Cliff Tucker

The Maryland men's basketball team is not sulking after dropping both games of last weekend's 2K Sports Classic benefiting Coaches vs. Cancer at Madison Square Garden. Players are not crestfallen, and coaches aren't panicking. If anything, the Terps are eager to get back into action and correct the mistakes that led to a 79-70 loss to No. 4 Pittsburgh on Friday and an 80-76 loss to No. 13 Illinois on Saturday. Competitive play in both games has Maryland convinced it can beat a top opponent, and when the Terps (3-2)

Maryland sophomore center Jordan Williams had missed his previous nine free throws when he stepped to the line for the final time with 2:29 remaining in Wednesday's game against North Florida. Williams' free throw struggles have been well documented this season and when he finally made his first free throw of the night with the game all but over, the announced crowd of 13,894 at Comcast Center offered a mock cheer for the Maryland big man. The problems that plagued the Maryland men's basketball team for much of its early non-conference schedule returned Wednesday, causing an 85-62 win over the Ospreys to feel much less decisive than the scoreboard showed.

Maryland may look back one day and find that its 69-64 loss to Georgia Tech in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament didn't mean much in terms of the Terrapins' ultimate goal of making a deep run in the NCAA tournament. But the loss sure stung the Terps on Friday night. It was a trying defeat because of the success that No. 19 Maryland (23-8) had during the regular season, winning its last seven games and raising fans' expectations. It was made all the more dispiriting because the Terps -- using frenetic, full-court defense -- erased all but one basket of a 19-point deficit.

Since 1990, No. 4 seeds are 64-17 in the first round of the NCAA tournament. But the fourth-seeded Maryland Terrapins know their opponent tonight possesses a skill that can be the great equalizer - the 3-point shot. Houston, the No. 13 seed, made more 3-pointers this season - an average of 8.3 per game - than in all but three years of its history. "We definitely focused on it knowing that Houston is all about run-and-gun - getting the ball up and getting a lot of 3s up," Maryland junior guard Adrian Bowie said before a shootaround Thursday night at Spokane Arena.

- It was Maryland's first game since a nine-day layoff for final exams, and Gary Williams looked edgier than usual. The Maryland coach had noticed that Georgetown, Florida and Tennessee had all lost recently (to Old Dominion, Richmond and Southern California, respectively) during a period when many teams' schedules are interrupted by finals. Might his Terps (7-3) be rusty enough to have to worry about being challenged by Winston-Salem State? Williams' concerns seemed warranted only during a first half in which Maryland was largely invisible inside.

Even with all the indignities it endured this season -- the eight single-digit losses, the seven starting-lineup changes -- it seemed improbable that Maryland would drop its final regular-season home game to a Virginia team it led in the Atlantic Coast Conference standings. Not on Maryland's Senior Day. Not when the Terps urgently needed a lift after two straight ACC defeats. Not under a coach who habitually gets his players to finish with flourishes and whose team went undefeated here last season in conference play.

- There are many ways to describe Maryland's 104-100 double-overtime win Saturday night here over Virginia Tech. Start with strange. Three hours before what was supposed to be a 4 p.m. tipoff, Gary Williams and his players got off the bus in front of Cassell Coliseum and noticed the sidewalk was flooded. It came from a water main that had been ruptured when a van carrying beer to a pre-game party in an adjacent building backed into a hydrant, knocking it over. "I knew something was up," the Maryland coach said more than six hours later.

Finally, Maryland could exhale. Finally, the Terrapins — who have had a propensity this season for losing close games and missing foul shots — could relax, knowing they overcame both troubling tendencies in the same game. Finally, free throws became Maryland's friend instead of foe. The Terps, who entered Saturday's game last in the Atlantic Coast Conference in free-throw percentage (63.1 percent), converted 12 of 15 in the final four minutes to preserve a much-needed 79-77 victory over Clemson.

Gary Williams met the media at Comcast Center on Sunday wearing his usual expression, as if someone had just rear-ended his car. Moments earlier, his Maryland Terrapins had improved their record to 3-0 with an 89-59 pasting of Maine. Now Williams was being asked how good this Maryland team could be, and his answers invariably came down to this: Who knows? It's only November. "Nobody's where they want to be on Nov. 14," the Terps coach said. "You have to keep improving.

After Maryland's opening game, coach Gary Williams resisted lavishing too much attention on promising guard Pe'Shon Howard or Maryland's other first-year players. "This is one game," was the coach's mantra then. After the season's second game Wednesday night, it proved increasingly challenging for Williams not to single out Howard for praise. Capping a night in which he repeatedly made big plays, the confident freshman swished in a basket with three seconds left to lift Maryland to a 75-74 victory over College of Charleston.