Nolan Smith keeps Vasquez quiet

Maryland guard Greivis Vasquez put up decent numbers, including 17 points, but Nolan Smith’s hounding defense limited him from imposing himself on the game.
Maryland guard Greivis Vasquez put up decent numbers, including 17 points, but Nolan Smith’s hounding defense limited him from imposing himself on the game.

It was last year that Greivis Vasquez, the fiery point guard that makes Maryland go, ensured that he would have the rapt attention of the Cameron Crazies whenever his Terrapins came to Cameron Indoor Stadium. “That’s my house,” Vasquez said of Duke’s home floor. “I love going in there.”

Even if Maryland isn’t Duke’s rival, those are still fighting words, and ever since, the give-and-take between Vasquez and Duke’s fan base has evolved into something of a mutual respect. Vasquez talks to players, fans and referees—anyone who will listen, really. He holds his follow-through. He shimmy-shakes. He looks tauntingly at the bleachers after daggers. He’s got swagger, and he revels in the attention, and opposing fans are sure to shower him with that attention. But last year, when the Venezuelan exited sullenly near the end of Maryland’s 40-point shellacking in Durham, Vasquez sat down and, again, looked at the Cameron Crazies. This time, he nodded in the recognition that Cameron, clearly, was not his house.

It wasn’t a particularly friendly abode Saturday, either. But that had little to do with the translation of traditional English jeers into Spanish—the fans even chanted “¡Nuestra Casa!” in the last minute of Duke’s 77-56 victory—and more to do with the defensive pressure of Nolan Smith, who limited the ACC’s fourth-leading scorer to just four points in the game’s first 29 minutes. In that time, the Blue Devils built a 20-point lead en route to yet another ACC pounding, increasing their margin of victory in home league games to 18.8 points.

“He does like to talk,” Smith said of Vasquez, his counterpart. “But after last year’s game, when he talked before coming in here, he’s been quiet.”

Smith was primarily responsible for silencing Vasquez—on the scoreboard, and thus, in decibels—as he drew the toughest assignment in Duke’s man-to-man scheme.

It’s no scouting secret that all good teams try to force elite players into doing things they’re not as comfortable doing. Vasquez, a big, powerful point guard who thrives on guile, prefers to slow the game down and use his frame to body up smaller defenders.

“I look at myself as a great defender, someone who can lock someone down,” Smith said. “[Vasquez is] not a jet. He’s kind of like Jon [Scheyer]. He’s not like an Ishmael Smith that’s gonna blow by you. He’s just crafty, and he gets to where needs to get to.”

So instead of letting Vasquez go where he needed to go, Smith forced him left. Smith sped him up by playing him low. He contested his floaters. Those little tweaks led to larger frustrations, and nowhere was it more noticeable than in the box score, where Vasquez was held scoreless for the game’s first 16 minutes. His teammates didn’t do much to pick up the burden, as the Terrapins trailed by 16 at halftime, shot 0-for-7 from deep in the first half and only 2-of-13 from 3-point range over 40 minutes.

“If you look at our team, I’d assume that they would come into the game to try and stop [Vasquez],” Maryland head coach Gary Williams said. “When you have a good player and the other team is really focused on that player, you must do things in your offense well: screen, passes, spacing. We didn’t do much of that in the first half.”

“At times, I felt he was frustrated,” said Smith, who harried Vasquez into four turnovers. “He never got anything going, and that can wear on someone throughout the game.”

Naturally, Vasquez’s sparring partners in the wooden bleachers weren’t shy about reminding him of his goose egg, peppering him with bilingual taunts throughout. For most of the contest, it was a lopsided tête-à-tête. Vasquez isn’t one to talk out of turn, and because Smith had suffocated him, he had also effectively muzzled him.

Until, that is, Vasquez went off in the second half. From the 11:01 mark until 9:26 remained in the second half, Vasquez scored on four straight possessions, slicing the Blue Devils’ lead from 19 to 10 and giving the Terrapins the only glimmer of opportunity they saw all afternoon. After his last jumper, which gave Vasquez 13 points when he had four just minutes earlier, he offered a quick glance at the Cameron Crazies to his left. Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski was cornered into calling a timeout to stem the momentum, and before jogging to his bench, Vasquez snapped his head to glare at the students again. Game on, his stare said.

Vasquez, however, seemed to have forgotten that this wasn’t his freshman year, when Maryland left with a win, and the Terrapins still trailed by 10. It was the closest they would get to the lead in the second half, as minutes later, the margin would swell back to 20. By the time Vasquez left the Cameron floor, for the last time, with 1:36 left, he was Maryland’s leading scorer with 17 points. Duke led by 23, and it was almost as if no one had noticed he was gone.

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