Maryland, on minor upturn, clashes with slumping Rutgers

Steve Pikiell has been at Rutgers for 10 years. For Buzz Williams at Maryland, it's been more like 10 months.

What they have in common is a cognizance that their Big Ten Conference programs have been supremely disappointing this season.

The conference's East Coast rivals will meet for the first of two games this season on Sunday afternoon in Piscataway, N.J.

The Terrapins (10-14, 3-10 Big Ten) lost 10 of their first 11 conference matchups before a recent two-game winning streak pulled them out of the nosedive.

Earlier this week, Williams apologized to fans during a press conference.

"I have not tried to dodge anything relative to the results," said Williams, who took over after a successful stint at Texas A&M. "I apologize for those that don't think they know me or whoever these fans are. I'm happy to -- I'm not hiding anything."

Williams added that injuries to players such as top scorer Pharrel Payne (leg), who hasn't played in two months, can't be an excuse.

"We have to do a better job in our decisions. We have to do a better job in our evaluations," Williams said. "... There's not an excuse or justification for our lack of success, other than we have to do better and we will do better."

The Terrapins followed a 67-62 win at Minnesota with a 77-70 home victory over Iowa on Wednesday, when freshman Andre Mills went for a career-high 24 points. David "Diggy" Coit leads healthy Maryland players with an average of 15.3 points per game.

Rutgers (9-15, 2-11) has lost seven straight for the first time since Jan. 21-Feb. 10, 2018. The Scarlet Knights are on track for their worst record since Pikiell took the reins in 2016-17.

The team has had a full week off since its last game, an 80-68 home loss to then-No. 9 Nebraska.

"I'm looking for improvement," Pikiell said after that game. "Even with this losing stretch, we were at USC with a chance to tie the game. We have to keep getting better."

He then sidestepped a question about whether Rutgers' ongoing struggles were related to a poor name, image and likeness budget.

"(New athletic director Keli Zinn) hired six people in the NIL space. We probably needed that three years ago," Pikiell said. "We weren't as innovative as we needed to be, but we still have to win -- nobody cares about excuses."

Tariq Francis leads the Scarlet Knights with 16.5 ppg and has paced them in scoring four of the past five games.

--Field Level Media