At some point Friday afternoon, Maryland men’s basketball coach Kevin Willard will motion to his bench, a player will rise from his cushioned courtside seat, and a fan base will hold its collective breath.

The Terps (25-8), seeded fourth in the NCAA tournament’s West region after a breakthrough regular season, have faced better teams this year than Grand Canyon (26-7), the No. 13 seed and their first-round opponent. The Terps have played in more hostile environments than Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena. But the stakes of a simple coaching calculation — Who plays, and for how long? — have never been higher for Willard than they are this weekend.

Maryland has one of the nation’s best starting lineups, a sweet-shooting, airspace-smothering group with the game to match its colorful “Crab Five” nickname. If that were enough, the Terps would be a virtual shoo-in to make their first Sweet 16 since 2016. They would be among the tournament favorites to make it to San Antonio, Texas, for next month’s Final Four.

But 40-minute games require a bench in basketball, and that is where Maryland can get in trouble. Too much “Crab Five,” and the Terps might run out of steam. Not enough, and the Terps might run out of firepower.

“This team, they’re extremely confident in their individual skills, but I think we’ve talked a lot about as a staff and as a team, together, about the importance of having a team attitude,” Willard said Sunday in College Park. “And I think these guys have built a very strong team attitude where they believe in each other and they’re going to work for each other.”

Some combinations have worked better than others. Maryland opened the season starting two incumbents (sophomore guard DeShawn Harris-Smith and senior forward Julian Reese, a Baltimore native), two transfers (junior guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie and senior transfer guard Selton Miguel) and a freshman (blue-chip center recruit Derik Queen, another Baltimore native).

But, four games into the season, Willard made a change. Sophomore guard Rodney Rice, another transfer, replaced Harris-Smith in the lineup. In his first collegiate start, Rice scored 13 points in a 108-37 win over Canisius, Maryland’s second-largest margin of victory in program history. Four months later, the starting five remains untouched.

And nearly untouchable. According to CBB Analytics, while on the floor this season, Gillespie, Rice, Miguel, Reese and Queen have outscored opponents by 190 points, the highest margin of any Division I starting lineup. In league play, the Terps’ starters outscored Big Ten Conference opponents by 85 points; only Duke (a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament), Houston (No. 1 seed), St. John’s (No. 2 seed) and Marquette (No. 7 seed) had more dominant lineups.

“Maryland played 18 conference games with no depth, as they say, and they finished second in the conference — and it’s one of the hardest conferences in the country,” Big Ten Network analyst and former Purdue guard Raphael Davis said in a telephone interview. “I think for people to still be talking about their depth, it kind of makes no sense.”

The Terps do have depth. Most of it just happens to be concentrated in the Crab Five. Maryland was one of four major-conference teams this season to have all five starters average double-digit scoring while starting at least half of their games. Over the Terps’ 33 games, their starting lineup has produced 32 20-point performances. Queen, the Big Ten’s Freshman of the Year and a projected first-round pick in this year’s NBA draft, has a team-high 11, followed by Reese (seven), Gillespie (six), Rice (six) and Miguel (two).

“Their starting lineup’s as good any starting lineup in the country,” USC coach Eric Musselman said after Maryland’s starters combined for 85 points in an 88-71 win over the visiting Trojans last month.

The Terps’ bench, however, could use some scoring punch. In Michigan State’s buzzer-beating 58-55 win over Maryland last month — the third of four losses the Terps have suffered in the closing seconds of games this season — Maryland’s starters struggled to score. Crucially, so did its reserves. Senior forward Jordan Geronimo, graduate transfer guard Jay Young and Harris-Smith, all more noted for their defensive contributions, combined to play 22 minutes, collect 10 rebounds, take two shots and score no points.

Over the Terps’ next two games, road wins over Penn State and Michigan, their substitutes combined for four points. In the regular-season finale against Northwestern, another win, just six points. Maryland finished conference play averaging just 6.5 bench points per game overall, which ranks in the 0th percentile nationally, according to CBB Analytics.

Flashes of production have made the team’s potential all the more tantalizing. Maryland’s most impressive win all season might’ve come in the Big Ten tournament quarterfinals last Friday, when Geronimo and junior forward Tafara Gapare, sidelined for part of the season by an illness, totaled 15 points and the Terps sidestepped early foul trouble in an 88-65 dismantling of Illinois.

“Everyone said, ‘What happens if they get in foul trouble?’” Davis said. “They beat Illinois by 30, and it’s like, ‘Well, wait. Do it again.’ ... I think when you have guys that can go get 20 [points] any given night, that you can actually run sets for … Coach Willard has a legit five options where he can run a different play. So, if a guy does get in foul trouble or if a guy isn’t playing well, he can go to Selton if Rodney’s not going, or he can go to Ja’Kobi. And then Derik’s a pro.

“So I just think he [Willard] has done a great job with this team. I think they like each other, they mesh well, and they’re tough, and they’re also skilled, and normally, you don’t get tough and skilled teams. And I just think that’s what makes them different.”

Depth is not a prerequisite for March Madness glory. The past four national champions — Baylor (2021), Kansas (2022) and Connecticut (2023 and 2024) — averaged 23.6 to 29 bench minutes per game, according to the analytics website KenPom. Maryland’s reserves enter the tournament averaging 24.7. North Carolina, which rode its “Iron Five” to the 2022 national championship game, managed just 7.9 bench points per game in postseason play.

The very structure of NCAA tournament games tends to reward shorter rotations. TV timeouts are longer. So are halftimes. Travel is limited. So, while Terps starters have been careful not to lean too far into the Crab Five hype — “We do have a whole team. It isn’t just us out there,” Gillespie said last month — Willard might lean on them like never before.

Maryland has “five guys that need to get the basketball,” he said Sunday, and that might be enough. “Because on any night,” Willard explained, “someone can get you.”