Sophomore Jamison Battle’s valiant effort wasn’t enough to get Minnesota men’s basketball back to .500 Wednesday night against Maryland. A dominant effort from the Terrapin bigs in the paint led to an 84-73 loss for the Gophers.

Battle scored a career-high 39 points and was hitting shots at all levels. It was clear he was feeling it from the get-go and hit seven threes. Battle’s effort wasn’t enough, and Minnesota lost its 15th conference game, this time noticeably lacking the efforts of Redshirt senior Eric Curry

Maryland had a field day inside the paint, and it wasn’t just from one guy. The Terrapins spread the ball out perfectly, having five guys score in the double figures. Maryland led Minnesota 46-16 in paint scoring.

Curry was announced out prior to the start of the game with an undisclosed injury. That led to a constant struggle for Minnesota, who even went without either of its other bigs for much of the second half.

Senior Charlie Daniels and freshman Treyton Thompson had a better chance of seeing an increase in minutes, but that wasn’t entirely the case. Daniels played 13 minutes, just four in the second, while Thompson played just three first-half minutes.

A short-handed Minnesota team got off to a hot start behind Battle and senior Payton Willis. Willis had the teams’ first eight points, with a pair of threes before Battle got his career night going.

Willis ran into foul trouble early, and it turned into a Battle night. He scored Minnesota’s first 14 points coming out of the half, and in doing so, broke his career-high in points.

There wasn’t much scoring outside of the dynamic duo, who accounted for 60 of the teams’ 73 points and combined to shoot 21-45 from the field.

Minnesota has its last regular-season game Sunday against Northwestern before the Big Ten tournament gets underway on Wednesday, March 9 in Indianapolis.