The Comcast Center crowd gave Terp men’s basketball guard Eric Hayes an extra-warm ovation as Adrian Bowie checked in for him with 4:57 remaining in the first half of Tuesday’s win against Fairfield.
The senior guard had earned it with a personal 7-0 run that was part of a 15-0 Terp run that took the Terps from down by three to in control of the game.
“I thought he really played well,” coach Gary Williams said. “There was a certain toughness out there tonight. He’s just such a steady player that sometimes it gets overlooked—what he’s doing.”
Hayes finished the game with a team-high 14 points, part of another balanced Terp offensive effort, but it was when he hit for a majority of his points that picked up the home team.
After the Terps missed their first five shots, Hayes sunk a three to open up the scoring nearly three minutes into the game. His 7-0 run, which included a jumper over 6-foot-11 Ryan Olander, helped him finish the half with 10 points.
“Unbelievable,” guard Greivis Vasquez said of his fellow senior. “That was good for us. We really need Eric to continue to do that, especially when I’m struggling.”
It wasn’t the same kind of big splash game that he had at times late last season, such as when he poured in a career-high 21 points in the team’s ACC Tournament win against N.C. State.
But Tuesday night it was doing what he does best that proved exactly what the Terps needed: staying level-headed when the going got tough to spark the team.
“He looked very calm when things weren’t calm and he had the ball,” Williams said. “In other words, he settled us down and got us into the offense. He only took 11 shots but he made a couple big ones there in the first half to really get us started.”
Eric Detweiler is The Diamondback’s Terrapin Men’s Basketball Team beat writer. He can be reached at edetweilerdbk@gmail.com. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/edetweiler.