It's GameDay - Terps Take on US National Team

Tonight is our first and only chance to work out the kinks before the season opens next Friday night against Princeton. Unfortunately, the US National Team is a hard team to work out the kinks against. Almost every player on the team is a star on the WNBA level and I doubt they will rollover and play easier like previous exhibiton opponents have.

Just an FYI, Crystal has a sprained foot according to TerrapinTimes, so it would be a shock to see her play tonight as we need her healthy for 39 games this year.

Here's what I want to see tonight:
- Better defense by everyone.
- Better decision-making by KT, no need to shoot every time down the floor.
- More Aggression and attacking the hoop.
- Better handling of the pressure.
- Post players with outside shots.


What do you think?

Terps Picked 4th in ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll

The first real poll of the season came out this morning and the Terps start the season ranked fourth with 637 points. Tennessee was one, followed by UConn and Rutgers.

Looking at the preseason poll, the Terps will play the #3 (Rutgers), #5 (LSU - NIT), #6 (Oklahoma), #7 (UNC), #9 (Duke - at least twice), #16 (Ohio State), #19 (Florida State), #21 (Pittsburgh), #25 (North Carolina State) as well as the following teams receiving votes: Middle Tennessee State, Notre Dame (NIT), Georgia Tech, UCLA, and Temple. That's 15 games (at least) against teams at least one coach thought was worthy of being in the Top 25.

More Articles

More articles previewing the season:

Annapolis Capital
Off Court
CSTV's List of Top PGs
CSTV previews the ACC

Maryland Media Day

Yesterday was media day on campus and in case you missed it, you can either watch Brenda's Press Conference or read her quotes or the players' quotes.

Some of the news outlets covered it:
Baltimore Sun
The Diamondback
Washington Post
Examiner
Examiner




In other news, USA Basketball finally announced its roster for Wednesday with the one surprise being Lisa Leslie's return to the court.

Monday Musings

- Chelsea Lee and April Sykes chose Rutgers, which is a real kick in the pants.
- Dee Liles recommitted to Maryland, let's hope she finally gets to wear a Terps uniform in 2008.
- Still no word on who will be coming with USA Basketball, but from putting together bits and pieces from releases, chances are we will be playing many of the players on the USA Select Roster listed here.
- TerrapinTimes is reporting that we crushed Georgetown 90-52 on Saturday. No stats are available.

Maryland picked to win ACC; Crystal Preseason POY

Maryland received 27 of 37 votes and is the preseason favorite in the ACC.

Crystal was tabbed Preseason Player of the Year, while Marissa was a Preseason All-ACC selection.

Let's hope we live up to these expectations.

Tuesday was ACC Media Day, yet no poll

Judging from articles on the web, it was ACC Media Day down in Greensboro and all the coaches were in attendance, except for Brenda, who missed the event with back spasms (not a good sign with still 5 months before the twins arrive). The preseason poll was not released and is expected to be released today. Below are the links to articles regarding the event.

Examiner

Greensboro News Record

Raleigh News and Observer

Examiner

Washington Times

Charlotte Observer

Burlington Times

USA Today

Not a good sign that the Post nor the Sun bothered to send anyone down there. Somehow Heather Dinich was able to go cover men's media day.

In other news, the WNBA Draft Lottery was held yesterday and LA won the first pick, followed by Chicago, Minnesota, Atlanta, Houston, Washington, New York, Seattle, Connecticut, Sacramento, Detroit, Indiana, Phoenix, New York. I know the basketcases would want Lang in the Capital City. Atlanta would be ironic as she again would start with a rebuilding team. Anywhere but NY as they tend to let draft picks sit on the bench.

Monday Musings

-Sorry for the delay been having computer issues.

- It was great to see the team back on the court at Maryland Madness, but would it have hurt to let the ladies play more than 5 minutes? Here's hoping Harper's long-range shooting wasn't a one-time thing and she mimics what Gist would do on the break last year - spot up from three and can it.

- Almost all the preseason polls are out and we are ranked as high as #2 with Langhorne being an All-American in every mag. SportsPage.com picked Maryland fifth as did the Black Athlete Sports Network.

- Jessica Garrison picks Crystal as one of the top six centers in the country.

- ACC Men's Media Day was yesterday, which means women's media day will be just around the corner. Will Lang be preseason POY? Will Maryland be picked to win it all?

- Looks like someone taped the women's dance at Media Day:

Potential 2018 Recruit: Nicky Greenberg

According ESPN Radio's Mike Golic, Coach B may already be interested in seven-year old Nicky Greenberg from Westport, CT after learning about her last night at the Jimmy V Dinner. According to her father, she can dribble with her left-hand and is already working on her cross-over dribble. Her father believes she will develop "mad hops" as she gets older. Early competition seems to be Rutgers.

Monday Musings

Less than 5 days until the first practice as Friday will be the first time many of see Drey Mingo, Marah Strickland and Kat Lyons in a Terp uniform. Unfortunately, Anjale and Kim are not healthy enough to suit up.

The roster page on umterps.com has been updated! Here are all the new head shots

According to this release two preseason mags ranked us 4th and one picked us fifth. Crystal and Marissa were also tabbed preseason All-Americans.

Crystal gets a back handed compliment in this article by Jeff Lippman. Last I checked, Crystal was more of a POY candidate than Abby Waner.

The Rebkell boards have a poll about most anticipated games. Somehow the person created it thinks that Maryland-UCLA is a huge game and completely avoided our games vs. LSU, Oklahoma, Rutgers and Ohio State.

TerrapinTimes reported that top prospect April Sykes was on campus over the weekend along with 08 target Dara Taylor from DE and 09 target Maggie Lucas from PA. Sykes is rumored to be down to us, Rutgers and Illinois. Also sounds like Cierra Brevard is heavily leaning towards FSU.

Welcome Back

Summer is over and the football team lost a critical game to Wake Forest on Saturday, it's time for basketball season.

I hope you like the changes around here and there are still more to come! Among the changes: new message board for all the fans to chat on during road games, polls, countdown timer, links to the opponents' sites and message boards.

It's been quite a summer in College Park:

almost all the coaches minus Coach Floyd treated the team like the Titanic and jumped off

Brenda is having twins just in time for the tournament. (Yes, there will be poll about naming the kids)

Lynetta Kizer has agreed to join the Terps in 09. Right now, she's the only one, but Terrapin Times tells me weekly that the next could be very soon.

Two recruits are already out for the season: Anjale Barrett and Kim Rodgers, both with leg injuries (we should insure all our recruits' legs before they step on campus - that's now three recruits in two years that can't play a minute of their freshman season because of injuries.)

Shay is no longer on the team and thanks to the great coaching of Patty Coyle Shay's ass found a permanent spot on the bench. (as did Ivory Latta's, which was great)

Duke hired a coach who likes to play zone on defense and who we have beaten in back-to-back seasons.


If you haven't seen it yet here is the commercial for Maryland women's basketball season tickets.

Monday Musings

Brenda signed a contract extension meaning she will now be with the team through 2013.

According to TerrapinTimes.com, former Riverdale Baptist head coach Diane Richardson is taking over the post vacated by Mark Pearson.

Looks like the Official Shay Doron website is finally online.

Thursday's Trivia

According to Terrapin Times Maryland will play Ohio State, Temple, Middle Tennessee State and Pittsburgh at home next year. In addition they will play in the preseason WNIT featuring Notre Dame, LSU, Michigan State and TCU. Also, nonconference games include Oklahoma, Rutgers, UCLA and UCSB.

Duke is still searching for a coach. Boyle from Cal turned them down.

We are still on Della Donne's final 6 list. She recently replaced Duke with Texas. Also on the list: UConn, Tennessee, MTSU and Villanova.

Tuesday's Tidbits

I was lucky enough to score a ticket to last night's women's basketball banquet from a friend, so here are my observations:

1)The thing was too long. 3 hours is way too long.
2)Nancy was great as was the rebounder lady. Didn't really know what the rebounder lady was presenting.
3)Four of the girls are injured or will be injured: Newman had her knee scoped, Emery is having her knee fixed again, Sa'de had knee surgery and Christie has a stress fracture in her foot.
4)Coach Walz continued his "It was nice knowing you" tour by appearing at the banquet for possibly five minutes and then leaving. He's doing whatever he can to distance himself from the team.
5)Couldn't help but notice some disdain in Coach Frese's voice when introducing the players. She only talked about the positive first half they all had and nothing in the latter part of the season.
7)The highlight video was nicely done, but had too much rap music for my tastes and not enough of a tribute for Aurelie. It also made me mad as it showed how it was a wasted year.
8)Shay and Aurelie's speeches were both tearjerkers with Shay announcing her new official website. (For those wondering, Kalika and Alli Spence were members of their class too).
9)I felt bad for Sa'de as no one wanted a picture of her.
10)It would have been nice to have one of the girls grab the microphone and say a few words i.e. we too are disappointed in the season and we don't expect this to happen again.
11)Lastly, it seems like the guy in charge of the Rebounders forgot to mention a certain someone's blog yesterday. I was only the first blog about the team. Maybe I need to donate some money for the recognition.

Monday's Musings

Four of the five incoming recruits made the Parade All-America Team. Strickland and Rodgers made the second team, while Barrett made the third team and Mingo the fourth team.

Shay answered some questions after the Draft(Scroll more than half the way down).

Thursday's Tidbits

Sorry for the delay again, it is tax season.

I didn't get to see Drey or Marah play due to the game being on ESPNU, but reports are that Marah played well.

Congrats to Crystal for being a Kodak All-American. A year too late if you ask me.

Congrats to Marah for being named MVP of the WBCA Game.

The coaching search continues. For the Terps' fans hoping to get the LSU assistant, it may be a futile attempt as Van Chancellor wants the job and I think he will retain the old staff.

Bye, bye Gail. I can't wait until we get a crack at Texas in the near future.

Lastly, congrats to Shay, the 16th pick of the WNBA Draft to the New York Liberty. Great pick for the Liberty except they traded away her idol, Becky Hammon.

Articles

Baltimore Sun
Ynetnews
Jerusalem Post

A week later and some tidbits

It's been a week since we treated the basketball like a hot potato. I apologize for not updating the site earlier. The first few days I was in remorse. Not that we lost, but the fact that we didn't care how bad we looked. The next few days I was just swamped with work.

As far as how I felt with how we played: we flat out sucked. I give credit to Ole Miss who played the game of their lives and continued to bring the pressure whenever we made a run. Aside from that, what happened last Tuesday was a reflection of the whole season: we had this air of superiority all year that we could turn it on and off when we wanted too, unfortunately the bounces never went our way. We continued to flirt with falling behind hoping that our superiority would carry us to victory. The only way we won games was by blowing teams out early and then coasting to victory. In my mind, no one improved from last year and in fact I think we regressed as a team. Too many quick shots, not enough confidence to try something else. I saw the pictures of the team crying after the game, it's too bad it took a tournament loss for the team to show any emotion whatsoever. I hope for the team's sake, the loss makes each player hungrier and they stop taking winning for granted. November is a long ways away and it will be interesting to see how things unfold since then.

Coach Walz has left to take the head coaching job at Louisville and is taking Becky Bonner with him. Good riddance to both as instead of helping right the ship and take us to title #2, they decided to jump off now so that they didn't sink any further. (just kidding Coach, good luck and take care of Geno for us)

Marah and Drey will be playing in the McDonald's game tonight at 5:30 on ESPNU. Once again ESPN has decided that despite being the home of women's college basketball, a high school all-star game is not worth ESPN or ESPN2 coverage.

Game 34: Mississippi (NCAA Second Round)

Time to move on to our second course, which will be nothing like the first one. In fact, we first sampled this course back in November over in the Bahamas. Things have changed since then. Ole Miss may have developed some more scorers and turned the D, but we also added a faster point guard who can dribble through pressure. It should be a high scoring game.

Of course another win puts us four steps away from another National Title, while Ole Miss tries to play the spoiler.

The game is on ESPN2 at 7 p.m.


Interesting note: Right now only two of Maryland's opponents have been eliminated from the tournament and they were both knocked out by another Maryland opponent.

Ole Miss

Record: 22-10, 4-3 (Neutral)

Common Opponents: Miami (W, 82-64)

Most Points Allowed: 110

Fewest Points Scored: 46

Team Information - Stats

They like to create off their defense. Not a great half-court team. Would rather create turnovers and score easy buckets.

Scores 77.4 points per game and allow 65.5 ppg.

Allow teams to shoot 40.4% from the floor and 29.0% from behind the arc, while they shoot 41.1% and 26.5 % from 3.

They are not a 3-pt shooting team. They like to get in the lane and attack the basket.

Outrebound opponents 44.2-40.6

They generate 24.6 turnovers per game, while only committing 16.1 per game.

Shoot 62% from the free throw line.

The first time we played them all five starters scored in double figures including 19 from Laura Harper. It was basically a track meet and we used our height advantage.

The tallest player they start is 6'1 and they bring a 6'3 player off the bench.

Players to Watch - Roster

Armintie Price. Their 5-9 do-it-all senior. Leads the team in points, rebounds, steals, assists and turnovers. Essentially as she goes, the team goes. in the first game, she was held under 10 points and shot terribly. Likes to drive the lane and initiate contact and get to the line. Only shoots 57.7% from there. Has only taken 42 three-points, making only 7.

Ashley Awkward. 5-6 senior guard who is second on the team in scoring, steals, assists and turnovers. Another guard who loves to shoot the ball, although she will step outside the arc for 3 as she leads the team with 99 attempts, but only 27 makes. Doesn't rebound and doesn't foul.

Alliesha Easley. 5-8 freshman guard who is third in scoring and assists. Also shoots a ton of three pointers but rarely makes them. Can get in foul trouble.

Shawn Goff and Danetra Forrest. Essentially the team's post presence, although neither takes the same amount of shots as the guards. Goff is the better scorer, rebounder and shot blocker. Neither one shoots the 3.

Carla Bartee. the team's other three-point threat off the bench.

Keys to the Game

Take care of the ball.

Attack the press smartly.

Make Ole Miss run some sort of offense (usually it's give the ball to Price and let her create)

Keep throwing fresh bodies at Price, keep her off the boards and frutrate her to no end.

Control the Paint. No reason for Langhorne, Coleman and Harper not to all have at least 10 rebounds each.

Don't rush shots just take them in the flow of the game.

Doron Sends Harvard Packing Again, 89-65

Four years ago, Harvard's coach dreamed of having a young Jewish girl from New York play for her in the NCAA Tournament. That dream never came true and today in Hartford it became her nightmare. Shay showcased her freshman year form today as she hit a variety of shots from all over the court and led the team in scoring with 21 points. The win moves us on to a rematch with Mississippi on Tuesday and extends our non-conference win streak to 31. Fourth straight year of advancing to the second round of the tournament (only one other ACC team has done that - Duke).

The team came out tentative and with a new starting line up. Sa'de started over Kristi to help Toliver relax and not feel some much pressure. In case you haven't noticed Kristi has been down on herself the last few games and it was affecting her play. Sa'de's insertion wasn't the cause for the tentativeness, just a long lay off.

In the end, we saw the return of the running game. Remember that? That was back in November and December. I thought we lost that part of our game.

Time for the second course - some Rebels from Mississippi.

Recap|Box Score | Notes | Photo Gallery

Positives

The line up change. Toliver needed to know she wasn't invincible and that she was hurting the team. Sa'de brings emotion and speed and doesn't look for her shot.

The running game. We took the ball off the rebound and attacked Harvard before they could set up. Fast breaks equal easy points.

Shay. She's playing like she doesn't want to lose again as a Maryland player.

Coleman. She went after rebounds and played with fire. Shorts were a bit short from further away, but she will fix that.

Jade and Aurelie. With Harper struggling again, both filled in amicably in the post.

Neutral

Sa'de. I like how she ran the ball up the court and showed emotion, but I want her to drive to the hoop more and create her shot.

Langhorne. Seemed frustrated with the double teams and was forcing shots. Rebounded tough though and made some great outlet passes to start the break.

Toliver. Took the benching in stride, then tried to shoot her way back into the starting line up. The second half she played more in control and wasn't just firing up shots.

Negatives

Harper. Where have you gone 2006 Laura Harper? Another game of little offensive production. She has to be more than a shot blocker and foul collector. Maybe it's time to start Jade.

Lack of rotation on the zone defense. we left the far corner open for skip passes and wide open shots.

Half-court offense. No spacing and a bunch of people standing around watcing Crystal get double teamed. Also we stood around and settled for jumpers instead of attacking. Are we afraid to get hit? Did the lack of calls in other games make us shy?

Doron Sends Harvard Packing Again, 89-65

Four years ago, Harvard's coach dreamed of having a young Jewish girl from New York play for her in the NCAA Tournament. That dream never came true and today in Hartford it became her nightmare. Shay showcased her freshman year form today as she hit a variety of shots from all over the court and led the team in scoring with 21 points. The win moves us on to a rematch with Mississippi on Tuesday and extends our non-conference win streak to 31. Fourth straight year of advancing to the second round of the tournament (only one other ACC team has done that - Duke).

The team came out tentative and with a new starting line up. Sa'de started over Kristi to help Toliver relax and not feel some much pressure. In case you haven't noticed Kristi has been down on herself the last few games and it was affecting her play. Sa'de's insertion wasn't the cause for the tentativeness, just a long lay off.

In the end, we saw the return of the running game. Remember that? That was back in November and December. I thought we lost that part of our game.

Time for the second course - some Rebels from Mississippi.

Recap|Box Score | Notes | Photo Gallery

Positives

The line up change. Toliver needed to know she wasn't invincible and that she was hurting the team. Sa'de brings emotion and speed and doesn't look for her shot.

The running game. We took the ball off the rebound and attacked Harvard before they could set up. Fast breaks equal easy points.

Shay. She's playing like she doesn't want to lose again as a Maryland player.

Coleman. She went after rebounds and played with fire. Shorts were a bit short from further away, but she will fix that.

Jade and Aurelie. With Harper struggling again, both filled in amicably in the post.

Neutral

Sa'de. I like how she ran the ball up the court and showed emotion, but I want her to drive to the hoop more and create her shot.

Langhorne. Seemed frustrated with the double teams and was forcing shots. Rebounded tough though and made some great outlet passes to start the break.

Toliver. Took the benching in stride, then tried to shoot her way back into the starting line up. The second half she played more in control and wasn't just firing up shots.

Negatives

Harper. Where have you gone 2006 Laura Harper? Another game of little offensive production. She has to be more than a shot blocker and foul collector. Maybe it's time to start Jade.

Lack of rotation on the zone defense. we left the far corner open for skip passes and wide open shots.

Half-court offense. No spacing and a bunch of people standing around watcing Crystal get double teamed. Also we stood around and settled for jumpers instead of attacking. Are we afraid to get hit? Did the lack of calls in other games make us shy?