GREENSBORO, N.C. — They walked away crushed, hands on their hips and heads bowed to floor. Guard Dez Wells tried to leave early before the handshake line, screaming in fury as he moved through the tunnel, but was ushered back. The Maryland men’s basketball team had again found itself in a one-possession game, and for one last time as an ACC program, the ending was a disappointment.
Boris Bojanovsky’s dunk with 0.4 of a second left sent ninth-seeded Florida State to a 67-65 win, stunning the eighth-seeded Terrapins who had flown here seeking a miracle run that could end their prolonged NCAA tournament drought.
When Maryland and Florida State met for two regular season games, the results could not have been more different. In mid-January, the Seminoles used 18 three-pointers and blasted the Terps at home by 24 points. One month later, Maryland point guard Seth Allen left a scorched earth in his wake in College Park, scoring a career-high 32 points as Maryland got ample revenge.
An entirely new situation arose in the opening act of the ACC tournament’s second day, as the teams took the court before a sparse crowd speckled with Terps fans who trekked south to see their team officially end its tenure in the league after 61 years. Before tip-off, Maryland forward Evan Smotrycz was ruled out with lower back spasms. The team’s fourth-leading scorer had carried Maryland through the first half of its upset of then-No. 5 Virginia on Sunday, but the injury was apparently so great that he spent most of Thursday’s game on the bench, near the walk-ons, hands in the pockets of his warmup pants.
The depth situation grew so dire that John Auslander, the team’s lone senior who had seen the court all of 22 minutes in the regular season, played two possessions before halftime, at which point the Terps led 34-32. Five three-pointers from Allen and Jake Layman (15 points) helped create space against Florida State’s aggressive and long defense, particularly because interior scoring was at a premium. By game’s end, the Seminoles had scored 36 points in the paint. Maryland had 22.
The second half began in sloppy fashion, and the Terps reached the under-16 officials’ timeout with four turnovers in six possessions. Layman quickly picked up two fouls on the same sequence, and Maryland’s big men bungled low-post passes that could have been layups.
Slowly the game – and Maryland’s already-slim hopes of attaining an automatic NCAA tournament bid by winning the conference title – began to slip away. Wells, who along with Allen scored a game-high 18 points, stopped an 11-0 Florida State run with two free throws, but Ian Miller answered with an NBA-range three-pointer that put the Seminoles back up by double digits, 56-45.
During that pivotal stretch, Maryland forward Charles Mitchell dislocated his left pinkie, doubling over and stomping the ground in pain. Maryland’s leading rebounder was led into the locker room by two team trainers but later returned to the bench, pinkie and ring fingers wrapped in tape. Meanwhile, the Terps had charged back thanks to their full-court press that left Florida State panicked and cut its deficit to 57-55 on a Layman layup.
Both sides were gassed as the game dragged on past two hours. After Miller moved the lead back to six points with 3 minutes 40 seconds left, Turgeon called timeout and gathered his players around. “Come on,” he screamed inside the silent arena, and were it not for the Maryland pep band, more fury might have been heard. The Terps were fighting an uphill battle and time was running out.
So, following the final officials’ timeout, Turgeon checked Mitchell back into the game and he promptly helped force a turnover. Then Wells hit two free throws to make it 63-61 and Layman tied it up with an emphatic breakaway slam. More free throws from Wells and Bojanovsky kept the game tied until the final possession, when the Terps found themselves heartbroken as they left this building and conference for good.