Maryland
Maryland men’s basketball upsets No. 10 Illinois, 76-67, for first signature win of season | TAKEAWAYS
Maryland men’s basketball is seizing its opportunity.
Three days after using a furious second-half rally to dispose of a Michigan team missing its leading scorer, the Terps took advantage of 48 combined points from Jahmir Young and Julian Reese to upset No. 10 Illinois without its star, 76-67, on Sunday afternoon at the State Farm Center in Champaign, Illinois.
Maryland (11-6, 3-3 Big Ten) outscored the Fighting Illini, 52-26, in the paint. The Terps overtook Illinois for a 47-46 lead in the first five minutes of the second half and did not relinquish it.
The Terps collected their most significant win since stunning then-No. 3 Purdue, 68-54, at home on Feb. 16, 2023. The victory was also the program’s first against a top-10 opponent on the road since a 70-64 shocker at then-No. 6 Wisconsin on Dec. 28, 2020.
Playing away from the friendly confines of Xfinity Center in College Park hasn’t been easy for Maryland, which earned only its second win in nine road games this season. Since the start of the 2022-23 season, which coincided with Kevin Willard taking over as coach, the program is 4-17 in away games and 2-12 on the road against Big Ten foes.
“It’s definitely a good sign to see us win on the road and at home as we’ve been doing,” Reese said. “I feel like beating the No. 10 team in the country is definitely a good sign for us. It’s a good stepping stone for what’s to come.”
Young, a fifth-year senior point guard, paced Maryland with game highs in both points (28 on 11 of 24 shooting) and assists (eight). Reese, a junior power forward who grew up in Randallstown and graduated from St. Frances, chipped in 20 points on 8 of 16 shooting and 11 rebounds for his eighth double-double of the season.
The Fighting Illini (12-4, 3-2) lost for the second time in their past three games. They could have used fifth-year senior shooting guard Terrence Shannon Jr., who continues to lead the team in scoring (21.7 points per game) and ranks fifth in rebounding (4.5) despite his indefinite suspension late last month after an arrest related to a rape charge.
Maryland capitalized on a depleted opponent for the second game in a row. It edged the Wolverines, 64-57, on Thursday night one day after Michigan suspended sophomore point guard Dug McDaniel (seventh in the Big Ten in scoring at 17.8 points per game) so he could concentrate on his academics.
Here are three observations from Sunday’s win.
Jahmir Young and Julian Reese shone brightest for Maryland when the team needed them
All season, Young and Reese have been the Terps’ top producers, and they reaffirmed their status at Illinois.
Young’s 28 points were tied for his second most this season, and he has scored 20 points or more in five of his past six starts. His eight assists were a season best and one shy of his career high.
“He’s starting to get back into a rhythm,” Willard said of Young, who missed a 75-53 rout of Coppin State on Dec. 28 with the flu. “He scores 37 at UCLA and then he gets the flu real bad and doesn’t practice. It looks like he’s getting back to his rhythm. He’s just a kid that loves to win and wants to win.”
Reese has totaled 48 points, 33 rebounds, nine blocks and six steals in his past three games. This most recent eruption began after a zero-point outing in a 67-53 loss to No. 1 Purdue on Jan. 2.
Reese and Young anchored Maryland in each of the game’s halves. In the first, Reese compiled 11 points, seven rebounds (including two on the offensive glass) and two steals. In the second, Young racked up 16 points and six assists.
The stars were aligned for the Terps, who will continue to need strong showings from Young, Reese and fifth-year senior small forward Donta Scott (nine points and five rebounds) to make some waves in the Big Ten.
Maryland went to a strength to avoid settling for a weakness
The Terps’ Achilles heel this winter has been inconsistent 3-point shooting. That deficiency returned, but they adjusted and relied on their assets.
Maryland doubled up Illinois in the paint. From Reese’s work in the lane to Young’s drives to the bucket to senior small forward Jordan Geronimo’s dunks, the offense flourished when attacking the Fighting Illini on the interior.
Unable to find much rhythm from behind the 3-point arc, the Terps went away from that style in the second half, taking only five long-distance attempts. Instead, they penetrated and looked for opportunities closer to the basket.
Willard said the coaches were eager to establish a presence in the post, especially when the 6-foot-9, 230-pound Reese was matched up against 6-10, 230-pound senior power forward Coleman Hawkins.
“If they were going to play Coleman Hawkins at the five spot, we were just going to go inside and keep pounding,” Willard said. “Ju went 8 of 16, but even on his missed shots, we were making [Hawkins] defend. We were hitting him, we were pounding him, and that wears you out, dealing with a guy like Ju if you’re not used to that. So our whole thing was, ‘Let’s get it inside to Ju early, and let’s try to wear out Coleman Hawkins because if you just let him switch on pick and rolls and play perimeter defense, he gets a rest.’ The guys did a great job of listening to what we were trying to do.”
And Reese might have further motivation when the teams meet again Feb. 17 in College Park. He got into a shouting match with Illinois assistant Tim Anderson after the coach declined to shake Reese’s hand in the postgame exchange.
The short-range, high-percentage chances in the lane contributed to the Terps converting 46.2% (30 of 65) of its shots from the floor, their best field-goal efficiency against a Big Ten opponent this season. Other games left on the schedule might require different strategies, but Maryland would be wise to take stock of their strengths and employ them heavily.
The perimeter offense wasn’t pretty, but made a couple of key contributions
Maryland’s reputation for struggling from long distance won’t change for the better after its performance against Illinois.
The Terps connected on only 23.5% (4 of 17) of their 3-point attempts, including just 16.7% (2 of 12) in the first half. They missed their first six shots from behind the arc before Scott hit one midway through the opening period.
As previously mentioned, the offense took only five attempts from long distance in the second half, but two of them loomed large. First, Geronimo’s 3-pointer about eight minutes into the period not only gave Maryland a 52-48 lead but marked his first successful jumper from that range since Dec. 22 at UCLA — a span of five games.
And freshman shooting guard DeShawn Harris-Smith’s 3-pointer with four minutes remaining widened the Terps’ advantage to 66-59. It was his lone 3-pointer in five attempts.
“They work so hard at it,” Willard said. “Eventually, it’s got to go in because you’re working at it. They make them at practice, they work at it. They’re in the gym every morning at 7 a.m. So I just keep telling them to shoot it, and you have to have confidence that the work they’re going to put in is going to come to the court eventually.”
Maryland at Northwestern
Wednesday, 9 p.m.
TV: Big Ten Network
Radio: 105.7 FM
Maryland
Maryland elections officials deal with threats of violence, turnover concerns ahead of presidential election
BALTIMORE Since the last presidential election, Maryland has seen a concerning rise in turnover among our state’s election officials—with almost half new to their positions—according to research from the Bipartisan Policy Center.
As of January 2024, Maryland saw turnover in 11 voting jurisdictions.
Turnover is also on the rise nationally according to a CBS News investigation.
What is driving the exodus? Some blame an increasingly hostile environment, fueled by citizens who do not trust the election system.
Documenting Threats in Harford County
Stephanie Taylor oversees elections in Harford County.
She gets a lot of correspondence from the public—and keeps all of it in a binder with the title “Love and Not So Much Love Notes” on the cover.
“These are our nice letters, and these are our nasty letters,” she showed WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren
“There’s a lot of cursing. We’ve been called Nazis,” Taylor said. “We’ve been accused of cheating, changing voter turnouts, changing the results, which is very hurtful to us because we take great pride in our job that we do here.”
Hellgren asked her what that says about where Maryland stands right now. “There are a lot of angry people who do not trust the election process. I don’t know how to get through to them,” she said.
Since the 2020 presidential election, Maryland has seen a 46 percent turnover rate among election officials. That is larger than the 36 percent national average.
“Have you had people leave because they could not take it?” Hellgren asked.
“Yes,” Taylor admitted. “One person who was with the office for quite a long time. She had a key role in this office. Just the stress of it—she’s just like, ‘I’m done.’ And she quit.”
To make sure her staff members feel safe, Taylor has used grants to dramatically increase security at their office and warehouse in Forest Hill.
“This is one thing everyone in the office said we needed to enclose this after all the craziness started happening after January 6th,” Taylor said as she showed WJZ the public entrance area.
She had bullet- and bomb-deflecting glass installed that will not shatter.
“We have changed the whole look of this office. We used to have an open reception area. We put walls up. We put glass in. It is not bulletproof glass, but it will change the direction of a bullet. We have coating on our windows that if someone were to put a bomb outside, this coating would catch it and it would just drop it so there wouldn’t be shards,” Taylor said.
There are also new cameras and stronger locks.
“Now, if it’s unlocked, it has a high-powered magnet and you have to be buzzed in,” she said at a secondary door to the board room.
“We have our own FBI contact. I never in my life thought I would say that I have my own FBI contact. It just never even crossed my mind,” Taylor told Hellgren.
“They were being disruptive, calling us names. We got a threat in one of the meetings that we got on tape. I did turn that in to the FBI and the sheriff’s department. It’s just the way the world looks at us now. It’s so different,” she said.
New Law Means Stiffer Penalties
Earlier this year in Annapolis, the General Assembly took action to protect poll workers, election judges and their families from threats which have been on the rise across the country.
Citing the turnover, Governor Wes Moore’s administration advocated for and and won changes to the law. There are now tougher penalties against those convicted of threatening election workers, with fines increasing from $1,000 to $2,500.
“It is becoming harder to recruit election judges. It is becoming harder to recruit elections administrators, and we need to respond to that,” said Eric Luedtke, the governor’s chief legislative officer at a hearing on February 21st.
Violators could also get up to three years behind bars.
During that hearing about the legislation, Baltimore County’s elections director revealed she, too, had been threatened.
“After receiving a threat firsthand, I was overwhelmingly thankful for the protection from my county, the FBI and homeland security,” Ruie Lavoie, the director of Baltimore County elections, told lawmakers.
WJZ asked Maryland’s state elections administrator Jared DeMarinis whether the new law does enough to deter people from threatening election workers. “I hope so. I think time will tell on that, but I think you have to have the first step and I think this was a great first step,” DeMarinis said.
State Safeguards the Vote
DeMarinis took over as elections administrator from Linda Lamone last year.
She had served in that position for more than 35 years, but DeMarinis also worked in that office for almost two decades.
“Yes, I’m a new person, but it’s not like I don’t know the electoral process,” DeMarinis told Hellgren.
On the threats, DeMarinis acknowledged “those types of incidents really shake you to the core.”
He said, “This is really trying to take it to a new level where you’re trying to inflict bodily harm or even death upon you know a person just doing their job and making sure that our democracy works.”
He made it a priority to stamp out misinformation and added a “rumor control” section to the state elections website.
“Before, there was a trust. There was an understanding in the process here, and there’s a segment of the population now that just doesn’t believe in any of that,” DeMarinis said.
DeMarinis is also pushing young people to get involved as election judges and poll workers.
He is aware that when elections officials leave, so does their experience and knowledge of the process. That is why he is partnering more experienced elections officials with newer ones to lessen the impact of any turnover.
And DeMarinis believes that turnover is not always a negative.
“Turnover brings new blood, new ideas, new points of view to the process. It helps streamline things. But yes, there is a concern about losing a lot of institutional knowledge,” he said.
A Veteran in Charge in Baltimore City
“I just don’t want to believe that people are not interested in an important process as this,” said Armstead Jones, Baltimore City’s election director
Baltimore has one of the longest-serving elections directors in the state.
Armstead Jones said in the city, the problem is not threats, but getting enough people motivated to staff the polls.
“At one time, we’d have as many as 3,200 election judges working Election Day and those numbers have dropped over the years,” Jones said. “I believe in this last election, we may have had about 1,500 judges to work. Maybe 2,100 trained, 600 did not show so those numbers are getting lower each time.”
The state remains committed to smooth and transparent elections, despite the challenges.
“Having that full confidence in the system is the underpinning of everything that we do with good, solid elections,” DeMarinis said.
Staying Despite Challenges
“I love the job. I love the people I work with,” said Taylor of her Harford County position. “If you’re in a polling location, it’s so much fun to be there and you see people coming in and taking part in democracy.”
She told Hellgren she has no plans to leave and be part of the turnover despite uncertainty about the future.
“Do you see it getting any better?” Hellgren asked. “I’ll let you know after this election. It depends on what happens after this election,” she said.
Maryland
Sunny, beautiful start to Maryland’s workweek
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Maryland
Fall chill overnight for Maryland
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
-
Politics1 week ago
Trump impersonates Elon Musk talking about rockets: ‘I’m doing a new stainless steel hub’
-
World1 week ago
Brussels, my love? Is France becoming the sick man of Europe?
-
World1 week ago
Locals survey damage after flooding in eastern Romania
-
World1 week ago
Taiwan court orders release of ex-Taipei mayor arrested in corruption probe
-
Politics1 week ago
'For election purposes': Critics balk at Harris' claim she will 'enforce our laws' at southern border
-
World1 week ago
Seven EU members hadn’t received any post-Covid funding by end-2023
-
World4 days ago
Meloni says 'we are making history' as Italy’s FDI reviews progress
-
World1 week ago
Oasis fans struggle to secure tickets for band’s reunion tour