Maryland men’s basketball coach Kevin Willard said there was “so much noise” after his team lost its first four true road games of the season by an average margin of less than five points.

The noise is no longer after the Terps defeated No. 17 Michigan, 71-65, Wednesday in Ann Arbor in their final true road contest of the season. No. 13 Maryland won five of its final six games away from Xfinity Center, perhaps saving its best for last with a top-20 victory over a Wolverines team ranked second in the Big Ten standings.

“More than anything, I’m just so proud of that group of guys because it could’ve been easy to let all that negativity, let all that talk deter them,” Willard said. “These kids deserve a lot of credit.”

Rodney Rice paced the Terps with 19 points, while Derik Queen and Selton Miguel each added 17. The trio combined for three-quarters of Maryland’s points. Rice and Miguel buried seven of the Terps’ nine 3-pointers.

Maryland (23-7, 13-6 Big Ten) entered into a third-place tie with Purdue with the win. Willard’s squad can secure a double-bye in next week’s conference tournament if it wins Saturday against Northwestern — and the No. 2 seed is still in reach.

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“So many of these guys are going through this for the first time — the pressure, the ranking, people talking about double-byes and NCAA tournament stuff,” Willard said. “These guys mentally have really stayed strong.”

The Terps got off to an abysmal start offensively. They missed 12 of their first 14 shots but never trailed by more than seven thanks to the Wolverines’ similarly sluggish start. Michigan (22-8, 14-5 Big Ten) started 6-for-18 from the field and at one point turned the ball over four times in a two-minute span.

Right when the Wolverines began to look lost offensively, Maryland found its groove. It went on a 12-2 scoring run and made five of nine shoots during that stretch.

The Terps dominated the last 11 minutes of the first half, shooting 50 percent from the field and forcing five Wolverine turnovers amid a 23-8 run. They entered the break holding their largest lead of the game to that point, 33-22, despite Rice and Ja’Kobi Gillespie shooting a combined 2-for-13.

Miguel and Queen paced Maryland in the first half, scoring 13 and 10 points respectively, while the freshman big man neared a double-double with eight rebounds. Junior big man Danny Wolf led Michigan with 11 points at halftime.

The Wolverines, who lead the Big Ten in turnovers and rank bottom-20 nationally in that category, coughed the ball up seven times in an ugly offensive half. The 22 points were their lowest single-half total of the season.

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Michigan’s turnover problems only worsened to start the second half. Coach Dusty May watched in disbelief as his group committed four turnovers in five possessions before the first media timeout.

Then, the tide shifted. Maryland’s lead, which grew to as many as 11 eight minutes into the period, quickly evaporated. The Wolverines scored nine of 11 attempts — fueled by four from graduate center Vladislav Goldin — to make the score 54-52 with just over nine minutes remaining.

Goldin, after missing eight shots in a poor offensive first half, responded with 14 points in the second. He was the Wolverines’ main catalyst along with Wolf — they both dominated on the interior with senior big man Julian Reese in foul trouble.

Maryland also missed its last five shots and scored just three field goals in the final eight minutes. But none of that mattered, as the Terps led for all 20 minutes and left Ann Arbor with another resume-boosting win.