#612 ASA PLAY ON Maryland -4.5 over Michigan, Saturday at 3:30 PM ET - We faded Michigan last night and it turned out to be a poor pick. Purdue shot the ball very poorly 34% from the field and never had a chance. Our main concern in that game for the Boilers was defending inside the arc. They haven’t been good at that this season, although much better as of late, and the Wolverines took advantage of that making a ridiculous 69% of their 2 point shots which led to 52% overall. That shouldn’t happen today vs a Terp that ranks in the top 50 nationally defending inside the 3 point line. That means Michigan may have to be hot from deep to pick up a win here and they are not a great outside shooting team ranking 17th in the Big 10 in 3 point FG%. They only shot 30% from deep last night but it didn’t matter because they were scoring at the rim as a very high rate. The other outlier last night was Michigan only had 6 turnovers. This is a team that has been terrible at taking care of the ball ranking 330th in offensive turnover rate. Today we expect them to struggle vs a Maryland defense that can cause problems ranking in the top 45 nationally at creating turnovers. The Terps destroyed an Illinois team that had been playing at the top of their game coming in. It was a huge revenge game for the Illini after getting smoked at home by Maryland and they still went on to lost 88-65 yesterday. To be honest it wasn’t even that close as the Terps led by almost 40 points at one point in the 2nd half. These 2 met once this season and Maryland traveled to Ann Arbor 10 days ago and won by 5 despite shooting only 38% for the game (Michigan shot 44%). The Wolverines also shot above their average from deep hitting 35% of their triples and still lost at home. They turned the ball over 22% of the time in that game which is what we expect today. Maryland is the better team across the board and we’re not going to let one data point (yesterday) for Michigan change that. The Wolves were playing terrible over the last month plus entering the tourney and caught Purdue on a night where they shot poorly and Michigan took advantage of poor inside defense. We’ll lay it here.