COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- After honoring its two seniors Andrew Terrell and Ivan Bender for Senior Night and a surprise marriage proposal from Bender to his longtime girlfriend that fired up his teammates and the Xfinity Center crowd before the game, No. 24 Maryland (22-9, 13-7 Big Ten) closed out the regular season March 8 with a 69-60 victory over visiting Minnesota (19-12, 9-11) to complete the series sweep against the Golden Gophers this year.

“What a great night,” Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon said. “From Ivan [Bender] surprising his teammates and asking his girlfriend to marry him and her saying yes, which I was really worried about (laughs). He told me about it this week that we were going to do it. He made me the ring bearer. That was really cool. And being able to get Andrew [Terrell] in the game, which was great. Senior night is hard to script but that was terrific. The building was great again tonight. The fans were terrific. I’m not sure we had a game after Christmas where it wasn’t snowing or raining, and it’s not easy to get to a game at Maryland as it is with traffic and parking and everything that comes with it. So I just want to thank the fans. We had a terrific home season. But Tonight we were just really good. Just a great regular season for us.”

The Terps took care of business Friday night. So much so that chants of “We want Andrew” rained down from the fans at Xfinity Center about midway through the second half with Maryland leading by 22 points. Although the Golden Gophers closed the gap late in the game, Maryland’s win was never in jeopardy and Terrell, along with Bender, got to finish his last home game on the floor.

“We heard a lot of get Andrew in the game chants, so we wanted to do whatever we could to make that happen,” Terps junior point guard Anthony Cowan Jr. said.

Behind the fourth double-double of the season by freshman forward Jalen “Stix” Smith and perhaps the most efficient game of the year by Cowan, Maryland took control of the game early and never let up.

Cowan and Smith started the game on fire, scoring 13 of Maryland’s first 15 points.

Smith finished the game with 19 points, 11 rebounds, three blocks and two steals in what turned out to be his most dominant performance in a Big Ten game this year.

“He’s got to be aggressive,” Turgeon said. “He’s got to play with toughness, which he did tonight. He’s got to act like he’s one of the best players on the floor, which he did tonight. It’s up to him. It’s all there. We need him. He knows it. It hasn’t always gone the way he has wanted this year, but he has handled it with class. But we need him. He’s doing extra workouts. He’s doing extra things, extra weight workouts. He’s doing a lot of things to help get him ready, so I’m happy for him to have a night like this.”

Smith, who hit a career-high three shots from deep Friday night, said after the game that the messages he received throughout the week from his coaches and teammates resonated with him, but he received some extra motivation from Bender’s proposal during the Senior Night ceremony.

“I always have that frame of mind going into a game that I’m going to shoot my shot if I have it open and if it falls it falls and if it doesn’t just get back on defense, but today it was falling and every time I got it Coach Turgeon kept telling me to shoot it, so I did,” Smith said. “I was already fired up because it was Senior Night, it was our last game of the regular season, but I think it was Ivan’s proposal that kind of fired me up more because I was kind of already hyped from it so I was like I might as well carry the energy over.”

Cowan posted a team-high 21 points (8-for-17 from the field and 3-for-6 from three) and five assists while turning the ball over just twice. He also locked in on defense and came away with two steals and a block.

“My teammates found me,” Cowan said. “Bruno [Fernando] had a really good pass backdoor and then Darryl [Morsell] found me in the corner. I think that really got me going throughout the rest of the game.”

After a slow start individually that included some early foul trouble and shooting 1-for-5 from the field in the first half, Terps sophomore center Bruno Fernando got himself going after halftime and finished with his 20th double-double of the season, posting 11 points and 11 rebounds in a tough matchup with Minnesota center Jordan Murphy, who finished with 14 points and 10 rebounds of his own.

“I just try to stay in the game as much as I can,” Fernando said. “It’s hard at times. Sometimes I try to figure out teams, how they guarded me in the first half--if they’re going double team or digging. Minnesota wasn’t really double teaming me and whenever I took the dribble they would come and dig so it kind of took me a little while to get adjusted to however they were playing me and I just made plays from there.”

The Terps won the turnover battle in a Big Ten game for the first time this season. Not only was their offense efficient, but their defense made life tough on Minnesota, which had more turnovers (eight) than field goals (seven) in the first half. In turn, Maryland scored 18 points off of the Golden Gophers’ 13 turnovers on Friday night.

“Our turnovers have come way down, which has been great the last two games,” Turgeon said. “We’ve really worked hard on the turnover situation. Guys are just making better decisions. They’re getting in the paint and not rushing things. And we’re getting better and it’s encouraging. And I still think our best basketball is ahead of us. I really do. And it’s exciting because our league is so good and the schedule that we played has made us better, it has made us tougher.”

Maryland will now await its seeding fate in the Big Ten Tournament as the rest of the conference finishes out its regular season schedules. It will be either a four or five seed for the Terps depending on what several other teams do this weekend, but they’re feeling encouraged either way heading into the postseason after a win like they had Friday night.

“It’s encouraging to win but at the same time we have to move on from it,” Fernando said. “That was the end of the regular season and now we have to focus on the tournament. The tournament is different. Every team comes in with a chip on its shoulders so we have to be ready to execute and keep playing the way we’re playing and try to get wins.”