COLLEGE PARK, Md. — On a night where early-arriving students received a giveaway in his honor, sophomore forward Jalen “Stix” Smith saved the game for No. 9 Maryland (20-4, 10-3 Big Ten) Feb. 11 as the Terps escaped with a 72-70 win over Nebraska (7-17, 2-11) at Xfinity Center to extend their winning streak to seven games and remain unbeaten at home this season.

“Bottom line, you play these games to win them and we won, so we’re happy with that,” Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon said. ”We didn’t play our best game; started from the beginning. We didn’t run back on defense all night. We’re a good defensive team and we weren’t tonight. So we didn’t respect our opponent enough. I’ll take the blame for that. But we also have high standards for ourselves.”

After blowing numerous double-digit leads, including one with under five minutes left in the game, Maryland needed a stop in the final seconds, up just one with the ball in Nebraska’s hands.

Cornhuskers’ leading scorer on the season Cam Mack, who had hit two free throws with 12 seconds left to make it a one-point game despite being a 58.4 percent shooter from the line on the season, drove to the hoop but was met by Smith, who picked up his first block of the game at the perfect time and secured the rebound after with just 0.7 seconds remaining.

“Stix made a big-time block,” Turgeon said. “When [Mack] was going down the floor, I saw Stix by the rim and I felt pretty good. I was just hoping we’d come out with the ball.”

Smith finished with a team-high 16 points and 13 rebounds to claim his 15th double-double of the season and seventh straight.

“[Smith] does what it takes to win, and defensively, he’s so good defensively,” Turgeon said. “I’m just happy for him. He’s playing well. Tonight he was frustrated. They were switching ball screens and they were basically tripling him on the post. But Stix has been terrific. I knew he was going to block that shot.”

Terps’ sophomore guard Eric Ayala, who broke out of his scoring slump last game with 12 points against Illinois, tied Smith for the team lead with a season-high 16 points against the Cornhuskers on Tuesday night. Ayala hit four threes to get there and the outing marked his first back-to-back double-digit scoring effort since games against Temple and Harvard in the Orlando Invitational back on Nov. 28-29. Ayala also led the Terps with five assists.

“Just staying confident and worrying about the next shot, telling myself the next one will go in,” Ayala said. “And they were falling for me tonight.”

Despite the stellar night, Ayala did miss the front end of a one-and-one with 22 seconds left in the game. Hitting both shots would have put Maryland up by two possessions.

Senior point guard Anthony Cowan Jr. didn’t have the same luck from three, going 0-for-4 from beyond the arc on Tuesday night. but he scored the majority of his 13 points from the line, hitting 9-for-12. All nine makes from the charity stripe came in the first half and his only free throw attempt after halftime was a miss on the front end of a one-and-one with the game on the line.

“This one almost slipped away because they weren’t expecting the missed free throws but they got it done when they had to,” Turgeon said. “So we’ll regroup. We’ll take tomorrow off. I’ll do a better job and we’ll get after it on Thursday. We’ll be back to who we are.

Cowan took on more of a distributor role against the Cornhuskers, dishing out a season-high 10 assists. The Terps’ also received scoring contributions from freshman forward Donta Scott, who finished with 10 points, and junior guard Darryl Morsell, who had nine, including a big three-pointer with just over a minute to go. Scott also added 10 rebounds to his stat line for the first double-double of his college career.

“Donta is relentless,” Smith said. “He does everything you need him to do. He’s just trying to help the team in any way possible. He just continues to play hard for us.”

With Smith, Cowan, and Scott all recording double-doubles Tuesday night, it marks the first time three Maryland players finished with double-doubles on the same night since 2001.

Despite strong scoring efforts from all its starters, Maryland struggled to put Nebraska away on Tuesday night. Much of that had to do with poor second half defense and sloppiness with the ball on offense.

The Terps committed 17 turnovers with the last coming on an inbound pass that ended up putting the Cornhuskers at the line down four with just 35.6 seconds left in the game.

“We had a bad turnover,” Turgeon said. “We weren’t supposed to make the pass to Wiggins. Wiggins was supposed to cut in our press offense. And then we missed two front ends of one-and-ones. And then we had some soft fouls out there too. So we’ll learn from it. Our guys have been great all year. They battle.”

Maryland also stopped playing sound defense and ripping down boards after halftime. Nebraska shot just 27 percent in the first half but upped that number to 41 percent by the end of the game. The Terps’ ended the first half with a plus-seven rebound margin but finished just plus-one.

“We got really lackadaisical in the second half, especially me,” Smith said. “I think I only got like two rebounds in the second half. But it’s just something we have to fix in the film, making sure we figure out what we did wrong and make sure we don’t do it again.”

Most of the Cornhuskers’ damage was done by their leading scorer on the night, Haanif Cheatham, who finished with a game-high 20 points while shooting 7-for-11 from the field. Nebraska also received a heavy lift offensively from sophomore wing Thorir Thorbjarnarson, who had 15 points and a team-high seven rebounds. Senior forward Matej Kavas also scored 11 points off the bench for the Cornhuskers.

“We just were out of it. I can’t explain it, and they’re really hard to guard,” Turgeon said. “They got downhill on us. We couldn’t figure out ball screens. We got beat off the dribble, closeouts weren’t great, transition wasn’t great, rebounding wasn’t great. So it was just one of those deals. You just kept thinking that we were going to get it going defensively because that’s what we do, but we never did.”

Maryland is now 14-0 at home this season and 14-0 when leading at halftime. But the true milestone of the game was Turgeon earning his 200th victory as the Terps’ head coach. He is the second-fastest Maryland coach to reach that feat all-time behind only the legendary Lefty Driesell.

“That’s huge,” Cowan said. “He has done so many great things around here. That’s huge for him. I’m really happy for him.”