Maryland vs Houston


Written by -

The 4-seed Maryland Terrapins take on the 13-seed Houston Cougars in the West Region of the 2010 NCAA Tournament on Thursday, March 18th. Taking a look at the odds, it’s pretty clear that the books are expecting a blowout, with Maryland -9 over Houston as the point-spread.

Gary Williams will be leading the Maryland Terrapins to his 17th NCAA Tournament appearance, with 14 of them coming with his alma mater. Maryland went 23-8 this season and 13-3 in ACC play, tying Duke for first place in the ACC. The Terrapins are led by one of the best players in the country in PG Greivis Vasquez, who averages 19.5 PPG, 6.3 APG, 4.6 RPG and 1.7 SPG. Vasquez does it all for Maryland, but the Terrapins also have four other players averaging at least 9.2 PPG, so he has plenty of help too.

Houston is an intriguing 13-seed, considering they went just 19-15 this season and 7-9 in Conference-USA to finish in seventh place during the regular season. But the Cougars reeled off 4 wins in 4 days to win the C-USA Conference Tournament, capped off by a come-from-behind victory over UTEP in the title game. By making the field of 65, head coach Tom Penders become only the ninth coach in the history of college basketball to take four teams to the Big Dance. This team has superstars, which is almost a requirement of any team that makes a deep run. They are led by the nation’s leading scorer in Aubrey Coleman, who averages 25.6 PPG and 7.4 RPG as well as 2.7 steals/game. But he isn’t the only stud on this team. Kelvin Lewis put up 15.3 PPG and averaged 1.8 steals/game this season, also scoring 28 points in the title game of the C-USA Tournament. The Cougars led the nation in turnover margin, and taking care of the basketball is huge when it comes to the Big Dance.

Subscribe to the BetFirms RSS Feed
Comments

Got something to say?