COLLEGE PARK, Md. — After another slow start, No. 7 Maryland (3-0) ended the first half against Oakland (3-2) Nov. 16 on an 11-0 run, and the Terps never looked back from there, running away with an 80-50 victory in College Park.

“Really proud of our group,” Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon said. “We played a good team. They wanted to play a slow game. We figured out how to get the game going a little bit faster. Another slow start for us. Am I concerned? Yes and no. Sometimes when you have the No. 7 in front of your name and you haven’t quite earned it, you think you’re supposed to beat everyone by 25 points in each half, and that’s not the case in college basketball. So we relaxed a little bit right before half, talked about that at about the eight-minute mark in the first half, and then in the second half we really played well.”

A team-high 14 points were scored by Maryland junior Darryl Morsell, who opened up the second half by scoring 12 of the Terps’ first 21 points and also finished with seven rebounds, two steals, and a block.

“Darryl got two layups to start the second half and that kind of got him going then he made the three,” Turgeon said. “The one thing that we don’t talk about is how much time our guys spend in the gym. Darryl is in the gym every night because he wants to be a guy that you have to guard. So it’s good for a guy like that who puts so much time in to make shots, and defensively he’s always good for us.”

Morsell benefited by a new second-half game plan by Maryland that allowed the Terps to speed up the pace of the game by playing a trap-zone defense and getting out and running on the Golden Grizzlies. The increased pace helped Maryland score 30 fast-break points.

“I’m an athlete, I like to run. I like to get up and down,” Morsell said. “I feel like I’m in good shape so I kind of told the guys at halftime that we have a lot of athletes on this team so let’s make this a track meet. We’re deep too, so if you get tired we can sub. So that’s kind of what we tried to do in the second half.”

Terps senior point guard Anthony Cowan Jr. dished out a season-high seven assists to add to his 11 points and six rebounds, while sophomore wing Aaron Wiggins was Maryland’s third double-digit scorer on the day with 10 points of his own. Wiggins also swiped three steals for the third straight game.

“It pays off, the work that I put in,” Wiggins said. “I’ve been working on my quickness on defense and being able to slide my feet. So I mean, seeing it kind of pay off, it’s just one thing I have to continue to work on. I can’t just be satisfied with what it is. I have to continue to work, but I can definitely see improvement.”

As a team, Maryland shot an efficient 53 percent from the field and maximized its success with a plus-10 rebounding margin. The Terps’ defense was also able to force 19 turnovers, which were converted into 25 points.

“It just shows how talented we are,” Wiggins said. “We’ve got a big group with a lot of talented guys. I think every game we’ve had three or four guys scoring in double digits, guys who are having really good nights when other guys aren’t having the best ones. It just shows how tough of a team we can be, how good of a team we can be because at any point somebody can get going.”

Turgeon went with the same starting lineup — Cowan, Wiggins, Morsell, Jalen “Stix” Smith, and Makhi Mitchell — for the second straight game, but the Terps also received a heavy lift from their bench on Saturday. Maryland’s bench outscored Oakland’s 34-16, and the Terps ended the game with mostly walk-on players on the court.

Junior walk-on guard Reese Mona scored a career-high five points off the bench for Maryland, and senior walk-on Will Clark scored the first bucket of his collegiate career for the Terps’ final points of the game.

“It was phenomenal,” Morsell said. “It was good. Those guys bring it every day in practice, so I enjoyed it.”

Making his second career start, Mitchell found it hard to stay out of foul trouble once again, picking up three fouls and three points in six minutes of playing time.

“I know [Mitchell] wants to play,” Turgeon said. “I know he doesn’t want to foul. I thought he played a little bit smarter in the second half.”

Besides letting up a game-high 18 points to Oakland senior Xavier Hills-Mais, Maryland’s defense stifled the Golden Grizzlies, especially in the second half where the visiting team went on multiple four-minute scoring droughts. Oakland finished shooting just 37 percent from the field and 29 percent from three on Saturday.

“Just guarding and keeping the ball in front of us,” Morsell said. “The team, as well as coach Turgeon, feels the defense is one of our strong points. The guards are focused on keeping the ball in front of them and bigs are just focused on protecting the rim and fronting the post and stuff like that.”

The Terps have shown the ability to play multiple defenses and switch from man to zone in the middle of the game so far this season. Using the press to speed up the game on Saturday proved to be what Turgeon’s team needed for its superior skill and athleticism to prevail.

“We put the press in this week and they hadn’t seen it,” Turgeon said. “It worked for us, guys were good in it, got the game going a little bit better. We have multiple defenses that really help us and kind of change the tempo of the game.”