Isaiah Watts’ first two months with Maryland men’s basketball didn’t go as planned.

The Washington State transfer was touted as one of coach Buzz Williams’ biggest shooting assets. But the 6-foot-3 junior consistently saw shots clank off the rim in his first 11 games.

He shot 32.7 percent from the field and 27 percent on 3-pointers entering Sunday’s clash against Old Dominion. Both were career-lows by more than six percent.

Williams, searching for answers amid a .500 start, gave Watts his first start of the season. Early minutes translated into consistent results. The junior guard scored all 17 of his points before halftime, providing the Terps a lead they never relinquished in a 73-58 win over the Monarchs.

“We were getting really good one-pass threes, extra-pass threes, touching the paint, kick-out threes,” Watts said, “In the second half, it wasn’t as much of that. … But sometimes, they just don’t fall the way you want them to. Trust me, I know.”

Williams’ seventh starting group this year looked like the best one he’s played in the first half.

Maryland (7-6) scored the first 17 points of the contest — its best stretch to open a game since January 2003. Williams trotted out Watts alongside redshirt freshman guard Andre Mills, freshman guard Darius Adams, senior forward Solomon Washington and senior forward Elijah Saunders.

Williams has often opted for early substitutions this season — a strategy that didn’t answer inconsistent offense.

But Sunday, he kept his starters in for more than six minutes to begin the contest. The group, despite lacking a true point guard, outscored Old Dominion (4-10), 27-5, in the opening period.

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“I’m not saying that group is the answer, but that group did accumulate more turkeys and more assists with less turnovers than any other group that we have played,” Williams said. “So that’s a good start.”

The lineup’s lead ballhandlers, Mills and Adams, are the two best drivers on the team. They also offer a physical presence at the top of Maryland’s press defense, and Watts adds an element of shooting the team has lacked.

The guard trio combined for 39 of the Terps’ 45 first-half points. Watts accounted for 37 percent of Maryland’s offense in the opening period, while Mills and Adams each added 11 points on three made triples. But Watts and Mills went scoreless in a cold second half, while Adams finished with 18 points on 6-for-16 shooting.

Forced to adapt without injured forward Pharrel Payne, the Terps ran a “5-out” offense while placing a heavy emphasis on ball movement and perimeter spacing.

Two staples of a Williams-led group typically involve dominating at the free throw line and on the offensive glass. But missing Payne’s 6-foot-9 frame, Maryland shot less free throws and grabbed less offensive rebounds than Old Dominion, who KenPom ranked in the nation’s bottom-150 of both metrics entering Sunday.

Instead, the Terps built an advantage from beyond the arc, knocking down 11 3-pointers to Old Dominion’s three. They also recorded 12 first-half assists and tied their season-low of eight turnovers, helping their Big Ten-low 0.79 assist-to-turnover ratio.

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The early cushion was needed.

Maryland shot 10-for-19 on first-half threes before converting just 1-for-9 in the second frame. The Terps scored just 28 points after the break, shot 34.5 percent and were outscored by 12.

Sunday marked Maryland’s final “buy game” — or matchup against a non-power conference opponent — before resuming Big Ten play. The 15-point victory continued a trend of Williams’ group beating up against lower-level opponents.

The Terps outscored their previous four mid-major opponents by a combined 73 points. The struggles for Maryland have come against more stout programs — its posted a -120 point differential against its first six high-major opponents, plus No. 7 Gonzaga.

The Terps have many more future opponents like those than like Old Dominion. Now the question is: Will any of Sunday’s positive results translate?

“It’s gonna be different in Big Ten play,” Adams said. “We’re not happy about how this went, but we’re definitely going to learn from it.”