After the first few possessions Tuesday night, Terrapins men’s basketball coach Mark Turgeon turned to his assistants and yelled through the groans of the Terps fans.

“We’re in for a tough one,” Turgeon recalled telling his staff.

Within the first four minutes of the game, Northwestern had snagged three offensive rebounds and parlayed them into six second-chance points. The trend continued throughout the night as the Wildcats finished with 16 offensive boards and 16 second-chance points.

While the No. 7 Terps managed to prevail, 62-56, in overtime, securing defensive rebounds will likely be a point of emphasis moving forward.

“We definitely going to continue to work on it,” said forward Robert Carter Jr., whose 13 defensive boards accounted for nearly half of the team’s 27. “[Turgeon’s] definitely going to be preaching that next week because we too good of a team to get outrebounded by 10.”

After Northwestern’s first three offensive rebounds, Turgeon screamed out at the court, demanding his players squeeze the ball. When the problems persisted, Turgeon threw his arms up in the air, spinning toward the bench.

By the time Northwestern forward Aaron Falzon snared an offensive rebound with 7:13 left in the first half, Turgeon simply folded his arms and glared at his players on the floor.

“Our ball screen defense was terrific, our on-ball defense was terrific, our team defense was terrific,” Turgeon said. “We just didn’t finish possessions with rebounds. Hopefully that will be easy to fix for us.”

The Terps rank as one of the best defensive rebounding teams in the Big Ten. They hold opponents to 29.9 rebounds per game, the fewest in the conference, and their 5.7 rebounding margin ranks fifth in the Big Ten.

Still, they allowed Northwestern, which entered the night averaging 10.9 offensive boards per game, to continually keep possessions alive.

“We are a little bit bigger [than in past seasons], so we are able to get in there a little more,” Northwestern coach Chris Collins said. “That’s been a strength of ours and I was really proud to get in there to get 16.”

Carter said part of the problem was how many long rebounds there were. Shots from beyond the arc tend to bounce farther off the rim, and Northwestern missed 16 3-pointers.

“Coach always says long shots lead to long rebounds,” Carter said. “A lot of times we were running toward the rim and the ball bounced over our heads or we get the rebound and they come swipe it.”

The redshirt junior, who leads the Terps in rebounding, said the best thing to do in those situations is box out and urge the guards to find their men on the perimeter.

Forward Jake Layman said Northwestern was “just being more aggressive than us. I think that’s all it was.”

It didn’t prove to matter in the end, though. Over the final five minutes of regulation and the five-minute overtime period, Northwestern managed just eight points.

“I feel like when it was time to get the big rebounds,” Carter said, “we got them.”