The Maryland women’s basketball team is undefeated in Big Ten play, ranked third in the country, and has lost only one game. But guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough knows the Terps have been far from perfect.
“Sometimes coach [Brenda Frese] is probably trying to pull her hair out,” Walker-Kimbrough said.
The Terps (19-1, 7-0 Big Ten) feel they’ve struggled to be consistent. Frese believes her team has played down to its competition at times this year.
“[It’s a] continued theme that we have to be able to get out of,” Frese said. “We’re not there yet and we’re not satisfied with that part of the game.”
When Maryland travels to play Illinois on Thursday, it will be another chance for the Terps to do what has been an elusive achievement recently: play 40 minutes of strong basketball.
The Terps picked up a couple of blowouts early in their conference schedule, knocking off Nebraska and Northwestern by 44 and 31 points, respectively. There have been hiccups since then, however, even if none of them led to losses.
In Maryland’s 89-83 win against Penn State on Jan. 11, the Nittany Lions made a last-ditch comeback effort. Rutgers pulled off a similar feat Sunday, cutting a 20-point fourth-quarter deficit to eight before eventually falling, 80-71.
The Rutgers game highlighted the team’s lack of depth, another area Frese hopes her team can improve.
“Right now, [the rotation] has kind of tightened up,” Frese said. “It’s up to our depth to push. They didn’t take advantage of that against Rutgers in the time they were in.”
With the outcome decided late in the fourth quarter against the Scarlet Knights, Frese emptied her bench, but Rutgers took advantage by outscoring Maryland, 14-6, over the final three minutes.
Starting guard Destiny Slocum even returned to the floor in the game’s dying moments to help seal the win. And while Slocum said there are some advantages that come with the familiarity of a tighter, more consistent rotation, Frese would prefer to use her bench more often.
To help develop that depth, the Terps need to get into early, comfortable leads, which also has been a struggle as of late. Iowa led Maryland at halftime of their contest Jan. 14. Michigan won the first quarter against the Terps five days later and was within four points at the break.
“We continue to get everyone’s best shot,” Frese said. “We’re in our third year in the conference, everybody knows everybody. It does make for tighter games.”
Even Rutgers slowed the game down in the first half to keep its deficit to 34-30. The Terps then dominated the third quarter, 26-13, just as they did against Iowa, when they won the third period, 28-12.
“We show glimpses of what we really can do,” Walker-Kimbrough said. “Five-minute spurts, eight-minute spurts, but then we have to consistently be that team. It’s easy to say, but we have to make sure we get down to it.”
Walker-Kimbrough said a lot of that responsibility falls on her shoulders as one of the team’s senior leaders and the most experienced guard on the floor. She considers herself, Slocum and the other guards the “first line of defense,” both literally on the floor and as players with the ability to set the tone early in games.
The Terps believe there are some positives to the team’s slipups in recent outings. Rutgers imposing its game style on the Terps reminded Walker-Kimbrough that Maryland has to play its own brand of basketball. Teams poking holes in the Terps’ game helps them choose what to focus on in practice, Slocum said.
And obviously, critiquing the way in which the team won games is preferable to looking at what went wrong in a loss.
“Even when we haven’t played a complete, 40-minute game,” Frese said, “we’ve found ways to win.”
