Guard Laurin Mincy drives past a Connecticut defender during Maryland’s 81-58 loss to Connecticut in the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament in Tampa, Florida on April 5, 2015.
TAMPA, Fla. — It wasn’t how Laurin Mincy wanted her winding journey to end. Not after she had revitalized her Terrapins women’s basketball career during her fifth and final year after suffering a pair of ACL tears since the start of high school.
It wasn’t supposed to end with Mincy matching her lowest scoring output of the season. Not after she had led the Terps in scoring while averaging nearly 15 points per game through the first seven postseason contests.
But Sunday night at Amalie Arena against powerhouse Connecticut, that’s how the final 40 minutes of Mincy’s time in a Terps uniform unfolded. Mincy scored three points on 1-of-5 shooting, and her team fell, 81-58, in the Final Four for the second consecutive season.
“I had a really terrible game,” Mincy said. “It was a little disappointing because I know my team needed me to play at a high level.”
Mincy logged 22 minutes, her second-briefest time on the floor since Jan. 18. She committed six giveaways, matching her highest total in a single contest since November. And she converted just one field-goal attempt for the third time in 37 games.
It was arguably her worst night of the season. The performance, Terps coach Brenda Frese seemed to suggest, didn’t do Mincy’s career justice. Nor did it define a standout senior season, one Frese was hoping Mincy would finally put together after spending most of her first four years bouncing back from knee injuries.
“I couldn’t be more proud of Laurin,” Frese said. “All the adversity that she went through in her five years to be able to lead this team to new heights, to a season that nobody expected, is something that I’m going to cherish forever in terms of her legacy.”
Mincy ends her career 19th on the Terps’ all-time scoring list with 1,379 points. She ranks sixth in program history with 143 made 3-pointers. And her career 81.7 percent mark at the free-throw line is second only to guard Kristi Tolliver.
Even though she wasn’t 100 percent healthy for most of her time in College Park, Mincy’s 143 games played for the Terps leaves her one shy of tying the program record.
“A lot of people could have rolled over and said, ‘You know what? [Because of] my knees, I’m not going to be the player I used to be,’” guard Lexie Brown said. “But Mincy, she worked extremely hard to get back this season. To see her back to who she was before her knee injuries and see how hard she worked and pushed us every day, I think that’s the legacy she’s going to leave with us.”
Perhaps Mincy’s final regular-season game and last postseason contest at Xfinity Center better resemble what Brown will remember about Mincy’s career.
On Senior Night, Mincy set her career high with 28 points and played 40 minutes for the first time since before she tore her right ACL five games into her junior season. Then in the second round of the NCAA tournament, the final time Mincy played in front of her home crowd, she went 6-for-7 from beyond the arc for 27 points to lead the Terps past previously-unbeaten Princeton.
But against the Huskies, who recruited her in high school, she never quite found her rhythm.
“I was one of the few kids that wanted to beat UConn,” Mincy said Thursday, referring to her recruitment process. “I wanted be one of the ones to knock them off their throne. That’s ultimately why I chose Maryland.”
The New Jersey native never did top Connecticut in her time donning No. 1 for the Terps. But just like Sunday’s underwhelming outing to end her career, it was only a fragment of Mincy’s lasting impact with the Terps.
