Maryland Women's Basketball: Latta Skips and Shoots Her Way Past Maryland, 84-71

Another big crowd, another loss for the Terps. In front of the largest crowd to ever watch an ACC game, Carolina played loose, while the home team was rattled again. For some reason, Maryland sees more than 10,000 people in the stands cheering and goes into a shell (no pun intended) for the first 30 minutes of the game. Then they look at the scoreboard and say "Oh Shit, we are losing, big time to play defense" which they do, to make the game close and sometimes pull out the win. The team needs to get beyond that at this point, maybe Brenda needs to pump crowd nice into practices like football coaches do. The mindset of this team in big games is disappointing.

Give Carolina credit. They hit their shots down the stretch and played better with the ball then they had all year. Leaving Ivory Latta open four straight times didn't help either.

I was impressed with the heart the team showed when down 20. Against Duke they sort of folded in that situation, but last night they fought back and got it to 1. Also, the loss was to the #2 team in the country, who happens to be undefeated and was looking for revenge.

The crowd was great tonight and it felt like a men's game, I hope we get the same experience for the Duke game.

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Positives

Shay. That was the freshman year and sophomore year Shay. She wasn't going to let the team lose without a fight. She stepped up like a senior should in a big game.

Newman. Her defensive intensity in the second half was great. She went after loose balls and made it tough for UNC to score.

Rebounding. Who would have guessed we would outrebound UNC by 12 and still lose? Great job ladies. Keep it up.

Neutral

Team's intensity. Came out for 5 minutes to start the game, then went away for 10 minutes, then came back for 5 minutes, then went away for 5 minutes of the second half (UNC scored 18 points in that span), then came back. We can't have these roller coaster games of emotion. Like last year, we are coming out flat to start the second half.

Sa'de. Despite her awful first shot and questionable dribbles into the corner. I thought her defense during that stretch was great and she really used her quickness to her advantage. Now, she needs to rediscover her outside shot.

Crystal. 14 and 10, but only 4 after halftime. She needs to demand the ball more especially with the team on the ropes. When Carolina was struggling, they dumped it into Larkins who went to work down there. Crystal needs to do the same.

Negatives

The Super Sophomores. 8-of-30 shooting is not good, especially in a big game. In both losses, the two have struggled to shoot the ball and Coleman has been hesitant to pull the trigger. Maybe it's nerves, maybe it's pressure, but the two of them have to relax and have fun. Also, they players they guard combined for 49 points

Harper. She was the reason we won the title last year because she played hard and attacked. Yes, she had 10 rebounds and 4 blocks, but she shot 3-of-8, dropped 4 or 5 passes and then let another 3 or 4 rebounds go through her hands. Then after bodying up Larkins for most of the game, she got pushed around like a rag doll. She has to play tougher than that.

Defense. We played it for about 15 minutes, too bad the game is 40 minutes long. I would like to see this team really foul someone for once. Not an intentional foul, but a foul that says "don't come in here again."

Turnovers. 14 in a half is too much against UNC especially when they are dumb ones, like dropping the ball out of bounds, ridiculous full court passes, etc.

Free-throw shooting. We only missed 4, but they came at critical junctions, like front ends of the one and one.

- The three blind mice from yesterday's game. Somehow none of them can see our players get hacked on nearly every play, nor the amount of times UNC travels with the ball, but calling a technical from 65-feet away is completely in their realm of officiating. When will the ACC hire real officials?

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Up Next
at Georgia Tech on Thursday. They are 13-8 and 4-3 in the conference. They also play that weird style of defense.