EVANSTON, Ill. (AP) — Down 14 at halftime, Maryland coach Mark Turgeon decided his team needed a pep talk. His message? The second half would change the season.
Overstatement or not, the Terrapins played the rest of the way as if they had everything riding on it.
Jalen Smith scored a career-high 25 points, and No. 17 Maryland rallied to beat Northwestern 77-66 on Tuesday night.
“I told them we’re gonna change our season at halftime,” Turgeon said. “We’re having a good year. But I want to make it a great year. The guys took a nice step forward.”
The speech, Smith said, “gave us the notion that we’ve got to come out and play hard.”
“We just need to come out and play fearless, just put everything that we have on the court,” he added.
The Terrapins trailed by as much as 15 in the first half and were down 10 in the second when they went on a 15-2 run.
Back-to-back 3-pointers by Aaron Wiggins and Anthony Cowan Jr. gave Maryland (15-4, 5-3 Big Ten) its first lead of the game at 56-55 with 9:10 remaining before Smith punctuated the run with a hard dunk. Smith also hit a huge 3 with just under two minutes left to make it 72-63, lifting the Terrapins to their second straight win after back-to-back losses.
Smith, a sophomore, surpassed his previous high of 21 points against Minnesota last season and grabbed 11 rebounds. Wiggins scored a personal-best 17. And Maryland came away with the win after dropping four straight away from home despite shooting just 35%.
“When we have the energy, we all have faith that we can win any game that we play regardless of the score, regardless of how we start off,” Wiggins said. “It just shows our potential as a team.”
Pat Spencer led Northwestern (6-12, 1-7) with 17 points. Miller Kopp scored 16. But the Wildcats lost for the eighth time in nine games.
“No one is going to back down, we’re not going to quit,” forward A.J. Turner said. “That’s not what Northwestern is about. We’re going to keep fighting.”
