The slogan across the backs of pregame apparel worn by the Maryland women’s basketball reads “All Gas, No Brakes,” an allusion to the breakneck tempo at which the Terps want to play.
In Wednesday’s pasting of Alabama in the second round of the NCAA tournament, Maryland steamrolled the Crimson Tide 100-64 as their offense and defense operated at Mach five.
The Terps (26-2), the second seed in the Hemisfair region, shot 62 percent from the field, while posting 22 assists on 42 baskets. Six Maryland players scored in double figures, led by freshman Angel Reese, who had 19 points off the bench.
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Meanwhile, Maryland’s defense forced 19 Alabama turnovers, posting 33 points off the miscues. The Terps held Tide guard Jordan Lewis, who had 32 points in Monday’s win over North Carolina to eight points on 2-for-9 shooting.
In the process, the Terps notched their 14th straight win – all in double figures – while turning in arguably the most impressive performance of the 48 first and second round games.
Perhaps Maryland, which scored 25 points in a quarter for an NCAA-leading 43rd time, wanted to avenge the Terp men’s 19-point loss to Alabama in Monday’s second round game.
Maybe the Terps wanted to send a message to the NCAA women’s basketball committee that their Big Ten regular season and tournament championships and an offense that ranks first in the country should have been worth a No 1 seed.
And Reese, the St. Frances Academy graduate, may have wanted to remind the nation that, save for an early season leg injury, she is every bit as talented as Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, the two favorites for national Freshman of the Year.
Whatever the reason, the Terps jumped on Alabama from the tip, outscoring the Tide 30-9 in the first quarter. Maryland led 54-25 at the half, and absent a brief Alabama flurry to start the third quarter, they were never seriously threatened.
All but one Terp scored and a late three-point from reserve Tasiya Kozlova boosted Maryland to the 100-point mark, the seventh time they’ve dropped that many points on an opponent.
Maryland will face Texas next weekend in the regional semifinal.
Sports Media Analyst
Milton Kent is a veteran of Baltimore and Maryland journalism. Kent began a long association with the Baltimore Sun in 1985, serving as the Evening Sun’s Howard County reporter for 2 ½ years before joining the paper’s features department as an entertainment writer in 1988. In the following year, Kent began covering men’s and women’s college basketball for the Evening Sun, concentrating on the Maryland men’s and women’s teams. He continued covering college basketball when the writing staffs of the Evening and Morning Suns merged in 1991. From there, he covered the Orioles for three seasons before becoming one of the nation’s first fulltime sports media critics for parts of six years. In 2000, he began covering the NBA until 2004, when he launched a high school sports column, which he wrote until he left the Sun in 2008. Kent joined the staff of AOL Fanhouse, an online sports operation in 2009, covering sports media and women’s basketball, until operations ceased in 2011. He then joined the faculty at Morgan State University in the fall of 2011, where he has taught until the present day. In addition to writing for various platforms, including Sports Illustrated.com and TV Guide, Kent has hosted “Sports At Large,” a weekly commentary program airing on WYPR (88.1 FM) since 2002.