COLLEGE PARK, Md. — On his senior day, Terps point guard Anthony Cowan Jr. scored a team-high 20 points to propel No. 9 Maryland (24-7, 14-6 Big Ten) to a Big Ten regular season championship with a 83-70 win over No. 25 Michigan (19-12, 10-10).

“Arguably the best Big Ten ever, the deepest Big Ten ever. For our guys to do what they did, they’re special,” Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon said. “They’re special, they’re tough, and they all stepped up today. And Anthony came back to hang a banner and he gets to hang a banner. So just an all-around great day for our program.”

Cowan also dished out a team-high eight assists on Sunday afternoon. The Wooden Award finalist was also a perfect 6-for-6 from the free throw line and an efficient 7-for-11 from the field.

“It can’t get much better than that, to win it, especially on your senior night in front of friends and family. It’s huge,” Cowan said. “I just took what the defense gave me. I saw open shots and I was able to take them. And then I also saw my teammates a couple of times and was able to get them the ball in a position to score. That’s what I’m supposed to do, just be an overall point guard.”

In the regular season final, the Terps turned in one of their best performances of the season in front of a sellout crowd at Xfinity Center. The 56 percent Maryland shot from the field was a season-high for the Terps. Many of those buckets were converted on the break, as Maryland netted 20 fast-break to Michigan’s 12.

“I’m really happy for my team,” Turgeon said. “We played well today. I thought Michigan really played well. They made a lot of shots. They were really good today and they made us work because we played at a high level and the game maybe could have gotten away from them but they were terrific. We made shots today, which was big.

“Our defense in the first half was terrific. Our defense the last six minutes was terrific. Obviously, we were 16-1 at home. You don’t do that without great fan support. Our fans were great all year. The building was electric today. Our guys were feeding off of them. I just want to thank everybody involved.”

In total, Maryland finished with four double-digit scorers against the Wolverines, including sophomore forward Jalen “Stix” Smith, who hit a long-distance, buzzer-beater three to end the first half and finished with 18 points, 11 rebounds and four blocks for his 21st double-double of the season.

“Not many people get a buzzer-beater in their college career, and just knowing I got one is an amazing feeling.”

Smith was a big part of the Terps strong rebounding effort on Sunday. Maryland made it a point of emphasis to improve its rebounding this week after being outrebounded in several recent games and finished with a plus-seven rebound margin against Michigan.

“Pretty much just trying to take every rebound off of the backboard,” Smith said. “Everybody rebounded — the guards rebounded, the bigs rebounded. We were just making sure we didn’t give them many second-chance opportunities to score again and it just helped us out a lot in the end.”

Aaron Wiggins and Eric Ayala were the others to score in double figures for Maryland, netting 15 and 19 points, respectively. The two sophomore combined to shoot 6-for-8 from beyond the arc and really sparked the Terps’ offense in the second half.

“Those two haven’t shot the ball the way they’ve wanted to shoot it, but maybe today is the start of them doing what they need to do. And if that happens, March can be a lot of fun for us,” Turgeon said.

Cowan said after the game that he saw a different level of confidence in Ayala and Wiggins with a Big Ten title on the line on Sunday.

“They definitely came in with a lot of confidence and we needed every bit of it,” Cowan said. “Eric really stepped up and was really aggressive and was able to hit some big-time buckets for us. I knew it was in him. I knew it was coming. And I’m happy he was able to do it tonight.”

Wiggins credited Cowan with giving the Terps’ team as a whole a boost of confidence before tip-off.

“Individually, everybody was just locked in and full of energy,” Wiggins said. “Anthony said it before we went out to warm up. He said, ‘Make sure you break a sweat, make sure you find the energy that we need to get off to a good start in the game.’ And that’s what guys did. They bought in and they wanted to get this done.”

The Terps also played their best game defensively in the past two weeks. While Michigan did hit some tough shots throughout the game and finished 48 percent from the field as a team, including 13 points from Zavier Simpson, 15 from Franz Wagner, and a career-high 20 from David DeJulius, Maryland got stops when it mattered and held the Wolverines’ leading scorer Isaiah Livers to just six points on 2-for-8 shooting.

After the game, Turgeon credited some extra time to rest and practice leading up to the game as well as the defensive drills performed by his team in practice for the Terps being physically and mentally fresh enough for a strong effort on defense.

“I think we were fresh physically, I think we were fresh mentally. It was still weighing on us but we were a lot fresher mentally today than we’ve been in a long time,” Turgeon said. “So it was those two things and then we got after it in practice. We did some defensive drills that really made us play hard and it showed. We were great.”

With a share of the Big Ten regular season title now clinched, Maryland is locked into either a two or three seed in the Big Ten Tournament later this week. The outcome of the Michigan State and Ohio State game on Sunday will determine their seeding.

It was a joyous scene of cutting down nets at Xfinity Center after a 13-point win over the Wolverines, but the Terps know the season as a whole and achieving their ultimate goal is far from over.

“We know there’s more work to do,” Cowan said. “So we can celebrate this for the rest of the day but we have to get back to work tomorrow.”

There’s work left to be done, but Maryland now believes it’s ending the regular season with the confidence to get it done.

“Going into the Big Ten Tournament coming off of a championship win, a big win, especially after losing a couple of games, it’s big for us,” Wiggins said. “It gets us back in our groove. We realized what we were doing wrong and we fixed those things. So if we just stick to our team’s game plan, guard the ball, and execute on offense, we can do a lot more.”