It was sound basketball strategy to Exree Hipp, but it sounded like a rule to live by if you're the Maryland Terrapins: "When you get in trouble," Hipp said, "throw it to Joe Smith."

Against a smallish Texas team that has no real interior defense and goes up and down the court so much that one-on-one matchups are inevitable, Saturday's NCAA tournament West Region second-round game was as good a time as any for the Maryland Terrapins to throw it to Joe Smith. Particularly since he was upset with himself after a nine-point, on-the-bench-with-four-fouls performance in a first-round game. The result of throwing it to Smith was 31 points, 21 rebounds, 7 blocked shots and 4 steals for the first-team all-American, who said afterward, "I wanted to show the people of Utah what I'm made of."

That would be 24-karat gold, we conclude. The best NCAA tournament performance by an individual in Maryland basketball history shoved the Terrapins another several hundred miles west, to Oakland, Calif., where they will meet Connecticut on Thursday evening in the Oh So Sweet 16.

Nearly as important as the victory was the fact that the Maryland players knew they could have played so much better, and said so. They committed 21 turnovers and watched a nine-point lead dissolve and turn into a one-point Texas lead midway through the second half. Texas confounded the Terps for a while by trapping on every single possession, until Maryland Coach Gary Williams countered with an adjustment. But Maryland also couldn't pull away because the Terrapins were just too excited about playing a team they knew they should beat for a shot at the third round of the NCAA tournament.

"We played pretty sloppy and didn't put 'em away," Hipp said. "We should have been up 15 at the half but we were only up five."

Even Smith, heroic as he was personally, began to tick off the things that allowed a fairly one-dimensional Texas team to stay closer than it should have. "Let's see," Smith said, "we missed free throws, we made too many turnovers, we weren't stepping out to the ball to meet passes, we were too hesitant . . . We were too excited."

It's the sign of a good team, a maturing team, not to be satisfied with just a victory at this time of the season. Smith and Hipp were right, and the attention to detail will probably serve the Terrapins well against the Huskies on Thursday. At one point the Terrapins were ahead 39-30 and clearly in control of the game when Hipp sent a perfect pass on Smith, who tried to slam a wide-open dunk, but missed. Instead of being up 11, the Terrapins watched Texas point guard Roderick Anderson glide down the lane for a three-point play the hard way, cutting the lead to six, 39-33.

And so it went. A Smith post-up basket pushed the lead to 44-35, but Keith Booth (12 points, 11 rebounds) who otherwise played tough, bricked two free throws. Mario Lucas missed two a couple of minutes later, failing to push the lead to 10 points, and Texas reeled off nine straight points, helped by three Maryland turnovers. All of a sudden, Maryland found itself behind, 56-55, in a game it had controlled. "They're trying to kill me, that's what I think," Williams would say later.

But the Terrapins did the one thing you have to do in the tournament: They played nasty, nasty defense the entire game. The thing Texas does better than just about anybody is drain three-point shots. They average 8.6 a game and they work at freeing up people to take them. In the six-year tenure of Coach Tom Penders, the Longhorns have hit at least one three-pointer in 223 of 224 games. The last time they didn't hit a three-pointer was four years ago. As vulnerable a team as it is, two or three guys could catch fire and hurt a better-balanced team like Maryland.

But the Terrapins were too good on defense. Texas attempted its average of 21 threes, but hit only three and two of those came in the closing minutes. Hipp, who at 6-foot-8 has put a hurting on some pretty good shooting guards this season, held Terrence Rencher, a 21-points-per-game scorer, to 15. Rencher, for those who've never heard of him, is only the Southwest Conference's all-time leading scorer, having surpassed people such as Sidney Moncrief and Travis Mays. Rencher hit zero outside shots. And Roderick Anderson, the point guard who averages 20.7 points, missed 16 of 19 shots, 8 of 9 from three-point land. Duane Simpkins might not have done much offensively (6 points, 2 shots, 3 assists), but he stayed in front of Anderson as well as any defender has all season.

Whatever lapses the Terrapins had on offense they made up for on defense, holding Texas to 35 percent shooting, 14 percent shooting from three-point range. The Longhorns, remember, entered the tournament as the highest scoring team in the nation at 93.9 points per game. But Saturday, Maryland held Texas to its lowest scoring half of the season (30 points in the first) and its lowest scoring game of the season (68).

The number Hipp did on Rencher didn't escape Williams. "X is such a good defensive weapon," he said. "I've gotten a better appreciation of of what he does to good shooters."

It's a pretty good one-two punch, Hipp on defense and Joe Smith on offense. The nine-point performance in the rout of Gonzaga in the first round didn't sit well with Smith, even though he only played 24 minutes because of foul trouble. "It felt kind of odd, sitting on the bench like that," he said. "Utah people wanted to see what kind of team we are, what kind of player I am in particular. I was upset with myself, at the way they played me {three-on-one at times}. It was frustrating. But today, I had a lot of one-on-one situations when I got the ball because of the way they play the game."

One on one against Joe Smith isn't good, not unless you have a Rasheed Wallace or a Tim Duncan. Texas doesn't. And Smith made the Longhorns pay. "I didn't say anything to Joe," Gary Williams said. "He's one of those people who wants to be great. This is the way he reacts."