After a 1-3 start to league play, Maryland (13-8, 5-5) enters Saturday's game at Michigan State (13-8, 5-5) having won four of their last six, including road wins at Illinois and Iowa.

Among the two losses during the Terps' most recent six-game stretch was a two-point defeat at the hand of the Spartans in College Park.

Maryland held Michigan State to just 17 second-half points in their last meeting, taking a late lead before the Spartans pulled out the victory in the final minutes.

The Terps struggled defensively in the opening half in the first meeting between the two teams, allowing the Spartans to score 44 points before halftime.

Getting back defensively in transition was an issue early on in the first meeting, but head coach Kevin Willard believes they have learned from those first half struggles heading into Saturday's game.

"I think the biggest thing facing them for the first time, which this group did, is understanding their speed and how fast they get the basketball out, which is really hard to practice," Willard said on Wednesday. "They were able much better to get back and get set in the second half against them. They are even faster at home and that is going to be our biggest challenge on Saturday."

With the Terps' offensive struggles this season, defense has been the team's calling card. Maryland enters Saturday's game in East Lansing ranked 6th nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency according to KenPom.

"I think with some of the pieces we added, we got much tougher than we did last year," said Willard. "We lost some shooting, we lost some skills at certain positions, but we added some toughness. And I think it just took this team a while to kinda figure out what's the one thing they are going to be able to rely on game in and game out. And I think for the most part, I have a simple philosophy that if you play hard and do what I want, I'll let you shoot any shot you want to do, and they kinda like that."

Another reason for the Terps' recent improvements has been the improved play on both ends of the floor from Donta Scott as he's made the adjustment from power forward to small forward.

"He had a major change to go from a power forward to a small forward. It doesn't seem like much, but everything that he was used to last year from a defensive standpoint, from an offensive standpoint, changed," said Willard. "And because of our injuries early on to Cal [Swanton-Rodgers], to Jordan [Geronimo] and of course to Chance [Stephens], we were not able to really smoothly transition him and give him enough reps for him to be comfortable early in the season. And I think what you saw early in the season was a lot of confusion of what he was trying to figure out from moving from four years of power forward-and I think even his sophomore year he played some center-to now moving into a strictly perimeter player. And that was a lot for a fifth-year guy to have to try to transition. And I think what you are seeing now is Donta is very comfortable, he's playing at a high level both offensively and defensively. And because he's much more comfortable in what he's doing, he's playing much better."

The Terps and Spartans are set to tipoff in East Lansing at 5:30 p.m. ET with the game set to be broadcast FOX.

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