Maryland’s women’s basketball team is midway through its title defense, but already coach Brenda Frese senses the Terrapins may be even better this season. She’s about to find out for sure.
Top-ranked Maryland visits No. 3 Duke Saturday in a rematch of last year’s NCAA women’s basketball final. Maryland (18-0) has won 24 straight while Duke (17-0) hasn’t fallen since its overtime defeat to the Terps.
Too bad No. 2 North Carolina (18-0) can’t make it a three-sided match because the women’s game revolves around the ACC leaders. The Terps must wait until Jan. 28 for the Tar Heels.
Maryland-Duke will be nationally-televised and a sellout just like the men’s rivalry. So are the Terps home games against North Carolina and Duke where 17,950 will break the Terps’ ACC women’s attendance mark. Tennessee and Connecticut built the women’s game, but weren’t in the same conference. This trio combines for five games annually plus the conference tournament. It’s not a round robin, it’s Russian Roulette down to recruiting.
“It used to be we were recruiting against Tennessee and Connecticut,” said Duke coach Gail Goestenkors. “Now Maryland and North Carolina are in there. We like that D.C. area and it’s been very good to us, but now it’s so much more of a challenge because Brenda has done such a good job. . . . This year, people now understand how good Maryland is. I don’t think last year at this time they understood that.”
The Terps are good all right. The entire starting lineup is on the national player of the year watch list. All five! Maryland blew out No. 19 Michigan State 97-57 on Jan. 6 before pasting Miami 111-53 on Wednesday. Attila the Hun was easier on foes.
“No question we’re better thanwe were a year ago,” Frese said. “We’re playing with the utmost confidence I’ve seen us play even from a year ago.”
Duke beat Maryland by 49 points during Frese’s 2002 inaugural campaign. Terps athletic director Debbie Yow simply told her new coach that one day the roles would be reversed. And now they are. However, Goestenkors said the Terps couldn’t have become national champions without first beating the Blue Devils in the ACC final.
“When [Maryland] beat us in the ACC tournament, that was huge,” she said. “They needed to get over that mental hump and they did. That gave them the confidence in the national championship game to come back against us.”
Said Frese: “A lot of teams were intimidated when they took the court to face Duke. We had to continue to build with players that felt like they could compete with Duke. They were the measuring stick for us to get competitive, create our own dynasty here at Maryland.”
Terps guard Kristi Tolliver’s distant 3-pointer that forced overtime is still a weekly staple on “ACC Live.” It was the dagger despite not being game-deciding. Goestenkors said the Blue Devils still haven’t quite forgotten it.
“I don’t think the image of that shot will leave our minds completely,” she said. “I don’t know if we lost the game. They won the game. . . . They just hit the biggest shot.”
Rick Snider has covered local sports since 1978. Contact him at [email protected].
