone, Robert Carter, Damonte Dodd and company allowed Michigan State very few opportunities in the paint, limiting it to 41.9 percent shooting (13-of-31) from inside the arc and causing visible frustration on the part of Spartans players and coaches. Izzo’s club still won, sure, but perhaps Maryland’s defensive effort gives future Michigan State opponents a possible formula for victory.
3. Maryland will be fine. Much was made of the Terrapins’ late-season struggles, a stretch from mid-February through the end of the regular season during which they lost four of six games and failed to come up with solutions on the offensive end. Some pundits even suggested that Mark Turgeon’s club is among the most likely potential NCAA Tournament upset victims. And while that could still be the case – this is March Madness we’re talking about – it won’t be because Maryland has completely lost its mojo. Despite only winning a single game in Indianapolis, the Terrapins looked far more confident in both their 11-point win over Nebraska and their narrow loss against the Spartans. After scorching the nets to the tune of 1.37 points per possession on Friday, Maryland flexed its defensive muscle on Saturday, holding the country’s most efficient offense to just 23 second half points. Turgeon seemed genuinely relieved in the postgame press conference, as if his team had turned a corner in spite of the outcome: “Everybody in Maryland basketball feels good – feels better than we did coming into this week.” If those good feelings continue into the NCAA Tournament, the Terrapins may have a very nice March ahead of them.

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After Purdue’s blowout victory over Illinois in Friday’s afternoon session, Michigan State and Maryland followed suit with a pair of drubbings of their own. The Spartans used a 14-2 run early in the second half to ease past Ohio State, 81-54, while the Terrapins shot the lights out against Nebraska on their way to an 11-point victory in the late game. Here are four takeaways from quarterfinal Friday in the Big Ten Tournament.

Maryland took care of business against Nebraska on Friday. (Kiichiro Sato, Lincoln Journal Star)

Michigan State: The Spartans won by 27 points despite shooting poorly for a large stretch of the contest – which probably says something about just how good they are right now. Denzel Valentine was his usual versatile self, scoring 19 points to go along with nine rebounds and eight assists, but it was the play of Deyonta Davis (12 points, seven rebounds), Matt Costello (10 points) and Eron Harris (13 points) – along with stellar defense from start to finish – that made the difference. Watching Iowa and Indiana go down early in the tournament may have also had something to do with the Spartans’ dominant victory: “We saw that those two teams didn’t come out with as much fire as they had throughout the season… we had to be ready to play today,” Costello said afterwards. Next up for Michigan State is a rematch of last season’s Big Ten semifinal against Maryland.

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The year 1893 gives us the first known record of then-Texas A&M College’s Glee Club, originally made up of nine students and faculty from the college. As the club entered the 20th century, membership grew modestly from the original nine to a club of 21. They also began traveling across Texas and the United States trying their luck at singing competitions. (There is no record of success from said competitions.) In 1908, the director of the club left the college and involvement started to fizzle out. Two years later the college decided to hire Frank D. Steger for the task of reorganizing the club “for the development of individual talent, and for furnishing music in Chapel Services, Easter, Commencement, and other similar occasion.” Despite already having a lot on his plate (Steger was also the director of the local YMCA), the college must have been pleased with his direction. Thus, in 1911, A&M hired Steger as its first-ever head basketball coach. In the context of college basketball’s infancy, Steger had a solid career, winning 22 of his 28 games from 1912-15. However, despite that early success, the school we now know as Texas A&M University hasn’t been able to win 20 or more games, go deep in NCAA Tournaments, send players to the NBA or even keep head coaches in College Station at a consistent rate.

Then-head coach Billy Gillispie and point guard Acie Law IV went 27-7 in 2006-07. (Paul Zoeller/Associated Press)

Picture college hoops during the mid-to-late 20th century. Television was taking the sport to the next level and coaches had became synonymous with their schools — Dean Smith at North Carolina; Bob Knight at Indiana; John Wooden at UCLA; Al McGuire at Marquette. The financial pressures for success were different in those days, and at a football-first school like A&M, competitive basketball was often good enough. Shelby Metcalf was certainly that in College Station, coaching the Aggies to six Southwest Conference (SWC) regular season titles, five NCAA Tournament appearances and two Sweet Sixteens in his 26+ years at the school. Despite his infamous firing midway through the 1989-90 season, Metcalf is the longest tenured coach in the history of SWC basketball. After he was terminated, the program so disastrously spiraled through most of the next 15 years that there was hardly a pulse left. Then Billy Gillispie arrived on the scene.

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Your class, company, or family probably plays Secret Santa during the holidays. To get in the giving spirit this Christmas, we’ll play Secret Santa with the Big Ten’s 14 teams and coaches. As much fun as it would be to give Richard Pitino more hair gel or Tom Izzo some stilts, we’ll stick to practical basketball-related gifts that each Big Ten coach would be thrilled to unwrap.

Santa has a variety of interesting presents for Big Ten teams to unwrap

Here are the gifts we gave each coach and team (in alphabetical order):

• Illinois (John Groce): This is one of the easier teams to shop for: The injury bug has cursed Illinois, so it gets healthy players from Santa. The Fighting Illini are playing this season without their starting point guard (Tracy Abrams), power forward (Leron Black) and center (Mike Thorne, Jr.).
• Indiana (Tom Crean): Another easy team to shop for. If you haven’t heard of Indiana’s horrific defensive efforts, you’ve been living under a rock. The Hoosiers gave up 70 points to Kennesaw State and 72 to Alcorn State, respectively. Those teams rank 322 and 349 in the KenPom ranks, and average 64.1 and 60.3 PPG, respectively. Crean needs to start thinking of new ways to get his players to play better defense. Santa gives him a “D-Fense” sign that he can throw at players after bad defensive efforts. Better loosen up your arm, Tom.
• Iowa (Fran McCaffery): The Hawkeyes aren’t elite in any one area, but don’t have a lot of gaping holes. They do struggle to get to the foul line, with a 25.8 free throw rate, which ranks 337^th in the nation, per KenPom. Santa gives Iowa more free throw chances, especially to Peter Jok. The junior wing is Iowa’s second-leading scorer, but has attempted just 23 free throws.
• Maryland (Mark Turgeon): The one knock on the Terps has been turnovers. They turn it over on 20 percent of their possessions and have six players who turn the ball over at least 19 percent of their used possessions. Maryland finds sturdy handles under its tree this year.

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Three Key Takeaways.

1. Maryland was too strong up front for Connecticut. The combination of Diamond Stone and Robert Carter ended up being too much for the Huskies to handle around the basket. Stone and Carter combined for 24 points and 20 rebounds, an impressive showing against Amida Brimah. The Huskies made a second half push from the three-point line which made the game interesting late, but Maryland’s earlier work in the paint was too much for Connecticut to overcome. The Terrapins absolutely dominated the rebounding battle (45-24) and pulled down 14 offensive rebounds, leading to 15 second chance points.
   

   Melo Trimble had a lot to smile about Tuesday evening. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

2. Melo Trimble’s ability to get in the lane was the difference. Trimble was aggressive as usual tonight and that is best reflected in his free throw numbers. The sophomore point guard went to the free throw line 15 times, converting 14 of them. Trimble is very strong and uses his body tremendously when driving to the basket. Connecticut couldn’t keep him out of the lane, a place where he is absolutely lethal. Containing him is key to defeating Maryland and the Huskies just did not do that. Trimble makes so much happen whether it’s creating for himself or for his teammates. He has truly become one of college basketball’s best point guards in such a short time with the Maryland program.
3. Connecticut needs an offensive presence in the paint. Although a highly talented group, Daniel Hamilton, Rodney Purvis and Sterling Gibbs can’t do it all for the Huskies. While Amida Brimah is a tremendous presence defensively, he is not a factor on the other side of the ball. UConn forwards Hamilton and Shonn Miller are not big enough to have success in the paint against teams like Maryland with strong frontcourts. Granted, UConn will not be facing teams the caliber of Maryland throughout the season but this has to be a concern for Kevin Ollie as teams key in defensively on his talented crop of guards.

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There are talented tournament fields everywhere this Feast Week. The Gulf Coast Showcase has a relatively strong mid-major field headlined by Murray State, Duquesne (which absolutely BLASTED Penn State on Friday) and Texas Southern. Four capable teams — Clemson, UMass (already a winner over Harvard), Creighton and Rutgers — will tussle in another four-team field in Vegas. Looking further ahead, Atlantis tips off on Wednesday before a handful of other events kick off on Thanksgiving Day and beyond. As we did with Puerto Rico and Charleston last week, here’s a look at the event favorite, a dark horse, and the teams who have the most on the line this week. We’ll also highlight a player and a storyline to watch.

Maui Invitational

Despite some early struggles, Bill Self and Kansas are still the clear favorite in Maui. (Getty)

• Favorite: Kansas. Even with no Cheick Diallo or Brannen Greene for the week and the second half collapse to Michigan State in Chicago notwithstanding, the Jayhawks are still the clear favorite in Maui as the only top 10 team in this tournament. Perry Ellis and Jamari Traylor are seniors. Frank Mason and Wayne Selden are juniors. This is an experienced team that might be going on its last ride together. As usual, there’s chatter about this being the year the Big 12 title streak is broken. Winning the Maui title would probably pump the brakes on that notion, at least for the time being.
• Darkhorse: UCLA. In terms of talent and potential, the Bruins are a clear sleeper. Aaron Holiday, Bryce Alford, Tony Parker — you could easily see a team with talented pieces like these upsetting a still-not-quite-right Kansas in the semifinal and then taking out Indiana or Vanderbilt the next night. Of course, they’re flaky enough that they could brick the last Maui quarter to UNLV, especially after that whole Monmouth thing.

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