Maryland’s first real stumble of the season came from the same place the game kept breaking open: the 3-point line. Georgetown beat the Hoyas 86-74 on Saturday, turning an early 9-7 Maryland lead into a wire-to-wire answer that left Maryland chasing the rest of the way.
The edge belonged to Georgetown almost immediately after that brief start. Georgetown went on a 22-8 run, built an 80-53 lead with five minutes remaining and finished with 15 made 3-pointers on 50% shooting from deep. Maryland, by contrast, made only three of 20 attempts, its lowest 3-point percentage in the last three seasons, and spent the night trying to survive the math of a perimeter gap it never closed.
That search was the reason fans were looking at Georgetown basketball in the first place: the result exposed a problem that had already shown up earlier in the week. On Monday, Maryland allowed Bucknell to make 12 3-pointers, and Georgetown exploited the same weakness more ruthlessly, hitting five of its first 10 tries from long range. Elmarko Jackson scored 14 first-half points and Jaland Lowe matched him with 14, while Lowe also made four of his six 3-point attempts.
Maryland did have one player who kept forcing the issue. Payne scored a team-high 10 first-half points on 5-for-7 shooting, then added a game-high 18 second-half points while drawing five fouls. He converted eight free throws in his final 13 minutes on the court and grabbed seven of his eight rebounds on the offensive glass, the kind of effort that made the final margin look less like a collapse than a slow refusal to fold. Andre Mills made Maryland’s only first-half 3-pointer, but after that the Terps missed their next 17 shots from deep before Kaden House ended the drought with four minutes remaining.
By then the game had already been decided. Maryland closed on a 10-0 run, but it only trimmed the final score after Georgetown had already built the kind of cushion that turns a comeback into bookkeeping. Buzz Williams called the shooting numbers one of the team’s problems, and until Maryland finds a way to defend the arc without losing its own shot at it, the next game will carry the same question the first one did.
