COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Terps head coach Mark Turgeon’s young but talented team will face its toughest road test so far this season Dec. 6 when No. 23 Maryland (7-1, 1-0 Big Ten) heads to West Lafayette, Ind., to take on Purdue (5-3, 0-1).

Maryland moved up one spot in the AP Poll this week after dropping its first game of the season to No. 4 Virginia last week, only to follow it up with a seven-point win over Penn State to open up conference play on Saturday.

The Boilermakers will likely be playing with a little bit of desperation after falling out of the polls following losses last week to No. 11 Florida State and No. 5 Michigan. Purdue has now lost three of its last four, including a six-point loss to No. 15 Virginia Tech in mid-November.

Last season, the Terps lost both of their meetings to the Boilermakers by a combined 13 points. But with a more reliable frontcourt and stout defense this year, Turgeon believes his team is better-suited to matchup on the road with some of the tougher teams in the Big Ten like Purdue.

“I think we have a better team this year than we had last year,” Turgeon said. “We’ll see as the season goes on if we can stay healthy, but I think this team is going to continue to grow. We are playing five young guys in our top eight, so we’ll see how it goes Thursday night.

“I’d like to think our defense and rebounding is better than it was last year. I think that helps you. And we do have an inside presence this year with Stix (Jalen Smith) and Bruno [Fernando]. I think that helps you. And we’ve shown the ability to get to the foul line. We haven’t shot free throws great, but we’ve shown the ability to get there and I think that helps you too. So there are a lot of things that we’re doing well that are conducive to winning on the road. There are things that we’re not doing well that aren’t conducive. So I think there are a lot of things that are pointing in the right direction. But we’ll see when we get out there and how we react to it because it’s a whole other animal for us to get used to.”

Thursday night’s conference matchup will be the first truly hostile environment the Terps’ freshmen have faced in college, although, Maryland’s young contributors did already get a taste of a big-time sellout crowd at home versus Virginia last week.

The experience gained in the game against the Cavaliers on top of elder statesmen like sophomore Darryl Morsell and junior Anthony Cowan Jr. giving the rookies an idea of what they will face are factors that could go a long way in helping the Terps freshmen adapt on the road.

“Darryl [Morsell] and Anthony [Cowan] talked to me a lot about the road games, talking about how the atmosphere of the different arenas like Indiana and Purdue and how the fans are really into it and sometimes they try to get into your head and you just have to try and block it out,” Terps freshman forward Jalen “Stix” Smith said.

Turgeon isn’t overly concerned about how his younger players will react on the road and believes the growth he has seen out of them so far is a good sign of things to come.

“I think you can talk about it all you want but my young guys were nervous at home versus Virginia,” Turgeon said. “That was a big game at home and everybody was rooting for them. I’d like to think hopefully our veterans can help us out in [the Purdue] game and guys will get more comfortable as it goes on and we can hang around a little bit. But sometimes the young guys are also naive and they can just go out and play, so hopefully they’ll do that. But they continue to get better and they like big moments. I expect them to play well and I think as the year goes on we’ll continue to get better and better.”

Turgeon particularly likes what he saw out of Smith in the Terps’ last outing. The 6-foot-10 Baltimore native has shown early in his college career that he can score from virtually anywhere on the court, but in Maryland’s win over Penn State Smith had perhaps his best defensive performance so far a Terp, holding Nittany Lions star forward Lamar Stevens to 19 points on 24 shots.

And while Smith’s last performance on the defensive end was encouraging, Turgeon knows Purdue presents a different challenge for the stretch-four who is still coming into his own as a perimeter defender. But he’s also aware that he’s going to need Smith to be the versatile defender he has the potential to be in order for Maryland to be able to stop the Boilermakers’ scoring while simultaneously playing its best offensive lineup that includes Smith and sophomore center Bruno Fernando on the floor together.

“Now we’re playing Purdue,” Turgeon said. “It’s a different deal. [Smith] is going to be chasing a shooter around. Lamar [Stevens] is a great player but three-point shooting isn’t his specialty, even though he made a big one against us in the game. So it’s a little bit different, so we’ll see. Can he fight through screens and get there and be out there on shooters? That’s asking a lot out of him but for us to get where we need to be he has to do that because I’d like to stay with a big lineup as much as I can because offensively we’re pretty guard. We’re hard to guard in that lineup.”

When scouting Purdue, what jumps off the page first and foremost is the Boilermakers’ propensity for shooting and making threes. Matt Painter’s squad scores nearly half its points from beyond the arc as it shoots nearly 39 percent from downtown collectively. The shooting clinic that Purdue typically puts on has helped the Boilermakers currently have the eighth most efficient offense in the nation according to KenPom.“They’re just so hard to guard,” Turgeon said. “They have a transfer [from Dartmouth] (Evan Boudreaux) and they’re playing him at the five and he’s like a guard out there at 6-foot-7. So it makes them really hard to guard. But really it comes down to matchups when they’re changing their lineups or playing nine or 10 guys, being alert to that and how we’re going to guard them. But in the end it’s about trying to play the way we’re comfortable playing and the way we think we can be successful in this game. That’s what it comes down to.”

Purdue’s big with range, Evan Boudreaux, has certainly opened up the floor for the Boilermakers this season, but anyone who has seen Painter’s team play in recent years knows that it lives and dies by the play of its point guard and National Player of the Year candidate Carsen Edwards, who had 35 points across two games against the Terps last season.

“I’m not sure there’s really any way to guard Carsen Edwards because he’s so fast,” Turgeon said. “He can split ball screens. They do a lot of ball screen handoffs. They bring him off triples; they bring him off doubles. He’s got the ultimate green light and he can shoot from deep range. So he’s a special player. Hopefully we can do a job like we did on [Lamar] Stevens like we did last weekend where he scored 19 points on 24 shots. Hopefully if Carsen gets 22 points he does it on a lot of shots. That’s going to be the key.”

As he has been in the past, Cowan will be primarily tasked with the assignment of guarding Edwards on Thursday night. Typically asked to defend the opposing team’s best guard, Cowan has seemingly turned some of his matchups this season into one-on-one affairs that can affect him on the offensive end for better or worse.

Turgeon isn’t concerned about how ready Cowan will be for the battle between the two floor generals on Thursday. However, he would like to see Cowan take care of the ball more than he has in recent games.

“I know [Cowan] respects Carsen [Edwards]. We all do. It’s a little bit of a different animal. I think Carsen is getting more shots up than Anthony and Anthony is just trying to do things to help us win, so it’s two different teams. But I don’t think Anthony will get caught up in that. Anthony is going to do what he has to do and hopefully he’s going to value the ball a little more on Thursday night.”

Cowan has turned the ball over 14 times in the last three games combined, but he’s not the only Terp having issues protecting the ball. As a team, Maryland ranks 294th nationally in turnover percentage on offense according to KenPom, which is something the Terps know the must correct before Thursday night.

“It’s a huge concern,” Turgeon said of his team’s turnover woes. “It’s four straight games and now we’re heading on the road to a tough environment and we can’t have 17-18 turnovers and expect to win. We continue to talk about it. We continue to work on things. We had a really good practice [Monday] and hopefully we got everybody on the same page and thinking a little bit clearly. I do think we’ve played two pretty good defensive teams the last two games. That had a little bit to do with it, but our decision making--you just have to make easy plays sometimes and not try to hit the home run. It’s a major concern but it’s early. We have a young team. I’d like to think we’re just going to get better with that as the season goes on.”

Tip-off in West Lafayette between Maryland and Purdue is set for 7 p.m. EST. The game will be broadcast on the Big Ten Network.