So much for assuming that Jason Williams, Mike Dunleavy and No. 1 Duke were going to try to bury No. 3 Maryland with a barrage of three-pointers.

And unlike their last meeting with the Blue Devils which ended in a Final Four loss, the Terrapins consider themselves very fortunate they have so much basketball left to play this season after falling, 99-78, in Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Williams led all scorers with 34 points, but made just one of four three-point attempts, as he caught the Terps off-guard by routinely driving to the hoop. Dunleavy had just one more three-pointer than Williams, and finished with 21 points after giving the Blue Devils a serious boost in the second half.

“What we had trouble with when they went to all that dribble penetration was getting people to help,” said Maryland Coach Gary Williams, whose team failed to become just the third team to win three straight games in Cameron since 1985. “I think we were conscious of the three. That’s probably my fault. You go into the game and see what they did against State and things like that so you’re very aware of especially Dunleavy being hot right now, and we thought we had to take them out of the three. We did a pretty good job, but we didn’t contain the dribble penetration in the second half.”

The Terps came into the game looking to pound the ball inside to senior center Lonny Baxter, who finished with a team-high 24 points on eight of 14 shooting and made just eight of 15 free throws.

That strategy proved useful for the Terps as they overcame a 5-0 deficit in the first 20 seconds of the game, and an eight-point deficit to finish the first half with a 49-48 lead in a game that had 30 lead changes.

But in the second half, Maryland was unable to score even when they did get the ball inside. Maryland’s last lead of the game came with 17:26 remaining in the second half after Chris Wilcox (14 points, 7 rebounds) fed Baxter for a layup to give Maryland a 57-56 lead.

The Blue Devils recovered, and pushed the lead to 10 when a putback by Christensen gave Duke a 73-63 lead. Maryland’s last comeback attempt of the evening culminated when Drew Nicholas converted a Dunleavy miss into a jumper that pulled Maryland to within 73-70 with 10:28 remaining.

The Terps made just one field goal in the next two and a half minutes and a Dunleavy three pointer on an assist by Williams pushed Duke to an 85-73 lead with 8:13 remaining. The Terps would never cut the lead to less than 10 points the rest of the game.

“We just didn’t attack the way we should have,” said Baxter, who fouled for the third time this season, with 3:46 remaining in the game. “We should have just kept going inside, but we got away from that. It hurt us. We didn’t come out with the same enthusiasm we did in the first half, and that was the difference in the game.”

Maryland had trouble getting the ball to Juan Dixon, who scored just 10 points on two of nine shooting. It was the lowest scoring output for Dixon since he scored just two points in 11 minutes against N.C. State on Jan 21 of last year.

“I think I hurt my team, a lot,” said Dixon, who made one of four three-point attempts and is two away from breaking the Maryland career mark. “I missed a lot of opportunities to knock down a shot. I missed a lot of shots I could make today. A game like that is going to happen.

“I’ll be fine. I’m not going to hold my head down. I think I played hard out there. Hopefully we can get it going again.”

Said Gary Williams: “I thought (the defense on Dixon) was physical and (Jones) did a good job on Juan. He’s bigger than Juan. We didn’t do a good job though when that takes place – we have things we can do to counter that – we didn’t do a very good job of running our offense in the second half.”

The game was featured billing on ESPN all week, and among the promotional material was a “College Sports Century” episode featuring Dixon.

Considering the game was just a regular season game, no matter what the rankings of the opponents, Dixon agreed that the game might have been a bit over-hyped. Even if the game represented an opportunity for the Terps to earn their first-ever No. 1 ranking

“A lot of games in the past weren’t this hyped. We talked about it, but that’s how people wanted to hype it up. Hopefully next time we can do better.”

Senior forward Byron Mouton sounded a note similar to what many long-time fans were probably muttering to themselves following the game.

“It’s a big deal,” said Mouton, who finished with just six points and went 0-for-3 in the second half. “With all due respect to the other teams … it’s between us and Duke to win the ACC. This would have been big for us because we would have been two games up on Duke. It would have made them chase us to win the championship.”

Despite the loss, the Terps have the luxury of knowing that they are still very much in the hunt for first place in the ACC.

And that was a point that Williams was very adamant about in his post-game comments.