Maryland entered Wednesday night's contest against Duke ranked No. 1 in the ACC in points scored, pouring in 84.1 per game.
So the Blue Devils decided to get defensive, holding the Terrapins to just 30.2 percent shooting and 32 points below their season average in a 76-52 drubbing.
Duke shadowed ball-handlers with a tight man defense most of the night and forced 29 turnovers, including 19 steals, and kept the Maryland offense on its heels, often quite literally.
"I guess the first thing is that when you turn the ball over 29 times, you're probably not going to win the game," Maryland head coach Gary Williams said. "Duke plays nothing dirty, just good, physical defense."
Shelden Williams led the Blue Devils with his first triple-double, scoring 19 points, grabbing 11 rebounds and registering 10 blocks, a career high. He swatted nine shots previously this season, coming just one block shy of a triple-double against Davidson Nov. 19.
"It's great to have the Landlord out there," Sean Dockery said. "He's a guy who is going to help you out tremendously."
Dockery also joked that since Williams is such a premier shot-blocker, he yells for teammates to clear out just so he can stuff another victim.
William's interior defense thwarted the Terps game plan all night. Despite the fact that Maryland out rebounded Duke 45-37 and grabbed 21 offensive boards, the team could not score down low as Williams altered seemingly easy shots. The Blue Devils outscored the Terps, 32-26, in the paint and had more second chance points.
"He was great," Gary Williams said. "He had great timing tonight. He had some really great plays off of his man, blocking shots and things like that where it looked like we had layups and we didn't get them after that. There's the intimidation factor which I thought took place as the game went on."
The Terps top-ranked scoring offense boasts five scorers averaging more than 10 points per game, the only team in the ACC to have such a balanced scoring attack. But only one of the quintet made it to double digits; leading scorer Chris McCray scored 12 points on 4-for-11 shooting.
Even Nik Caner-Medley, known Duke-killer, could only manage a measly eight points on a 2-for-8 performance from the field. Caner-Medley averaged 18 points per game against the Blue Devils last season, helping his team defeat Duke twice.
"I think we played great defense. We were really helping each other as a team," Dockery said. "We just came out and played together, and that's all we want to do this whole year."
Dockery led the Blue Devils with five steals while he and fellow guard Greg Paulus kept relentless pressure on the ball and rarely gave Maryland open passing lanes. The Terrapins had only six assists all night, a far cry from their season average of 17.4.
While a 1:1 assist-to-turnover ratio is considered fine, Maryland's awful ratio was close to 1:5 for the night, just six assists against 29 turnovers.
Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said his team expended a great deal of energy playing defense in the first half and he was proud of his team's intensity and its refusal to let up defensively throughout the game.
Maryland never had a chance to gain momentum facing constant pressure and an inability to get open looks. The Terrapins largest scoring streak of the game was just six points.
"We were just on our defensive game," J.J. Redick said. "Certainly we've done that to some low D-I teams, but not a team like Maryland."
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