COLLEGE PARK, Md. — It’s tough to peg just what is scarier about Maryland’s latest men’s lacrosse juggernaut.

Is it that the Terrapins felt like they didn’t quite play up to their standard in a 20-12 rout at Michigan to open April? Or that their response — a 17-9 demolition of Rutgers to take over sole possession of first place in the Big Ten — was so immediate and precise?

Regardless, it was hard not to be impressed Sunday night with Division I’s lone remaining undefeated team.

“I knew they were good, but — this is a compliment — they are better than what I thought they were, and I thought they were good,” Rutgers coach Brian Brecht said. 

Maryland (10-0, 3-0 Big Ten) spread the wealth, receiving goals from 10 players while systematically picking apart the Scarlet Knights. Logan Wisnauskas had three goals and an assist and ended the night with 292 career points, two more than former teammate Jared Bernhardt to claim the school record.

Villanova import Keegan Khan had four goals and two assists. Former Cornell midfielder Jonathan Donville zipped passes around throughout the night and had a goal and four assists. Eric Malever collected two goals and three assists.

And on and on and on. The Terps had 13 assists, including four on five goals in the first 4:46. Rutgers (10-2, 2-1) cut the deficit to three on a couple occasions, but Maryland had things in hand when it took an 11-4 lead into the break.

“The trust to know that you’ll get the ball back is huge, because if you don’t have that trust, guys aren’t going to give it up,” Maryland coach John Tillman said. “That’s built by how they interact with each other in the locker room and how they are in practice. If there’s ever a sense of, ‘That guy is going to try to get his points and he’s just going to shoot a lot,’ all the sudden you start holding the ball a little longer.”

It was a sobering night for Rutgers, which had won four in a row and opened Big Ten play throttling Ohio State and Johns Hopkins by a combined 30-14 margin.

Thanks in part to Maryland faceoff specialist Luke Wierman winning 21 of 28 faceoffs, the Scarlet Knights were held to single digits for the first time since the last time they faced the Terps — a 13-9 loss on March 28, 2021.

“I like this team an awful lot,” Brecht said. “We’ve got some talented players. We did not play well tonight, and they took it to us. They’re a very good team and No. 1 for a reason. I’ve got to do a better job getting my team ready to play and not giving up five so quickly in a big game. I’m disappointed in myself. That’s a good team, and they made us pay for every single mistake that we made all over the field.”  

It is one of several crisp showings this season for Maryland, which added a defeat of the Scarlet Knights to notable victories over Princeton (15-10) and Virginia (23-12). It was also an upgrade over a week earlier against Michigan, when the Terps botched five clears and surrendered a season-high five extra-man chances.

There were few such openings for Rutgers, which didn’t go a man up until the fourth quarter and shot 5 of 27 in the first three quarters against a Maryland defense that ensured goalie Logan McNaney (12 saves) saw a diet of manageable looks.

“They didn’t feel like they played the cleanest game …,” Tillman said of the Michigan game. “Especially on the defensive end, I think there was definitely a sense of wanting to come out and play better. Offensively, the guys have been pretty consistent about trying to share the ball and move it.”

The victory put Maryland in position to clinch the top seed in the Big Ten tournament with a victory over Ohio State on Saturday. The Terps will earn at least a share of the conference regular season title if they manage a split against the Buckeyes and Johns Hopkins.

A split, of course, is not what Maryland is seeking, not when an eight-goal rout of Michigan was not good enough, and not when there were nits to pick Sunday night despite a thorough drubbing of one of the best teams in the country.

“First quarter was good,” Wisnauskas said. “We had some lulls here and there we have to work on constantly — just moving the ball [since] it died at times. That’s something that’s a work in progress.”

It’s enough to make anyone wonder just what the final product will look like next month.

Few coaches are better equipped to evaluate how this Maryland team compares to its recent iterations — the team that nearly won a national title in 2016, the one that actually took a Memorial Day victory lap the following year, the team that ran the table until the national final last season — than Brecht.

He’s had an up-close look at the Terps since the Big Ten began sponsoring men’s lacrosse in 2015. Rutgers is an impressive 20-8 against its other four conference opponents in that span, and now 0-10 against Maryland as league rivals.

So, are the Terps as good as they’ve been in the Big Ten era?

“I think so,” Brecht said. “They’re so deep and talented, they don’t have any flaws. Their faceoff game is outstanding, their transition between the lines is good, their poles are good, their defense is good, their attack is very unselfish and machine-like. They make you pay when you slide, they make you pay when you don’t slide, they make you pay if you look at the ball too long, they make you pay if you help out.”  

Scary stuff indeed.