It turns out there was more to Mark Turgeon’s decision to sit four starters, including Melo Trimble, during the final four-plus minutes of Sunday’s 71-60 loss at Wisconsin than simply wanting keep them fresh ahead of the final four regular season games.

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That was Turgeon’s explanation immediately after the loss when he was asked whether he was sending a message or not, but after a two days of having his reasoning questioned by fans and pundits alike, he changed his tune.

“I was disappointed in all our guys,” Turgeon said before Monday’s practice. “I don’t like to call them out in public but we weren’t

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rebounding. The guys that were sitting on the end of the bench the last four minutes weren’t rebounding and [Trimble] was one of them. Is that clear enough?”

The only starter who remained on the floor in the final four minutes with the Terps trailing by 12 after the under-four media timeout was 5-foot-11 point guard Anthony Cowan, who coincidentally had the lowest total rebounds among starters in second half, grabbing his only two missed shots in the opening stanza. Trimble (five rebounds) was joined by Kevin Huerter (four), Justin Jackson (five) and Damonte Dodd (two) on the bench.

Maryland was outrebounded by 17, including a 18-5 disadvantage on the offensive glass, and gave up 19 second chance points. The disparity on the glass was even greater in the final 20 minutes when the Badgers turned 10 extra chances into 13 points. The inability to close out defensive possessions with a rebound allowed Wisconsin to rally from a six-point halftime deficit and take a 64-52 lead shortly before Trimble subbed out with 4:32 to go. He was tired, yes, and Turgeon reiterated that Trimble would’ve re-entered if the Terps chipped into the lead, but the bottom line was the Terps coach wasn’t pleased with his star junior guard’s effort on the glass.

Turgeon held a meeting with his players on Monday to make his point clearer.

“He talked to us yesterday about how we’re going to finish the season the right way,” said Trimble, who finished with 27 points and tied Jackson for the team lead in rebounds. “We can still try to win the league and if not we’re going to get ready for the postseason. He told us in order for us to win games we’ve got to rebound and we didn’t do a good job of that.”

It’s no secret that rebounding has been the team’s achilles’ heel -- they’ve been outrebounded in each of their five losses this season -- but it hasn’t always been a matter of effort. Turgeon has often talked about the need become tougher inside and it’s been a major focus in practice for months but there’s also been a general understanding that the team doesn’t have the right personnel to turn their biggest weakness into a strength. Almost every team in the country has at least one weakness, and for Maryland, it’s clearly been rebounding this year.

The effort level, on the other hand, has been reflected in other ways, such as first-shot defense, which the Terps do better than anybody in the conference. They rank first in effective field goal percentage defense but just fifth in defensive efficiency due to their inability to close out possessions with rebounds.

Turgeon has been able to teach his group of offensive minded players defense, but rebounding has been a different story. They’ve allowed opposing Big Ten teams to grab 33.5 percent of their misses, which ranks second-to-last in the conference ahead of Iowa. They’ll have another test tomorrow night against Minnesota, which features three of the conference’s top-25 offensive rebounders in Reggie Lynch, Jordan Murphy and Eric Curry. It doesn’t make things any easier moving forward now that 7-foot-1 center Michal Cekovsky will miss the remainder of the season after fracturing his ankle late in Sunday’s game, making Turgeon’s latest effort to fix his team’s rebounding issues his most desperate.

“It’s very important for us just to get better as a team,” said Trimble, the Big Ten's reigning player of the week. “The thing we’ve been focusing on all season is rebounding and it’s just something we haven’t been able to correct yet. It’s something that we’re going to keep working on and hopefully get better at before the season ends.”