 in the league standings.
These two teams played once already this season, with the Terrapins topping then-No. 11 Ohio State 67-55. Things have significantly turned since then, with the Buckeyes struggling to stay in the NCAA Tournament projections after getting up as high as the national top five earlier in the season.
The Buckeyes are 2.5-point favorites playing at home, with the over/under set at 132.5.
The Terrapins may have the top inside-outside duo in the Big Ten in senior guard Anthony Cowan Jr. and sophomore forward Jalen Smith. Cowan leads Maryland with 16.7 points per game, and he’s been clutch when the Terrapins need a hoop, as he’s hit 10-of-16 three-point attempts in the final three minutes of games this season, including three in a win at Michigan State last weekend.
Smith has been a force on both ends of the floor, especially during the current winning streak, in which he has a double-double in each of the nine straight victories. That’s the longest active streak in the nation and the longest streak for a player in consecutive wins since Xavier’s David West did it in 2003. He’s averaging 18.9 points, 12.7 rebounds and 2.6 blocks during that span.
But Maryland is more than a two-man show. Sophomore guard Aaron Wiggins averages 10.1 points and 5.4 rebounds, and when he’s hot, the Terrapins hit another level. Maryland is 13-1 when he hits multiple three-pointers in a game. Junior guard Darryl Morsell has been solid of late as well, averaging 8.5 points on the season and coming off a career-best seven-assist performance against Northwestern.
After an ugly stretch in which they dropped six of seven contests from Dec. 29 to Jan. 23, the Buckeyes have started to find themselves again, winning five of their last seven. For Ohio State to secure a postseason berth, it is going to need to keep up that pace and move up in the Big Ten standings over the next five games.
Junior center Kaleb Wesson is the main offensive weapon for coach Chris Holtmann, averaging 13.9 points and 9.3 rebounds this season. But he comes off a 10-point performance against Iowa in which he shot just 4-of-10 from the field, including 1-of-5 from three-point range. He needs to be a force in the paint, especially against the strong rebounding of Maryland.
Guard Duane Washington Jr. is scoring 10.8 points per game, including a team-best 43 three-pointers, while forward Andre Wesson has upped his scoring average to 10.0 points per game in conference play. Freshman guard D.J. Carton (10.4 points per game) has missed the last six games as he left the program to tend to his mental health. Carton returned to the university on Friday but isn’t expected to join the basketball team again for at least a little while.
After dropping their first three road games in conference play, the Terrapins have reeled off four straight victories away from home. With Cowan leading the way, Maryland won’t be fazed by the home crowd in Columbus. Ohio State has won its last three home games, but it’s hard to see the Buckeyes being able to shut down the Terrapins for 40 minutes.
This one will be close for a while, but Cowan leads a late charge to help Maryland win. I’m taking the Terrapins +2.5.
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sentenced 16 former Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) men in Uttar Pradesh to life imprisonment for killing 42 persons in Hashimpura area of Meerut in 1987.
The court quashed a 2015 trial court judgment that exonerated them of the crime. It directed all the convicts to surrender before a court in Delhi.
Please Email the EditorQuestion 1. What motivated your interest in this topic? What made you curious about volubility as a specific workplace behavior where gender and power may play a role?
I became interested in workplace volubility (i.e., talking behavior) because of curious things that I had noticed about how power seemed to affect men and women differently when I was working as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate. Specifically, I noticed that male and female Senators who seemed to be the most influential didn’t give the same kinds of “stump speeches.” For example, even the most powerful women Senators oftentimes told a narrative about how they became involved in politics that made it seem like they were not in politics for the sake of getting power, but rather to help people somehow, but really powerful male Senators almost never had this same kind of personal narrative. Related to this, I noticed that these same very powerful female Senators oftentimes didn’t come to the Senate floor to speak at every opportunity, unlike their male counterparts.
Question 2. Your research shows that powerful women refrain from speaking up because they fear negative consequences such as backlash. We were interested in any insights you may have into the psychological antecedents of these perceptions of potential backlash – is it driven by a lack of psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999)? Are there other factors?
That said, I think it’s the case that everyone at work—males and females—has a strong need to feel both secure in their position and also safe. So I find the idea that fearing negative consequences for gender stereotype-incongruent behavior (i.e., backlash) is rooted in a desire for psychological safety very interesting (and perhaps something that should be examined in future research!).
Question 3. It seems that a crucial component of speaking up is also the person (or group of people) who is listening. How much of volubility depends on the audience? If individuals – men or women – view their audience as unreceptive to their message, isn’t it likely they will view their speaking up efforts as futile? How much then does futility influence how women speak up, especially to audiences that are primarily comprised of men?
Great question! I think both men and women’s willingness to speak up at work depends a lot on how they believe they will be perceived for doing so. In a series of studies on backlash effects for volubility in the workplace and in politics, I have found that people not only dislike a powerful woman who talks a lot, but they are also less willing to hire, promote, and vote for a highly-voluble woman compared to an equally-talkative man. What is also interesting about this is that women were just as likely as men to penalize highly-voluble powerful women, suggesting that it might not be the case that audiences comprised mainly of men are more likely to be unreceptive to highly-voluble women. (The fact that women are just as likely as men to exhibit backlash effects against women who violate gender stereotypes is oftentimes surprising to people, but research on backlash effects over the last 15 years has consistently shown to be the case.) So, in short, I think that women’s perceptions that speaking up may be “futile” is likely part of what “fear of backlash” for being highly voluble is all about. If others are perceiving you as “too dominant” and dislike you as a result, you are likely to also believe that they won’t be receptive to whatever it is you’re trying to communicate in the first place.
Question 4. The topic of gender, volubility and power has clear practical implications for both women and men and how they present themselves in work settings. Based on your findings that power seems to work differently for men and women, what do you think are some strategies that women could use to offset some of the difficulties they may face when using power in their careers? For example, at the end of the paper you mention Hillary Clinton’s listening tour during her Senate campaign. Would you give her similar advice today for her presidential campaign?
In general, though, I think that women (like Clinton) who are good at self-monitoring probably are already good at figuring out when to talk and when not to talk as they not only sensitive to social cues but they are also motivated to listen to these cues and modify their behavior accordingly. These are the women who are also pretty good at avoiding backlash effects in the workplace—they can walk the narrow tightrope between being perceived as both agentic (but not domineering) and warm (but not weak). I think women who aren’t as good at self-monitoring may want to pay attention to the fact that once they become the boss (or get power in some way), people may not treat them in the same way that men with power get treated. In other words, having power may license a greater range of behaviors, but this range may, in general, be slightly bigger for men than it is for women. Women in this situation would be smart to get the perspective of trusted friends and colleagues to help them navigate these situations.
Besides this paper in ASQ, I’ve been really fortunate to have a few of the things I’ve researched get picked up by the media, but I have really struggled with trying to find ways to make sure my work is described accurately. But more than that, I’ve had problems with the kinds of implications that reporters (and others) will derive from my work. For example, with this paper on volubility, a number of newspaper stories came out in Asia saying that (basically) that “Yale research shows that women shouldn’t talk at work.” And that certainly was not what I found nor was I making that prescription!