Julian Reese and Derik Queen give Maryland men’s basketball a powerful duo | TAKEAWAYS

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When a revamped Big Ten began conference play in football in the fall, a curious trend emerged.

Teams that traveled at least two time zones found themselves on the wrong end of the scoreboard, compiling a 9-17 record. That led to some pontificating over whether the additions of Oregon, UCLA, USC and Washington had a detrimental impact on the rest of the league.

It remains to be seen whether a similar tendency will crop up in basketball. Although each member of the Big Ten played two games each earlier this month, the West Coast schools played amongst themselves.

As the conference begins to prepare for the meat of its schedule this week, senior power forward Julian Reese said he thinks Maryland (11-2, 1-1 Big Ten) is prepared to meet the challenge of traveling cross country, which kicks off with road games at the Huskies (8-4, 0-2) on Thursday at 9:30 p.m. and the No. 9 Ducks (11-1, 1-1) on Sunday at 4 p.m.

“Another big test for us,” he said of the trip to the Pacific Northwest. “We’ll see how we do as we try to get a road win in the conference. We already kind of got a sense for what that’s like playing at Purdue. So just going into that road air and that road environment and just being able to take care of business is going to be good for us.”

Here are three observations from Saturday’s 81-66 victory over UMES.

Julian Reese and Derik Queen are every bit as important in the offense as the perimeter shooters

Much has been made about the significance of being efficient from the 3-point line, and that has been exemplified by Maryland’s improved rate of scoring thus far. But the interior presence of Reese and Queen is just as pivotal.

The duo provided another example against the Hawks (4-12). With their teammates converting only 27.8% from 3-point range (5 of 18), Reese, a Randallstown native and St. Francis graduate, and Queen, a Baltimore native, combined to score 41 points (50.6 of the team’s output) and collect 25 rebounds (67.6%).

The pair was critical in the…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/julian-reese-derik-queen-maryland-170900354.html

Author : Baltimore Sun

Publish date : 2024-12-29 17:09:00

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