Rasheed Sulaimon: Diamond Stone ‘going to learn’ from incident in loss to Wisconsin

COLLEGE PARK — By the time Vitto Brown broke for the basket, there was no need for anymore points, not on a night when Wisconsin overwhelmed Maryland with a 70-57 victory on Saturday night.

The Badgers’ junior guard soared for the dunk anyways, one final reminder that Wisconsin got the best of the second-ranked Terrapins and snapped their 27-game winning streak at the Xfinity Center.

There was no shortage of frustration following the Terrapins’ loss. There was the fact that Maryland shot 7-for-21 in the first half, missed 12 of their 22 free throw attempts and were out-rebounded, 40-30.

“Man, were they good tonight,” Maryland coach Mark Turgeon said of the Badgers. “I didn’t have our guys ready, obviously. It was disappointing and I was disappointed in the outcome.”

Then, there was what happened at the end of the first-half as Maryland faced a 16-point deficit. The Terrapins trailed, 35-19, with one second remaining in the first half, when Brown secured a loose ball along the baseline. As freshman center Diamond Stone wrestled for the ball, the two fell to the ground.

As Stone went to get up, it appeared he pushed Brown’s head to the floor, leading to a scuffle under the basket as that brought coaches and players onto the court. Just before Stone made contact with Brown, Wisconsin’s Nigel Hayes tried to move Stone away from Brown. Officials reviewed the incident on the monitors and issued technical fouls to Stone and Wisconsin’s Charlie Thomas.

“We had a jump ball,” head referee DJ Carstensen said in a statement provided to the media. “The two players fell to the floor. We had a contact deadball technical foul against [Stone]. Then we had an unsportsmanlike technical foul against [Thomas]. It was a flagrant one [on Stone]. That’s what we deemed it. We say that was a flagrant one contact foul. The ball was dead and there was contact. Unsporting was for what [Thomas] said.”

Turgeon said he did not see the incident in real time, but plans to address it.

“No, I did not see it. I heard about it,” Turgeon said. “It was a pretty physical game at the time. I will watch it and I’ll talk to Diamond.”

Wisconsin coach Greg Gard said he did not see it either, but had no issue with the way the situation was handled.

“I got blocked as it all happened,” Gard said. “There was a congregation of a lot of guys discussing some things, I guess. When Mark walked out there, I walked out there too to make sure cooler heads prevailed. When I talked to the officials, I was satisfied with the explanation of it. We have terrific officials in this league and we had a great crew in this game tonight.”

Following the game, Maryland senior guard Rasheed Sulaimon made sure to talk with the freshman center about the incident and how to handle himself in situations like that going forward. 

“We had a conversation after the game, just a few minutes ago, a one-on-one talk,” Sulaimon said. “When you give your heart out in this game, everything we go through from June all the way through now in February, emotions flare sometimes. You get competitive. Things happen. We had a conversation about it. He’s going to grow, he’s going to learn and he’s going to be better going forward.”