NCAA Tournament First Round: (7) UConn (15-7) vs (10) Maryland (16-13) prediction and college basketball game preview.
UConn vs Maryland Broadcast
Date: Saturday, March 20
Game Time: 7:10 pm ET
Venue: Mackey Arena, West Lafayette, IN
Network: CBS
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UConn vs Maryland Game Preview
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Why Maryland Will Win
The Terps might be limping into this after losing three of their last four games, but …
There’s no getting around it. They’re struggling – you don’t lose to Northwestern and Penn State if everything is super.
However, they have the makeup to push through the first round as long as they’re hitting from the outside.
This is a very, very, very momentum-streaky team. It doesn’t take the world for Maryland to look fantastic, and it all starts with the three.
It was devastating from the outside in a loss to Michigan in a late December game, but that’s Michigan – whatever. The Terps are 8-0 against everyone else when they hit better than 38% from three, and they’re 12-3 overall when they’re just 35% or better.
UConn allowed more than 35% from three in two of its last three games, and it lost in the Big East Tournament even though Creighton couldn’t hit a thing at times from the outside.
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Why UConn Will Win
This is a nasty team on the offensive glass.
The Huskies don’t have a ton of size, but they’re not small, and they attack everything on the glass really, really hard.
It’s one of the best teams in the nation in offensive rebounds, and Maryland has a bizarre ability to occasionally go into lapses on the glass – it’s one of the worst teams in college basketball on the offensive boards.
So going back to the positives for the Terps, if UConn can force a slew of misses from the outside – it’s generally a terrific team at getting out on the three – and if Maryland isn’t hitting at least 35% of its shots from the outside, that’s it. The possession is one-and-done.
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What’s Going To Happen
Can Maryland pull up out of the nosedive?
It had its moments over the second half of the season, but there wasn’t enough of a scoring punch – it was a grind just to get close to 65 points – and it’s not going to all of a sudden go off against this UConn defense.
But it’ll make more threes.
UConn has to win on the boards, and if it does, it won’t be by enough to matter. This is going to be a low scoring game that gets ugly at times, but Maryland will make eight threes, and UConn will make five.
UConn vs Maryland Prediction, Line
Maryland 64, UConn 62
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Line: UConn -3, o/u: 130
ATS Confidence out of 5: 2
Must See Rating: 3.5
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