When looking at the box score from the Terrapins women’s basketball team’s win over Indiana on Saturday afternoon, the scoring totals from the second and fourth quarters hardly hint at the end result: an 86-63 Terps win.
In the 10 minutes before intermission, the Hoosiers scored 17 points while the No. 5 Terps managed 15, 11 of which came from guard Brene Moseley.
The scoring discrepancy increased to eight points in the final frame. Indiana put up 24, the second-most points the Terps have given up in a quarter this season and the highest since No. 1 UConn scored 27 fourth-quarter points en route to a 10-point win in late December.
Instead, it was the Terps’ dominant play in the other two quarters — they outscored the Hoosiers by 33 points over that stretch — that propelled them to their seventh straight conference win and kept them in a tie with No. 7 Ohio State atop the Big Ten standings.
“Maryland is a really good team, and they showed it today,” Indiana assistant coach Rhet Wierzba said. “In the first quarter, they came out and showed their perimeter threats. They got a lot of good outside shots and got up on us with their perimeter players. In the third quarter, they showed their threats from inside.”
READ MORE: Several Terps step up offensively in win over Indiana
Behind seven points from guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough, who finished with 16, the Terps got out to a 13-point advantage by scoring 23 points in the opening frame. They bested that mark in the third, dropping 32 points and limiting the Hoosiers to just 12. Center Brionna Jones, after being held scoreless in the first half, scored all 10 of her points in the period.
Both performances came after the Hoosiers started each quarter with momentum.
Indiana began the game with a 3-pointer, and guard Tyra Buss, the Hoosiers’ leading scorer this season, drilled a jumper after center Malina Howard scored the Terps’ first points of the contest with a layup.
Down 5-2, the Terps responded with 11 straight points — seven of which came from Walker-Kimbrough — and extended the lead to double digits by the quarter’s end. Forward Tierney Pfirman contributed six points in the period, making three consecutive jumpers.
“She was really, really good today,” coach Brenda Frese said of Pfirman. “She has those moments when she comes in and she’s instant offense, just like Brene, and you got to have those. It opens the gaps, it allows us to extend our depth and I thought [Pfirman] was very active today.”
The run also came from Indiana’s inability to score after its early spurt. The Hoosiers shot 24 percent over the first 10 minutes, and Wierzba said, “we missed a lot of shots that we normally make.” Even so, he credited the Terps’ defensive pressure and athleticism for forcing his team to rush its attempts from the field.
Those shots began to fall in the second quarter, and Indiana made three of its first five shots out of the halftime break to cut the Terps’ lead to 41-34.
But in what Frese called the difference in the game, the Terps went on a 20-2 run that put the game out of reach. The veteran coach said the team increased its energy and aggression and looked “locked in” during the stretch.
All of that led to a dominating sequence that all but sealed Indiana’s first loss in its past four games. It also helped overshadow what the Terps couldn’t accomplish in the other two quarters.
“It started on defense,” Walker-Kimbrough said of the Terps’ third-quarter spurt. “Our defense limited them to one shot, quickly turned into our offense. When we got out, pushing the ball and continuing to run our lanes and continuing to get opportunities on offense.”
