REACTION: Maryland 82, Dartmouth 53

Well, that's much better.

After last year's scare against Coppin State, the Maryland Terrapins made sure to make no mistakes today and cruised throughout in their 1-16 first round NCAA tournament game at the Comcast Center.

Maryland never trailed in this one, scoring the first eight points before the Big Green got on the board. The Terps had 24 by the time Dartmouth hit double digits and had 35 by the time their opponents got to 20. They built a healthy lead and kept it throughout; a very important thing for them to do in this game. In both of their College Park NCAA tournament games last year, they had tons of trouble putting their opponent away. Even more recently, there was that double digit second half collapse against Duke in the ACC title game before winning in overtime. It was a huge positive for this team to put their foot on the opposition's throat and keep it down the entire way.

As I said in the previous post, it was all about Toliver today. She ended with 27 points, 23 of them coming in the first half when the Terps put the game away. She played until the 11:28 mark, which was good, because getting those extra reps for the bench players will be big for later in the tournament when they'll be needed for more meaningful minutes. And despite ESPN studio man Trey Wingo's accusations that the Terps were basically loafing in the second half, they outscored the Big Green 40-30 in the final 20 minutes. Good job by the Maryland reserves. All nine players played at least eight minutes with all players except Yemi Oyefuwa playing a quarter of the game. Again, those reps are important.

There's not a whole lot else to say here. The Terps had a simple task to do and they did it. Now they're on to round 2 and a surprising Utah team who just got done pulverizing Villanova 60-30. That'll be Tuesday night at 7 PM. The Terps didn't let their opponents slow the game down today and that will be even more key in a couple of days.