In the end, it was just too much. Too much UConn. Too much talent. Too much balance. Too much precision. Too much Breanna Stewart and Morgan Tuck. And there is neither shame nor disgrace in that. Because the Connecticut Huskies women’s basketball is usually too much for anyone in NCAA women’s basketball.
As I noted in my preview, UConn has lost 12 games since the beginning of the 2009-10 season. Seven of those came to a Skylar Diggins led Notre Dame team and only three other teams have managed a win against the juggernaut from Stoors in this six season span.
And lest you think the final margin of 23 points is an extraordinarily lopsided defeat, let me remind you that Connecticut had already beaten South Carolina – the other semifinal loser – by 25 and Notre Dame – the team they will face Tuesday night for the National Championship – by 18 earlier this season. Or, if you think Final Four games should be more competitive, let me remind you of the scores of the last two title games: Connecticut 79 Notre Dame 58 and in 2013, Connecticut 93 Louisville 60. It’s just what UConn does.
Perhaps Lexie Brown had the most accurate encapsulation:
“I just think we continued to get deflated as they went on their runs. And the thing about UConn, it’s not one person contributing to that run. Seeing how our team, we would try to key in on one person and then somebody else would score and we’d try to key on that person and the next person would score. They do a great job of sharing the ball.”
But from my viewpoint, it was more than that. For the only time this calendar year, I saw an opponent break the Terrapins’ will. And they did it quickly in the opening minutes of the second half. In my game recap for Testudo Times, I wrote that Frese called a wise timeout when UConn quickly opened their lead from 11 to 16 to open the second half. Frese knew this was a key point in the contest, “I thought it was the second half. They came out, and their aggressiveness defensively, they were really physical. Obviously they really clamped us down from the field and we were having a difficult time being able to score.”
Unfortunately from a Maryland fan’s perspective, I wrote in the next sentence that the Terps continued to unravel. And despite the assertion of head coach Brenda Frese that, “And obviously the score doesn’t indicate in terms of the fight, and we’ve got to be able to do a better job of closing the gap, but I thought we did a tremendous job in the first half trying to put some things together, especially in the adversity of the calls made. We just kept fighting and we kept battling,” the game was, for all intents and purposes, over at that point.
An interesting pattern
In my preview, my opinion was that Maryland would be best served by attempting to slow the game. Elsewhere, I stated that I thought the Terps needed to continually switch defenses and not let UConn see the same defense for more than three or four consecutive possessions so they would have to work for a few seconds to make the Huskies identify the defense and determine a means of attack.
From the outset, it looked clear that Connecticut wanted to push the pace. They leaked out on long rebounds and pressed on defense to try to speed play. They played the first half at averaging 15 seconds per possession – a pace that would have put the game into the mid 70s in terms of number of possessions. And this was a pace I thought would leave Maryland out matched. The Terps trailed by 11 at the break.
Three minutes or so into the second half, UConn had pushed the advantage to 18 and hovered between 15 and 25 for the remainder of the game. Once they had built that margin and I think, sensed that they had broken Maryland’s will, the Huskies were content to slow the game to a crawl and their average possession time increased to 20 seconds. They sensed at that point that they could score more or less at will and began to conserve energy in anticipation of Tuesday’s title game.
Excited for the future
Once teams reach the postseason, only one team wins its last game. The Terrapins will not be that team in 2015. But there is, as I wrote at the beginning, neither shame nor disgrace in that. Maryland had a memorable season.
They set a single season and program record with 28 consecutive wins. They won the Big Ten Championship and conference tournament and became the first team since Purdue in 1999 and only the third in history to compile an undefeated record in conference play. They reached consecutive Final Fours for the first time in program history. Terps fans should talk about those accomplishments proudly.
Frese talked about the future, “Obviously the consistency factor for us was key in terms of being able to get back to back, but there’s that one more percent in terms of where we need to go.
But I’m excited when you talk about our future and graduating one senior, to be able to have the sophomore class come back, I’m really, really excited about this future.”
And she reminded us that two of the three teams that beat Maryland this season are playing for the National Championship Tuesday night.
I, for one, can hardly wait to see what’s in store.
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