For the second straight game, No. 17 Maryland (16-4, 6-3, Big Ten) won on the road in the Big Ten and sophomore forward Jalen ‘Stix’ Smith set a career-high in scoring as the Terps got their first win at Assembly Hall in the Mark Turgeon era Jan. 26 with a 77-76 victory over Indiana (15-5, 5-4).

Smith netted 29 points and ripped down 11 rebounds for his 11th double-double of the season for the Terps. He began the game by scoring 11 of Maryland’s first 22 points.

“He’s just more confident,” Turgeon said of Smith after the game. “We have a lot of guys playing with more confidence, but Stix is really taking it to another level.”

But Smith wasn’t the only Terp to get off to a strong start in Bloomington. Maryland opened the game by hitting its first four shots from three and finished the first half 9-for-17 from beyond the arc. The 45 points the Terps scored before halftime were the most by Maryland in the first half of a Big Ten game this season. The nine threes were the most the Terps have had in the first half so far this year.

“My kids were phenomenal today,” Turgeon said. “Indiana was really good, I thought. We made shots early. They made shots. We made a bunch of them.”

Much of Maryland’s early success against the Hoosiers was due to ball movement. The Terps dished out 11 assists on their first 14 buckets — six of those dimes coming from sophomore guard Eric Ayala.

Despite leading by as much as 14 in the first half, Maryland let Indiana back in the game after halftime. The Hoosiers started the second half on a 7-0 run and were leading by one by the 14:38 mark. After a stellar first half shooting, the Terps shot 3-for-12 from three for the rest of the game.

“They’re really hard to guard,” Turgeon said. “Especially when they can throw it in and throw it out and they’re making threes, they’re almost impossible to guard...They hit every shot and I’m sitting there thinking, ‘Damn, here we go again.’ And it was our day.”

Indiana maintained that lead until a late-game sequence that saw sophomore wing Aaron Wiggins hit a three with 55 seconds left on the clock followed up by the go-ahead bucket by Smith on the Terps’ next possession with 14.5 seconds left in the game.

The game was finalized with Indiana bringing the ball up court for one last possession. The Hoosiers got a good look for their leading score, Trayce Jackson-Davis, who had his shot just a few feet from the basket rim out.

“The guys just stayed resilient,” Turgeon said. “We got three stops in a row at the end. We got the steal in the press. Wiggins made an impossible shot and then we got another stop and Anthony [Cowan] made a great play to Stix and he got a layup, which is what you want in those situations. And then they missed a two-footer. So in the end, it was our day, but I thought our defense was really good that last 11 seconds, too.”

The Terps will return home for their next game as they host Iowa Jan. 30. Maryland is currently riding a three-game winning streak and has won six of its last eight.