On Wednesday night, Maryland men’s basketball will host one of the most distinctive teams in college basketball.

Coach Tony Bennett has turned Virginia into a powerhouse — Terps coach Mark Turgeon called it the second-most consistent program in the past five years, behind only Villanova. He’s done so by utilizing a methodical pace and Pack Line defense that suffocates opponents.

While preparing for by far his team’s biggest test of the season, how has Turgeon tried to replicate the Cavaliers’ singular style in practice?

“You can’t. You can’t,” he said. “I mean, if we could, then we would play it, right?”

For a young team that hasn’t seen anything close to the challenge posed by the No. 4 team in the nation, it’s hard for anybody to say much of anything about Wednesday’s long-awaited showdown.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to really play and find out a lot of things about ourselves,” forward Bruno Fernando said. “We’re just fortunate to be in this position.”

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The Cavaliers are designed to make the “opportunity” of playing them feel more like a punishment. They frustrate teams by putting games in slow motion, limiting the number of possessions and suppressing scorelines.

No. 24 Maryland is coming off its best performance of the season, a high-octane 104-67 win over a Marshall team that loves to push the pace. That works more to the Terps’ favor, and it showed — guard Anthony Cowan cruised to a season-high 26 points, and guard Eric Ayala had 20 points in the best game of his freshman campaign.

In just about any other game, Turgeon’s strategy would be to force his opponent to play more like Marshall — but not Virginia.

During a 61-58 overtime loss in Charlottesville back in 2013, the Terps coach learned the challenge of getting the Cavaliers to stray from their gameplan.

“We went into their place [and saw] three or four different presses and different traps and all kind of stuff,” he said. “It’s hard to speed them up.”

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That doesn’t necessarily mean Maryland won’t try. When Cowan watched the Cavaliers’ 53-46 handling of No. 22 Wisconsin last week, he believed he saw two teams willing to keep things slow.

Turgeon didn’t go into detail about how he’ll attack Virginia — “They’re good at what they do, and you have to figure out a way to be good at what you do” — but Cowan suggested the Terps might not use the ‘beat them at their own game’ gameplan other teams sometimes use against the Cavaliers.

“We try to push the pace a little bit more,” Cowan said. “I guess we only can see how it’s going to go tomorrow.”

That seems to be the team’s attitude heading into one of its most anticipated nonconference games in recent years.

To this point, Turgeon’s squad has faced a pretty soft schedule, without any opponents sniffing the top 25. That changes now — and it’s a welcome change.

“I think we’re ready for it,” Turgeon said. “It’s time.”

Time for what, exactly, remains to be seen.

In response to questions about what it will be like facing a team with quirks so frustrating that a scout team can’t replicate them, Cowan wryly made it clear he has no interest in speculating.

“Guess we’ll have to find out tomorrow,” Cowan said. “I don’t know. Guess we’ll have to find out.”