This was what Mike Woodson envisioned IU would be. He's left wondering what could have been.

Mike Woodson took his beleaguered basketball team to College Park on Sunday seeking, to use his own word, validation.

Foremost of his team’s midweek upset of Wisconsin, once a Big Ten title contender now fading back toward the pack Indiana desperately wants to climb back into. That he got, a double-digit comeback paving the way to Indiana’s 83-78 win at Maryland.

But there’s been a wider question of validation too, as IU’s winter of frustration and failure has turned pointed criticism onto its third-year coach. This, Mike Woodson insists, is what his team was supposed to look like, the form it took in his mind’s eye when he walked his way through this season before it ever started.

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Woodson walked out of the Xfinity Center with that sort of validation too, if to a point. Sunday provided a fair snapshot here, as we approach the business end of the calendar, of an Indiana that’s both what its coach and also what its critics see, trying to make something good from what’s left of this season.

“Tonight, it all came together a little bit,” Woodson told reporters postgame. “We’ve played a lot of good basketball in spurts, man. I’ve said that all season long. I would like to say things would’ve been a lot different if we had had (Xavier Johnson) in a lot of those games we let get away. We can’t look back.”

Sunday was not quite a tale of two halves. Probably more accurate to call them thirds.

Indiana started well, faded for about 15 minutes and then blew Maryland away with the kind of offensive performance the Hoosiers (16-13, 8-10) just haven’t been able to make a regularity this season.

Ten first-half turnovers — January’s problem that faded in February before going on a reunion tour to start March — threw away whatever momentum IU could build. Maryland finished the first 20 minutes plus-eight in points off turnovers, and up 10 on the scoreboard, those two numbers inextricably linked.

“We went into halftime and made some adjustments,” Woodson said. “I thought they responded.”

Not immediately, given Maryland’s lead crested at 16 points with a little under 18 minutes to go. The Terrapins (15-15, 7-12) won’t have known then they were approaching the worst of the storm.

Indiana wound up making a remarkable 19-of-26 field goal attempts in the second half. Mackenzie Mgbako led the way, scoring 18 of his career-high 24 points after the break.

Along the way, he hit four 3s, his confidence fueling his offense and his offense fueling multiple IU runs. Not for the first time in the past two-plus months, Mgbako looked not just like the top-10 recruit Woodson signed in the spring, but the sort of long, athletic, scoring mismatch Woodson banked on when he promised to play Mgbako at the three as a freshman.

“My teammates got me some good shots,” Mgbako said. “I had to knock them down.”

Prominent among those teammates, a pair of guard-captains, Xavier Johnson and Trey Galloway, Woodson had hoped would set the table for this season. They were (and remain) his best perimeter defenders, his most experienced players and his primary creative forces.

Woodson made them captains for their years of service, but also because he believed they could dovetail the way they did Sunday, when they finished with a combined 25 points, eight rebounds and 10 assists.

“It was as well as they’ve played together since I’ve had them together,” Woodson said. “This is probably the two best games they’ve had. We just haven’t been able to get to that point. It’s what it is, man. To see them play together, lead like they did, being seniors, was pretty nice.”

Throw in 14 points from Malik Reneau, 15 rebounds from Kel’el Ware — who didn’t let a scoreless first half affect his defense — and some course correction on those turnovers, and you get an Indiana team that for the second time this season erased a double-digit road deficit to carve out a conference win.

The Hoosiers even shot 14-of-17 from the free-throw line for good measure.

“I don’t think anybody on our team ever stopped believing,” Woodson said. “We just haven’t been able to put 40-minute ball games together like I envisioned. I thought tonight we played a terrible first half but we never quit. We came out the second half, defensively we were tremendous.”

Yes, this — the length, the athleticism, the post production, Johnson’s creation, Mgbako’s scoring, Galloway’s all-action performance — is what it was supposed to look like. What for reasons of injury and inconsistency it hasn’t far too often this season. Woodson can and should take some of that validation he spoke about from Sunday’s performance.

Just as long as it’s understood turnabout is fair play.

Indiana was down 16. This was, again, not the first time the Hoosiers had to rally from a double-digit deficit for a Big Ten win. They still only have one conference victory against a likely at-large NCAA tournament team (Wisconsin). In fact, of their eight Big Ten wins, five — season sweeps of Michigan, Ohio State and now Maryland — have come against three of the five teams beneath them in the conference standings as of press time.

This isn’t to suggest IU deserves nothing from Sunday’s performance. When a season has wandered down the road Indiana’s undeniably has, there’s something to be said for a team that’s still not quitting on itself or the wider idea of getting better.

Mgbako is still improving. So is Ware. The Hoosiers have found ways to fit themselves around Malik Reneau’s best, rather than asking him to carry an unfair load. Health has a lot to do with all this.

Galloway has turned himself quietly into one of the Big Ten’s best point guards, and now he has another all-league caliber creator running next to him. You only get so many points for trying, but at the end of a disappointing season that’s still likely to end quietly, Indiana still is when it would be awfully easy not to.

Woodson and his team deserve credit for — despite some obvious setbacks — still striving toward the more perfect vision of this group its coach had before a ball was ever tipped on this season. There may just come a point when everyone involved must accept that vision had limits, ones currently defined by a calendar running out just as Indiana might be finding its best form.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana basketball finally puts it all together in win over Maryland