In every big tournament, there are favorites, longshots and dark horses. And then there’s a fourth category: the entry that no one wants to face.

Put the Maryland women’s basketball team in that last grouping heading into the NCAA tournament.

The Terps, who won the Big Ten going away, certainly aren’t longshots or even dark horses. And with a No.2 seed, Maryland isn’t exactly a favorite to capture the title in San Antonio next month.

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But, with the nation’s most potent offense and a 13-game winning streak – all by double digits – they enter their first-round meeting with 15th seeded Mount St. Mary’s (17-6) Monday as the team you don’t want to meet up with.

To that point, the Terps (24-2), ranked No.7 in the final Associated Press poll, have received a stamp of approval from the former Hoopster-in-Chief.

That’s right: Former President Barack Obama tapped Maryland as one of his Final Four on a bracket released on his foundation’s website, along with Stanford, North Carolina State and Baylor, further stamping them as the chic pick to win it all.

The Terps apparently weren’t far from a No. 1 seed. While Maryland was one of three schools from Power Five conferences to win both their conference regular season and tournament titles (joining Stanford and Baylor), only the Cardinal received a No. 1 seed.

The Terps finished fifth in the NET rankings, which replaced the Ratings Percentage Index. That’s just behind South Carolina, which grabbed the last top seed. The Gamecocks and the Terps are paired in the Hemisfair region (one of four named for landmarks around San Antonio).

Maryland looks well poised to make its first Final Four trip in six years, thanks to the best offense coach Brenda Frese has had in 19 seasons in College Park.

The Terps have proven adept at playing at fitting their offense to meet the moment.

In a pair of meetings with Iowa, for instance, Maryland ran with the Hawkeyes, who have the nation’s second-ranked offense. The Terps scored a combined 215 points in the two games, capturing the Big Ten tournament title in the second contest.

Indeed, in the last two months, Maryland has failed to score 84 points or more in a game just once, a 62-50 win over Northwestern, where the Wildcats slowed the pace to a relative crawl, packing the middle and daring the Terps to beat them from the outside.

Big mistake. Maryland leads the nation in three-point percentage at 40.8 percent. Of the eight regulars, four shoot at least 35 percent from distance, led by graduate transfer Katie Benzan, the best three-point shooter in the nation at 50.6 percent.

The presence of Benzan, who received honorable mention All-America honors from the Associated Press, allowed Maryland to move on from the transfer to Oregon of guard Taylor Mikesell without missing a beat.

But Benzan is hardly the only deep threat. Forwards Chloe Bibby and Mimi Collins, transfers from Mississippi State and Tennessee, respectively, have become reliable on the perimeter.

Meanwhile, guard Diamond Miller, who typically plays at the head of the Terps’ press where her length disrupts passing lanes, has taken a huge step forward from her freshman campaign. She was named the Big Ten’s Most Improved Player, scoring 17.5 points a game, while shooting 50 percent from the field and 38 percent from three-point range.

But on a balanced squad with six players averaging at least 10 points a game, sophomore Ashley Owusu has succeeded Kaila Charles as Maryland’s true leader.

The 6’foot guard has been forced to play out of position at the point and has been dazzling, leading the Terps in scoring (18.8), while placing fourth in the nation in assists (5.8). She landed on the AP’s third team All America and will be on the short list for national Player of the Year next season.

The Terps have succeeded for most of the year without freshman Angel Reese. The 6’3 swing player from St. Frances entered the season as the nation’s No. 2 recruit and was expected to be a key to Maryland’s success. Instead, Reese missed 14 games with a fractured leg, suffered in a game against Towson. She returned for the final eight games and is making her way back into the rotation. Her contributions will be vital to an attack where five players average 25 minutes or more.

That Maryland is in serious national championship conversation is a tribute to Frese’s coaching acumen.

In her 19th season in College Park, Frese directed an attack that lost six players to graduation or transfer and whose best three players have two years of collegiate experience or less.

Add all that to the pressure of coaching in a pandemic, where the Terps saw four games canceled or postponed, and coping with the news that her father, Bill, was diagnosed with cancer, and one could argue that Frese, named national Coach of the Year, by ESPN, did the best work of her career in a season where she passed her predecessor Chris Weller with her 500th career victory.

The Terps will need Frese’s skill and that offensive firepower to capture the program’s second national title. In addition to their relative lack of depth, Maryland is relatively slight inside, a particular strength of the Gamecocks, their potential rival in the regional final. Sophomore Aaliyah Boston is a finalist for the Naismith Player of the Year and would be a handful for the Maryland interior.

The Terps also have recent history to overcome, as the school has failed to reach the Sweet 16 since 2017, suffering second round exits in 2018 and 2019. Fortunately for Frese, there’s no institutional knowledge of the recent past, since only oft-injured reserve guard Channise Lewis is the only player on the current roster with Maryland NCAA tournament experience.  

Milton Kent
Milton Kent

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.

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