Maryland men’s basketball’s season has been all but over for several months. After an embarrassing 30-point blowout loss to Wisconsin, the team looked fully checked out and ready for the season to conclude. 

But the Terps showed fight against No. 11 Illinois on Sunday in their regular-season finale. They never trailed by double figures, and the Xfinity Center crowd was fully immersed in the action. 

Illinois looked to be running away with it, but a late push by Maryland brought the game within two with under a minute to play. 

An overturned out-of-bounds call awarded possession back to the Illini, never giving Maryland a chance to reclaim the lead, eventually falling 78-72 to Illinois. 

“I think that our fight, our execution to the game plan, is probably the best we’ve had all year,” Mills said. “Later down the stretch, we [had] to execute.” 

Andre Mills has been Maryland’s biggest bright spot amidst the disappointing season. He proved why with a 30-point performance — his second-highest total of the season — while shooting an efficient 10-of-18 from the field (55%) and 8-of-10 from the free throw line. 

Mills became the first Maryland freshman to post multiple 30-point performances in a season since 1993-94. 

Like his 39-point performance against Northwestern on Feb. 18, the redshirt freshman’s heroics were not enough to carry Maryland (11-20, 4-16 Big Ten) to a win. 

The Terps tied the game multiple times in the final 10 minutes, but never took the lead. Maryland passed out of several wide-open looks late in the second half, with Buzz Williams looking enraged as his team refused to shoot good looks. 

It resulted in a timeout with Maryland down four with under a minute to go, but the play design was not executed. Mills dribbled left and found no space, resulting in a last-second heave that fell short to put the game out of reach.  

Williams said Illinois gave a different defensive look than he expected during the timeout, leading to the empty possession. 

“That wasn’t the play design,” Williams said. “That’s my fault … It was a play design for [Mills] to get a three.”

In the transfer portal era of college athletics, senior days are much different from how they used to be. 

Players bounce around from school to school, rarely staying in one place for their entire collegiate careers. 

That is the case for the 2025-2026 Maryland men’s basketball team, which honored four seniors on Sunday — Colin Metcalf, Elijah Saunders, Diggy Coit and Solomon Washington. None of them were on the roster before this season. 

It resulted in arguably the worst season in Maryland’s history, but the Terps fought to the end against a top-ranked team.  

“The team we are today is not the team that [we] started out in November at all,” Mills said. “Personally, players, coaches, we’ve all grown so much.” 

Maryland was dominated in a 19-point loss at Illinois on Jan. 21 and entered Sunday as 14.5-point home underdogs. 

Illinois (24-7, 15-5 Big Ten) had lost two in a row after reaching as high as No. 5 in the AP poll, and bounced back with a near 30-point victory over Oregon on Tuesday. 

The Terps came into Sunday locked into the 17th seed in the Big Ten tournament, while Illinois was fighting to stay a top-4 seed and keep its double-bye.  

Diggy Coit replaced Darius Adams in the starting lineup. Both guards had their worst stretch of the season coming in, but played much better offensively on Sunday. 

It didn’t look like it would start that way. In Adams’ first touch, he turned it over, leading to an easy Illini two to end their scoring drought. He recovered from the rough start, finishing with 14 points on 6-of-12 shooting for the freshman’s first double-digit scoring game since Feb. 15 at Rutgers. 

Coit finished with 10, but along with Maryland’s whole team, went cold from three late. The Terps missed their last eight 3-point attempts. Isaiah Watts finished with 7 points, but his impact felt greater. He helped Maryland tie the game in the second half with his and-one reverse layup to re-ignite the home crowd. 

Maryland played a strong first half. It shot 52% from the field and didn’t let Illinois’ size advantage beat them on the boards. The defense held freshman standout Keaton Wagler scoreless with two turnovers on three shot attempts and Andrej Stojakovic to nothing after scoring 30 points in their previous meeting. 

The duo combined for 15 points in the second half, but it was their bigs’ play that made the difference. Illinois dominated the paint with a 42-20 advantage, led by 22 points on 9-of-13 shooting by 6-foot-9 forward David Mirkovic. 

Free throws were another advantage for Illinois. It shot 21-of-26 (81%)and made several huge ones late to ice the game.