COLLEGE PARK — A strange emotion resurfaced here Saturday inside Xfinity Center. The Maryland men’s basketball team was playing in March, and there was joy. Joy in the Terps’ style of play, joy in their breakthrough season, joy in the 74-61 win over Northwestern that sent them off to Indianapolis as the second seed in this week’s Big Ten Conference tournament.

“We’re going far, man,” reserve senior forward Jordan Geronimo told the announced sellout crowd of 17,950 before leaving the floor one last time in a Maryland jersey. “We’re going far.”

Who’s going to doubt him? If this March already feels different in College Park, it’s because the results certainly are. The 11th-ranked Terps are 24-7 overall and 3-0 this month. Over the previous four seasons, from the end of the Mark Turgeon era to the start of the Kevin Willard era, they had five wins total in the sport’s most maddening month.

Maryland is guaranteed only two more games this season: its Big Ten quarterfinal Friday night against seventh-seeded Illinois and its NCAA tournament opener next week. But expectations are as high as they’ve been since 2020, when the Terps won a share of the Big Ten regular-season title, and maybe longer. Even that team limped to the finish, losing three of its final five games before the coronavirus wiped out postseason play across the sport.

“We know how good we can be,” sophomore guard Rodney Rice, one of five starters averaging double-digit scoring, said Wednesday. “We know how good we can be when we play together as a team, so the expectations are high, but we can accomplish those.”

When Northwestern visited College Park last season for a late-February game, coach Chris Collins was struck by the fan base’s lack of interest. “No one was in here,” he recalled.

Maryland’s 68-61 loss to the Wildcats dropped the team to 15-14 overall in front of a half-filled arena. The Terps won just one game the rest of the season, finishing with the program’s second losing record in over three decades and missing the NCAA tournament for the second time in three years.

Collins, a former Duke guard and longtime Blue Devils assistant coach under Mike Krzyzewski, knew what Maryland could be, knew what a good Terps team had meant to college basketball, to the Atlantic Coast Conference, to the Big Ten over the years. He said he couldn’t help but smile Saturday as the lower seating bowl, packed with students who’d waited in line for hours for admission, serenaded his Northwestern team with “You suck” chants before tipoff.

“This felt like old-school Cole Field House,” Collins said. “I’ve been in a lot of big games in this building in my life, and it’s really cool when the atmosphere’s like that here because of the tradition of this program and what’s been built and what Kevin’s doing now.”

The Terps are a long way from their glory days under legendary coach Gary Williams. Freshman center Derik Queen, a Baltimore native who was named the Big Ten’s Freshman of the Year on Tuesday, has been alive for just one Sweet 16 appearance. Rice, a Prince George’s County native, couldn’t immediately remember the stars on that 2015-16 team who led the Terps to the NCAA tournament’s second weekend. He wasn’t even in high school.

The hope is that this Maryland team will raise another banner or two. The Terps’ “Crab Five” — the nickname given to the starting lineup of guards Ja’Kobi Gillespie, Selton Miguel and Rice; forward Julian Reese, another Baltimore native; and Queen — is one of the nation’s best five-man units.

Maryland entered Thursday night as the 13th-most efficient team in Division I, according to analytics website KenPom. Recent bracket projections have the Terps receiving a No. 4 seed in the NCAA tournament’s 68-team field, which will be unveiled Sunday. A strong weekend in Indianapolis could bump them up to the 3-seed line, as lofty a perch as they’ve enjoyed since their 2001-02 national championship season.

“I think everyone’s really enjoyed watching these guys play,” Willard, who took Maryland to the second round of the NCAA tournament in his debut season two years ago, said Wednesday. “I think that’s what I’m more excited about than anything — the way we’ve played, the way these guys have played, I think, has electrified the fan base, not just that we’re winning and we’re 11th in the country and a 2 seed [in the Big Ten tournament]. I think the way we’ve played has been a lot of fun to watch.”

The Terps can win ugly, and they can win pretty. Since Feb. 9, the start of a seven-wins-in-eight-games stretch, Maryland ranks fourth nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency, according to the analytics website Bart Torvik. Opponents have shot just 46.7% on 2-pointers and 32.9% on 3-pointers and have been largely blocked out on the offensive boards.

Even as the Terps shot just 37.7% over their final four regular-season games, their defense carried them to a comfortable victory at then-No. 17 Michigan and a near-comeback win against then-No. 8 Michigan State, which won on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer.

But Maryland’s offense will probably not be down for long. The team finished tied for third in the Big Ten in 3-point shooting (37%), third in scoring offense (81.5 points per game) and third in KenPom’s “adjusted tempo” metric. With the “Crab Five” on the floor together, the Terps have outscored conference opponents by an average of 14.1 points per 100 possessions, according to CBB Analytics, more than enough to compensate for a relatively punchless bench.

“I really like the fact that we can grind them out,” Willard said. “That’s showing me that we can play two different styles and win two different ways.”

In March, Maryland will need whatever it takes. Since the start of offseason workouts last summer, Geronimo said, the team has broken its huddles with a forward-looking mantra: “tourney.” Around campus, more and more fans have stopped Rice to wish him and the team luck in the postseason.

They want to believe, too.

“It’s definitely going to be fun,” Rice said Wednesday of his first Big Ten tournament.

“We’re right there,” Queen said. “Three games, three days. Might as well go win it.”