Bittersweet

ATLANTA -- It wasn't supposed to end this way. \nNot after surviving the first two rounds for the first time in eight years. Not after shocking top-ranked Duke. Not after slipping past No. 3 Oklahoma to complete an improbable run to the NCAA championship game. \nBut it did.\nIU's wild, crazy and unexpected chase for the school's sixth NCAA crown came up short Monday in the Georgia Dome. Maryland jumped to an early lead and never let IU get control of the game before winning its first national title in its first title game 64-52 in front of 53,406 fans. \nSenior guard Juan Dixon, the tournament's Most Outstanding Player, led No. 4 Maryland (32-4) with 18 points. Junior guard Kyle Hornsby led IU (25-12) with 14. Only he and senior guard Dane Fife (11 points) finished in double figures. \n"We had a chance tonight, but Maryland is a much better basketball team," IU coach Mike Davis said. "We missed a couple of shots, gambled defensively. It was them more than us."\nIU clawed back from an 11-point first half deficit to take a 44-42 lead, its first lead of the game, on a Jared Jeffries bucket with 9:53 remaining, but Dixon answered with a three-pointer to give the lead back to the Terps, and Maryland closed the game with a 22-8 run to give coach Gary Williams his first win over IU in eight career tries. \nIU got the slow-down tempo it wanted, but Maryland's defense forced IU to run a helter-skelter offense. IU regularly began its offensive set with less than 20 seconds remaining on the shot clock, and looked shaken nearly the entire game. A calm during the storm ignited IU's comeback, but it wasn't enough. \n"We just settled down a little bit," junior guard Tom Coverdale said. "Once we calmed down, our offense got a lot better."\nBut Williams credited IU's defense, which held the Terrapins to 43.8 percent, to shutting down Maryland just enough for the Hoosiers to stay in the game. \n"We had to really work hard because Indiana plays great defense," Williams said. "It took us 25 minutes until we ran our offense. When we finally started to play our game, we were all right."\nOnce Maryland figured it out, it wiped out IU's comeback effort, showed signs of an offense that averages 85 points per game and then played some defense of its own. \nIU, which entered the game with the top shooting percentage of any NCAA tournament team, never established an inside presence and finished the night shooting just 10 of 35 from inside the three-point arc. IU hit 34.5 percent from the floor, its lowest percentage since shooting 28 percent against Penn State Jan. 5. \nThree-point shooting kept IU in the game in both the first and second halves. IU finished the night 10 of 23 from the arc, but at the at the 14:10 mark in the second half, IU was seven of 11 from three-point land and five of 24 from inside the arc. From that point on, IU hit just two of 12 threes and eight of 23 shots from the field.\nIU's three forwards -- Jeffries, Jarrad Odle and Jeff Newton -- finished the night with just 14 combined points. Odle, IU's third-leading scorer, did not make a shot. \nSimilar to Saturday's win over Oklahoma in the semifinals, Jeffries picked up two early fouls and was one the bench at the 12-minute mark in the first half. Jeffries scored just two first-half points and committed two turnovers. \nThe Hoosier sophomore All-American finished four of 11 from the field and committed four turnovers. He finished with eight points and scored just 16 in IU's two Final Four contests. \nDixon, Maryland's all-time leading scorer, scored a tournament-low 18 points, but racked up 11 of those within the first 10 minutes of the game. Fife kept Dixon from getting good looks, but Baxter and a balanced Maryland attack solved IU's defense. \n"I tried to play my game, be patient," Dixon said. "I let the game come to me."\nIU had a number of chances to close the gap and push ahead, but let nearly each one slip away.\nThe Hoosiers held Maryland scoreless for over five minutes in the first half, but missed four free throws -- two front ends to one-and-ones -- and put up only two points during that stretch. \nA Coverdale bank shot in the lane finished off a seven to two run to close the half and it closed the Maryland gap, which had been as many as 11, to 31-25. IU shot just 32 percent in the first half.\nFor IU, it is the school's first-ever loss in the national championship game. IU was the second No. 5 seed to advance to the championship game and charged on a tournament run very few people figured could happen. But the sense of accomplishment was not any consolation for the Hoosiers, who somberly trudged off the Georgia Dome floor in the wake of the Maryland celebration. \n"It was good proving people wrong," sophomore guard A.J. Moye said. "But it would have been better proving the whole world wrong." \nIt was a Cinderella run that went awry on the night of its last dance.