Entering Saturday night’s game at Xfinity Center against then No. 24, now No. 16 Michigan State (20-9, 12-6 Big Ten), No. 9 Maryland (23-6, 13-5) had a simple path to a Big Ten regular-season title: beat the Spartans and clinch at least a share of being league champions.

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If the Terps had pulled off that victory in front of a sold out home crowd, they would have had to win just one of their remaining two regular-season games to stake their claim as outright conference champions for the first time since joining the Big Ten.

But things didn’t go as planned for Mark Turgeon’s team, as Michigan State came into College Park and never let the Terps even sniff a lead throughout the game, which ended with the Spartans on top 78-66.

The Terps’ loss pulled Michigan State within one game in the conference standings and opened up a number of scenarios for who will be crowned regular-season champion when it’s all said and done.

Currently, six Big Ten teams technically have a shot at a league title: Maryland, Illinois, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Penn State, and Iowa.

At 11-7 in the conference, Penn State and Iowa need a lot of help and are longshots to be league champions. But Wisconsin, Michigan State, and Illinois all sit at 12-6 in Big Ten play, just a game behind the 13-5 Terps. The Badgers and Spartans, in particular, are playing perhaps their best ball of the season at the moment.

Some upcoming matchups will be deciding factors in this six-team race. Penn State, which has lost three of its last four games, will host Michigan State on Tuesday night — the same night Maryland plays at Rutgers. After that game between the Spartans and Nittany Lions, either Penn State will be eliminated from the race with a loss or help Maryland’s chances by defeating Michigan State. In a similar situation, Illinois will host Iowa in its regular season finale on March 8.

So what are the remaining scenarios for the Terps?

If Maryland wins both of its remaining two games in the regular season (at Rutgers and home against Michigan), the Terps will finish with a 15-5 conference record and win the league title outright.

If Maryland goes 1-1 the rest of the way, the Terps can do no worse than tie for the regular season championship. If Maryland splits its last two games, Michigan State, Illinois, and Wisconsin would tie for the regular season title if they go 2-0 the rest of the way. The Spartans and Fighting Illini have tough tasks ahead of them — Michigan State goes to Penn State and then plays Ohio State at home, and Illinois travels to Ohio State and finishes the season at home against Iowa. But the Badgers, a team that has won six straight games, finish their season with a much more winnable slate. Wisconsin gets the conference’s 13th-place team, Northwestern, at home on Wednesday and finishes its season on the road at Indiana — a tough place to play but a team that has lost two in a row and seven of its last 10.

In a worst case scenario where Maryland finishes the regular season 0-2, Wisconsin, Michigan State, or Illinois would all tie the Terps for the league title by going 1-1 and any of them could pass Maryland by finishing 2-0. If Penn State or Iowa finish 2-0 and the teams ahead of them slip up, they’ll be in line for a share of the conference championship.

How this last week of the regular season shakes out will also determine seeding in the Big Ten Tournament. There are many different ways this could shake out as it appears we could end up with several teams with the same conference record and then the tiebreaker would be won by whichever team has the better record against the next highest team in the standings. No sense in bogging down your mind with all of those different possible outcomes at this point.

But at the end of the day, Maryland controls its own destiny with two games to go and if the Terps can just win their last two games, the regular-season championship will be theirs. Dropping one of these games would result in a tie, but a tie is still a championship because the Big Ten does not use tie breakers to differentiate a regular-season league title. Lose both, and we’re all here shaking our heads, wondering how things changed so quickly over the course of two weeks.

So now onto Rutgers and Michigan…

Maryland beat Rutgers in College Park a month ago. It wasn’t pretty, but the Terps edged out a 56-51 defensive win. Jalen “Stix” Smith was the MVP of that game for Maryland, recording a 14-point, 15-rebound double-double to go along with a career-high six blocks. Anthony Cowan Jr. also helped lead his team to victory by getting downhill and going 8-for-9 from the free throw line on his way to a team-high 17 points.

But the Terps had a hard time scoring overall against the nation’s No. 11 defense in adjusted efficiency according to KenPom, and Scarlet Knights’ senior wing Akwasi Yeboah caused problems for Maryland with his versatility and outside shot. Maryland did an excellent job of containing Rutgers’ backcourt in the first meeting, but junior point guard Geo Baker played just 19 minutes as he continued to make his way back from a midseason injury. Baker has been playing much better of late and has scored double-digit points in five of his last six games while averaging 3.5 assists per game in that span.

After traveling to The RAC on Tuesday, the Terps will host Michigan on Sunday in the regular-season finale. It will be the first time Maryland will have seen the Wolverines this year and Juwan Howard’s team has proven it can beat anyone when it plays its best or have a letdown at any given moment.

Pat Donohue
Pat Donohue

Terps Analyst

Pat has been covering sports in the DMV area since 2012. He is a former Washington Redskins beat reporter for PressBoxDC.com and has been covering University of Maryland football and basketball recruiting and daily beats for Rivals.com’s Terrapin Sports Report since 2013. Pat graduated from College Park with his master’s degree in journalism and has received bylines in publications such as USA TODAY Sports, The Philadelphia Inquirer, SB Nation, and Yahoo! Sports. A Philadelphia native, Pat enjoys fishing, golfing, and playing fantasy sports when he’s not covering or watching a game.

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