Maryland men’s basketball has cruised through the bulk of its start to the 2024-25 season as head coach Kevin Willard watched his team climb inside the top-20 in both updated KenPom and NET rankings on Thursday morning. And for good reason – Maryland led Ohio State by as many as 40 points on Wednesday night, its 33-point halftime lead was the largest in a Big Ten game in program history and set the stage for the first win by 20 or more points in conference play since defeating Nebraska nearly one year ago.
“You'll take these. You don't get them very often, so I'm just going to take it and run,” Willard said after the win.
But it wasn’t all good on Wednesday as the Terps’ frontcourt took a hit ahead of tipoff with center Braden Pierce ruled out for the remainder of the season, marking the second injury for the second-year center to open the season after battling a facial injury in preseason and sporting a mask during the season-opener. And after initially noting there was “no concern” following his absence in the win vs. Canisius, veteran forward Jordan Geronimo missed his fifth consecutive game on Wednesday, making depth now a question mark heading into the rest of December. But if there’s been a player who has filled that void, it’s been Georgia Tech transfer Tafara Gapare.
After playing more than 16 minutes just twice ahead of the Villanova game, Gapare has played at least 19 minutes in each of the last three games and finished in double figures in two of them. His 19 points on 5-of-7 shooting in 22 minutes vs. Bucknell marked a career-high for the high-flying forward, and on Wednesday, he followed it up with 12 points in 19 minutes – shooting over 70% from the field for the second time within a week. It hasn’t just been offense, though, after recording at least one block in five of the first nine games including a career-high six vs. Alcorn State.
“Coach had talked to me probably a day or two ago. He said just come out with better energy, start the game with high energy and continue on throughout the game,” Gapare said after the win.
The New Zealand forward has been able to add a pair of highlights along the way, first a poster dunk in the closing minutes of the Bucknell win then a soaring baseline dunk vs. Ohio State one week later, igniting the crowd inside the Xfinity Center.
“I [had] seen a jumping defender so I kind of had to pump fake, go to the lane, get a dunk. As coach says, [he] tells me to shoot the ball all the time so I had to shoot,” Gapare recalled.
For Maryland, it’s been about giving him enough time to get in rhythm as Gapare now sits sixth on the team in scoring (6.2). While Memphis transfer Jay Young and DeShawn Harris-Smith have been able to stabilize the second-team backcourt, Gapare’s emergence through November has provided the depth that instills the added confidence in Willard.
“He's a great kid. He's a very smart young man. And it's just, for me, it's just giving him enough time to let him make a difference on the court,” head coach Kevin Willard added. “He's just getting used to playing defense. It's the biggest thing that once he kind of gets what we're doing defensively, he's going to get better and better. He's going to see more time. It's just he's coming from a totally different defensive scheme than what we play and he gets lost a lot, especially early in the season he got lost a lot. He's not getting lost anymore and I think you're starting to see someone has a lot more confidence in this game.”
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