INDIANAPOLIS — In a college basketball season when more teams have been disappointing than dominant, it is of little consolation to Maryland coach Mark Turgeon and his No. 18 Terps that they have plenty of company in their current state of misery.

Having repeated consistently since preseason practice that his talented group would probably be the proverbial work in progress until March, Turgeon knows that he and the Terps must fix things quickly or risk being called one of the most underachieving teams in school history.

Whether Maryland (24-7) has taken the necessary steps should be evident when the third-seeded Terps play in the Big Ten Conference tournament quarterfinals tonight at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Maryland will face No. 11 seed Nebraska, which beat No. 6 seed Wisconsin in a 70-58 upset Thursday night.

Once considered a potential No. 1 seed in this year's NCAA tournament, the Terps will likely have to advance to Saturday's semifinals just to have a chance at a No. 4 seed after losing four of their last six regular-season games.

“I think we're going to be closer to where we want to be because losing grabs your attention to details,” Turgeon said Wednesday in College Park. “Maybe when you're 22-3, you're winning, you're talking about it but you're not correcting things you maybe should be correcting. I think we're making strides towards that. We know how to play; we've just go to go out and do it.”

Amid much debate surrounding what has caused this slide — from sophomore point guard Melo Trimble's hamstring injury that led to the first prolonged slump of his career to an offense that often looks confused and disconnected to a bench that has been inconsistent in its contribution — Turgeon hopes the Big Ten tournament is a launching pad for a long postseason run.

“I think the regular-season grind is behind us,” Turgeon said. “I think our guys have moved on. I think that happened when we landed Sunday night [after losing at Indiana]. Practices have been good. Attitudes have been good. … I think you can see a little more pep in their step, and they're excited with what lies ahead.”

Senior guard Rasheed Sulaimon said the Terps are looking at the Big Ten tournament “as a mini-version of the NCAA tournament.”

“Instead of six games, it's three games and [if] you lose, you go home,” he said. “We're going to use the Big Ten tournament as preparation for the NCAA tournament and at the same time we're going to try to win it.”

Before today's matchup was determined, Turgeon said the uncertainty of whom the Terps will face has given him the opportunity to correct his team's problems rather than focus on running through what challenge their next opponent presents.

“It's great not thinking about who you're going to play,” Turgeon said. “You have a good idea who you think it's going to be. It's a chance for us to really work on us because I don't know what next week is going to be like, how well we're going to do this weekend, if we'll play until Sunday night, then have a quick turnaround. We don't know. This week is really a work week to make us better.”

Turgeon said much of the week's practices have been spent on defense. Though the Terps finished the regular season at or near the top of the league in several defensive categories, they struggled at that end in all the recent losses as well as in a four-point win over Michigan.

“We've got to get back to guarding; we haven't done that as well,” he said.

Some believe the Big Ten tournament will be a positive step for the Terps, while others think the danger signs for a quick exit in the NCAA tournament are hard to ignore.

Shon Morris, a former Northwestern basketball player who works as an analyst for the Big Ten Network, said on air Monday night that he wouldn't be surprised to see the Terps find their way out of the funk that has caused them to fall from a No. 2 national ranking a month ago.

“All the pressure coming in here is going to be on Indiana, Purdue and to a lesser extent Michigan,” Morris said Thursday. “It's hard to be disappointed in a team that's 24-7, but a lot of people are. They're a team that no one's really expecting them to make a run and the way this thing lays out, they may have a chance to put things together, especially with Trimble getting healthy.”

ESPN analyst Dan Dakich, who worked several Maryland games this season, predicted in January that the Terps could be one of those teams that would have trouble living up to the expectations, in large part because there were a number of important players who were not only new to the team, but also new to the Big Ten.

“The Big Ten at the upper part of it is tough,” Dakich said Thursday. “That's what I tried to say at the beginning of the season. … Success is hard. You have success at a school like Maryland and people are telling you how great you are. And you've got to be able to handle it. I think they've handled it fine, I think they've had a good year. Based on their schedule, it was tough for them to have a great year against the top teams in the Big Ten.”

Dakich is not sure Maryland is going to be able to turn it around based on the way the Terps have played of late and the teams they might play in the tournament.

“This is what I saw against Indiana and if I was Mark, it would concern me,” Dakich said. “I thought they came out to play a really good game. They looked good, they were athletic, they made some shots. And then I thought Indiana just took them apart. Really connected teams that have talent never get taken apart. They don't crumble, and I thought for a lot of that game Maryland crumbled.”

Dakich said Maryland has enough talent and size but that the chemistry of the team must get back to where it was earlier in the season.

“They are playing against a number of teams that are pretty connected — Michigan State, Indiana, Wisconsin,” Dakich said. “They may be OK, but they're playing against teams that aren't trying to get themselves together. They're playing against teams that are together. These teams are not messing around; they're together.”

Trimble has heard many fans turn into doubters the past few weeks, and the Terps want to use that to silence them.

“Before, at the beginning of the year, we were at the top of the rankings and everyone pretty much had respect for us,” Trimble said. “I think now that we took a couple of L's, people have lost respect for us and we're not in the picture of anything. Knowing that and knowing what people are saying about us gives a chip on our shoulder and makes us more hungry, and that's something we all like.”

don.markus@baltsun.com

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