After squeaking past Wisconsin a week ago, the Terrapins women’s basketball team turned in perhaps its most dominant performance in Big Ten play on Sunday against Minnesota.
The Terps tallied 110 points, their highest scoring total against a conference foe since 2008, en route to clinching their second straight Big Ten title.
They’ve tallied six straight wins entering this weekend’s Big Ten Tournament, but guard Brene Moseley said the continued development of the team’s younger reserves will be crucial to the Terps’ success down the stretch of games.
“We’re doing really good right now,” guard Brene Moseley said. “And the funny thing is, I don’t think it’s our best. I think there’s another level that we have to us that’s going to be able to expand us.”
With the potential to play three games in three days, starting with Friday’s game against No. 9-seed Iowa, coach Brenda Frese believes it’s a solid barometer to see where the reserve players stand with the NCAA Tournament about two weeks away.
“I like how they’re approaching it, but until we get into those kinds of pressure situations, you never can tell,” Frese said. “But I do like the fact that I think our freshman have grown through this season and have really wanted those expectations.”
During the Terps’ second straight Final Four run last season, Moseley pointed out that the team featured veteran contributors off the bench. Moseley, guard Chloe Pavlech and forward Tierney Pfirman, all of whom were juniors, provided a sophomore-heavy starting lineup with experience when they came into the game.
Moseley and Pfirman still come off the bench this season, but they’re the third- and fourth-highest scorers on the team and each play more than 16 minutes per game.
Aside from them, the freshmen duo of forwards Kiah Gillespie and Brianna Fraser and sophomore guard Kiara Leslie are the only other players who crack the rotation.
“The importance of our bench is going to be the key part because I think our starters have done a great job with bringing the intensity,” Moseley said. “We have me and [Pfirman] on the bench right now, but besides us, it’s a very young group.”
The three players average at least 11 minutes per game, though they received just 15 combined minutes in the regular-season finale.
“They have no idea how valuable they are to our team,” guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough said of the freshmen. “They mean so much to us. The way Kiah shoots the ball, the way Bri Fraser handles the ball as a post player, You just don’t see those types of things.”
Entering her third conference tournament, Walker-Kimbrough has dealt with the physical toll that the tournament takes on a player’s bodies. But Fraser and Gillespie haven’t experienced that, so Walker-Kimbrough, the Terps’ leading scorer, has tried to keep her younger teammates confident through the grind.
After all, they might become important pieces in the Terps quest to make another deep postseason run.
“They haven’t really even hit their peak,” Moseley said. “They’ve been working hard, so it’s going to be fun to see whatever they bring to the table because I know it’s going to be good.”
